World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head
Author: Deighton, Len; Higgins, Jack; MacLean, Alistair
Date: 2013-12-12
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

World War Two Thriller Collection

Len Deighton, Jack Higgins and Alistair Maclean

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Winter

The Eagle Has Flown

South by Java Head

About the Authors

Also by the Same Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

Len Deighton

Winter

The Tragic Story of a Berlin Family 1899–1945

Contents

Title Page

Cover designer’s note

In attempting to come up with a concept for the…

Introduction

This is how it started. It was Friday afternoon –…

Prologue

Winter entered the prison cell unprepared for the change that…

1899

‘A whole new century’

1900

A plot of land on the Obersalzberg

1906

‘The sort of thing they’re told at school’

1908

‘Conqueror of the air – hurrah!’

1910

The end of Valhalla

1914

War with Russia

1916

‘What kind of dopes are they to keep coming that way?’

1917

‘Not so loud, voices carry in the night’

1918

‘The war is won, isn’t it?’

1922

‘Berlin is so far away and I miss you so much’

1924

‘Who are those dreadful men?’

1925

‘You don’t have to be a mathematician’

1927

‘That’s all they ask in return’

1929

‘There is nothing safer than a zeppelin’

1930

A family Christmas

1932

‘Was that more shouting in the street?’

1933

‘We think something is definitely brewing over there’

1934

‘Gesundheit!’

1936

‘Rinse and spit out’

1937

‘You know what these old cops are like’

1938

‘Being innocent is no defence’

1939

‘Moscow?’ said Pauli

1940

The sound stage

1941

‘It was on the radio’

1942

‘I knew you’d wait’

1943

‘Happy and victorious’

1944

‘We’re all serious’

1945

‘It’s a labour of love’

Cover designer’s note

In attempting to come up with a concept for the cover design for Winter, Len Deighton’s saga of a Berlin family set in the first half of the twentieth century, I sought a striking image that would express the outcome of the Winter family’s story. I recalled a photograph in my wife Isolde’s family album of her father as a child dressed in a sailor suit standing beside his father. This image seemed to fit the time and place precisely. By tearing the photograph apart it implied the outcome of their relationship; and in a metaphorical sense it would also suggest what lay ahead for the city, and indeed the entire country. Sometimes the simplest of images are the most effective.

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

Introduction

This is how it started. It was Friday afternoon – exactly 2.20 pm – and the snow was falling. The flakes that hit the car’s windscreen were not the soft, watery sort that slide downwards and fade away like old soldiers. These were solid bullets of ice, perfectly formed and determined to stay put. These were German snowflakes. Our elderly Volvo was on the road heading west from Munich, with the cold waters of the Ammersee close at hand and my sons on the back seat politely starving to death. My wife was at the wheel. ‘The next place we see; we stop,’ I said. ‘It’s getting late. I don’t care if it’s just a currywurst van parked on the roadside.’

The ‘next place’ was the Gasthof Kramerhof. It was a typical Bavarian inn, with a large restaurant that attracted locals and a few well-kept rooms for travellers. It was sited well back from the road and had an extensive parking area, which is often a measure of an inn’s popularity. Now lunchtime had ended and there were no cars there. The loops of tyre tracks that marked their departure were now disappearing under the continuing snowfall. But in such a Gasthof all travellers are welcome and mealtime lasts all day. Soon we were relishing a Bavarian meal: kraftbrühe – clear soup – followed by pork cutlets in a sour cream sauce with spätzle on the same plate. Had I been better informed about German food I might have guessed that the owners were Schwabs, for these were the long square-sided ‘pasta’ that is a delight of Schwabian cooking.

Outside, the snow was conquering the world. The sky was steely grey and descending upon the treetops. Stacked on the Volvo’s oversized roof rack, our bags and boxes now looked like a scale model of the Alps. What else was there to do? We stayed there for the weekend. That’s all it took for the Kramerhof to become our home and we remained there for many months. From the hotel room we moved one floor higher where I set up my portable typewriter in the attic rooms originally furnished for a mother-in-law. It was cramped under the steeply sloping roof and I banged my head a lot but this was the sort of Germany I wanted to write about. All the events of the neighborhood were celebrated there under our noses, from weddings – complete with amateur brass band – to hunting-dinners from which the smell of wine-rich venison drifted upwards to reach us in the early hours of morning.

My wife’s fluent German impressed the lady in the village post office and we soon knew everything about everyone. There was enough social life to furnish a dozen lurid novels. Retired military men abounded. I met a relative of General Gehlen, one of the very few spies who influenced history. The Kramerhof food was wonderful, the customers were entertaining and the owners became friends. They allowed us into the well-ordered kitchen where we learned how to make Schwabian spätzle and much more.

Winter was a biography of the Germany I had come to know over the years. We had lived in Vienna and in an Austrian village near Salzburg, which was now not all that far away, and my sons spoke a strongly accented German. For many Germans, and many historians too, Germany and Austria do not have a separate existence. AJP Taylor, who taught me so much about German history, persuaded me to consider both in unison and for that reason the story of Winter begins in Vienna. One of our neighbours in Riederau village had a son writing for a newspaper in Vienna. At my request, he rummaged through the archives to find out what the weather was like in Vienna on ‘the final evening of the 1800s’. Now I had no excuse for delay.

I knew what I wanted to say; I had been planning it for years. My hesitation had come from the problems of continuity. In the beneficial absence of formal instruction in the skills of writing fiction, I found it natural to write sequences in ‘real time’. In my book conversations and physical actions as depicted were apt to take about the same time as the reader took in reading about them. Of course there were expansions and compressions so that only the highlights of dinner party chit-chat were necessary; split-second reactions were expanded to encompass thought and reactions. But now I was going to relate the events of fifty years; I faced many problems I never even guessed about. Somerset Maugham, a writer I much admired, would often write in the first person of a man who observed the events of which he wrote. Maugham’s voice was apt to bridge his narrative with ‘…it was three years before I was to see either of them again, and it was in very different circumstances’. As a reader I rather delighted in this voyeur writer but I didn’t feel confident enough to use such leaps in time. And the frantic pace of German history would not survive a leisurely survey.

I sought advice from my literary agents Jonathan and Ann Clowes – the most widely read friends I have – and examined several family saga novels, old; and new. There was a lot to learn. More than once I decided to abandon my project but while I was sorting and sifting my research notes the solution became evident. I would eliminate connective material. My chapters would be brief human interactions, like flashes of lightning illuminating long nights of darkness. This format would require careful selection of material so that each chapter provided a vital link in the story. And yet Winter must not be a history book; it had to be an interesting and emotive story of a family living through Europe’s nightmare past.

I returned to Vienna. Vienna is a town different to any other that I know. The small central area is defined by the Ringstrasse around which, according to his son, the amazing Sigmund Freud ‘marched at a terrific speed almost every day’. Vienna is not so much a town as a spectacle: if you don’t want to visit Sankt Marxer Friedhof – where Mozart’s corpse was tossed into a common grave – you can chew on the famous chocolates that bear his name. If you don’t like the music of Mahler, what about Franz Lehar? If Klimt is too opulent, what about Schiele? If you don’t like the Hotel Sacher; savour your Sachertorte in Demels. If you don’t fancy Graham Greene’s sewers; seek Harry Lime on the big wheel in the Prater. Vienna has something for everyone; from the Wiener Werkstätte to the Wienerwald. Within the Ringstrasse there are more churches, historic buildings, restaurants and shops than anyone needs. But the greatest wonders of the city are its magnificent old cafes. So you can see why, for anyone inflicted with nsatiable curiosity, or easily diverted, Vienna is no place to write books.

I chose Munich because that city uniquely links Vienna with Berlin. The inhabitants of these three great German cities view each other with dispassionate superiority. While the mighty Austria-Hungary Empire dominated Europe, Vienna ruled. It was Bismarck, and the Prussian armies that in 1870 marched into Paris, that displaced Vienna and established Berlin’s ascendancy. At the turn of the century, Berlin’s music hall comics got guaranteed laughs from jokes that depicted Bavarians and the Viennese as hopeless country bumpkins. But Hitler changed all that. Hitler was an Austrian and his Nazi Party was born in Munich and when Hitler named that town as the Hauptstadt der Bewegung – ‘capital of the movement’ – all jokes about its citizens were hushed.

I visited all three cities frequently while working on this book but Munich was the place where it all began. My sons attended a local boarding school at Schondorf, and put their Austrian accents on the shelf. With the aid of my wife, I interrogated anyone old enough to provide me with memories of the old days. I was listening to the recollections of a fellow customer in a stationery shop when I spotted a small grey ‘typewriter’ that turned out to be Hewlett Packard’s radical new product. It was the world’s first laptop: a unique, strange and awkward beast by today’s standards – and started writing.

Len Deighton, 2010

Prologue

Nuremberg 1945

Winter entered the prison cell unprepared for the change that the short period of imprisonment had brought to his friend. The prisoner was fifty-two years old and looked at least sixty. His hair had been thinning for years, but suddenly he’d become a bald-headed old man. He was sitting on the iron frame bed, sallow and shrunken. His elbows were resting on his knees and one hand was propped under his unshaven chin. The prison authorities had taken from him his belt, his braces, and his necktie, and the expensive custom-made suit from Berlin’s most famous tailor was now stained and baggy. And yet the dark-underlined eyes were the same, and the pointed cleft chin made him immediately recognizable as a celebrity of the Third Reich, one of Hitler’s most reliable associates.

‘You sent for me, Herr Reichsminister?’

The prisoner looked up. ‘The Reich is kaputt, Germany is kaputt, and I’m not a minister: I’m just a number.’ Winter could think of no way to respond to the bitter old man. He’d become used to seeing him sitting behind the magnificent hand-carved desk in the tapestry-hung room in the ministry, surrounded by aides, secretaries, and assistants. ‘Yes, I sent for you, Winter. Sit down.’

He sat down. So it was all to be formal.

‘I sent for you, Herr Doktor Winter, and I’ll tell you why. They told me you were in prison in London awaiting interrogation. They said that any of us on trial here could choose any German national we wanted for our defence counsel, and that if the one we chose was being held in prison they’d release him to do it. It seemed to me that a man in prison might know what it’s like for me in here.’

Winter wondered if he should offer the ex-Reichsminister a cigarette, but when – still undecided – he produced his precious cigarettes, the military policeman in the corridor shouted through the open door, ‘No smoking, buddy!’

The ex-Reichsminister gave no sign of having heard the prison guard’s voice. He carried on with his explanation. ‘Two, you speak American …speak it fluently. Three, you’re a damned good lawyer, as I know from working with you for many years. Four, and this is the most important, you are an Obersturmbannführer in the SS…’ He saw Winter’s face change and said, ‘Is there something wrong, Winter?’

Winter leaned forward; it was a gesture of confidentiality and commitment. ‘At this very moment, just a few hundred yards from here, there are a hundred or more American lawyers drafting the prosecution’s case for declaring the SS an illegal organization. Such a verdict would mean prison, and perhaps death sentences, for everyone who was ever a member.’

‘Very well,’ said the prisoner testily. He’d always hated what he called ‘unimportant pettifogging details’. ‘But you’re not going to suddenly claim you weren’t a member of the SS, are you?’

For the first time since the message had come that the minister wanted him as junior defence counsel, Winter felt alarmed. He looked round the cell to see if there were microphones. There were bound to be. He remembered this building from the time when he’d been working with the Nuremberg Gestapo. Half the material used in the trial of the disgruntled brownshirts had come from shorthand clerks who had listened to the prisoners over hidden microphones. ‘I can’t answer that,’ said Winter softly.

‘Don’t give me that yes-sir, no-sir, I-don’t-know-sir. I don’t want some woolly-minded, fainthearted, Jew-loving liberal trying to get my case thrown out of court on some obscure technicality. I sent for you because you got me into all this. I remembered your hard work for the party. I remembered the good times we had long before we dreamed of coming to power. I remembered the way your father lent me money back when no one else would even let me into their office. Pull yourself together, Winter. Either put your guts into the effort for my defence or get out of here!’

Winter admired his old friend’s courage. Appearances could be deceptive: he wasn’t the broken-spirited shell that Winter had thought; he was still the same ruthless old bastard that he had worked for. He remembered that first political meeting in the Potsdamer Platz in the 1920s and the speech he’d given: ‘Beneath the ashes fires still rage.’ It had been a recurring theme in his speeches right up until 1945.

‘We’ll fight them,’ said Winter. ‘We’ll grab those judges by the ankles and shake them until their loose change falls to the floor.’

‘That’s right,’ he said. It was another one of his pet expressions. ‘That’s right.’ He almost smiled.

‘Time’s up, buddy!’

Winter looked at his watch. There was another two minutes to go. The Americans were like that. They talked about justice and freedom, democracy and liberty, but they never gave an inch. There was no point in arguing: they were the victors. The whole damned Nuremberg trial was just a show trial, just an opportunity for the Americans and the British and the French and the Russians to make an elaborate pretence of legal rectitude before executing the vanquished. But it was better that the ex-Reichsminister didn’t fully realize the inevitable verdict and sentence. Better to fight them all the way and go down fighting. At least that would keep his spirits alive. With this resolved, Winter felt better, too. It would be a chance to relive the old days, if only in memories.

When Winter got to the door, the old man called out to him, ‘One last thing, Winter.’ Winter turned to face him. ‘I hear stories about some aggressive American colonel on the prosecution staff, a tall, thin one with a beautifully tailored uniform and manicured fingernails …A man who speaks perfect German with a Berlin accent. He seems to hate all Germans and makes no allowances for anything; he treats everyone to a tongue-lashing every time he sends for them. Now they tell me he’s been sent from Washington just to frame the prosecution’s case against me…’ He paused and stared. He was working himself up into the sort of rage that had sent fear into every corner of his ministry and far beyond. ‘Not for Göring, Speer, Hess, or any of the others, just for me. What do you know about that shit-face Schweinehund?’

‘Yes, I know him. It’s my brother.’

One of the Americans lawyers, Bill Callaghan – a white-haired Bostonian who specialized in maritime law – said, after reading through Winter’s file, that the story of the brothers read like fiction. But that was only because Callaghan was unacquainted with any fiction except the evidence that his shipowning clients provided for him to argue in court.

Fiction had unity and style, fiction had a beginning and a proper end, fiction showed evidence of planning and research and usually attempted to impose an orderly pattern upon the chaos of reality.

But the lives of the Winter brothers were not orderly and had no discernible pattern. Their lives had been a response to parental expectations, historical circumstances, and fleeting opportunities. Ambitions remained unfulfilled and prejudices had been disproved. Diversions, digressions, and disappointments had punctuated their lives. In fact, their lives had been fashioned in the same way as had the lives of so many of those born at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Callaghan, in that swift and effortless way that trial lawyers can so often command, gave an instant verdict on the lives of the Winter brothers. ‘One of them is a success story,’ said Callaghan, ‘and the other is a goddamned horror story.’ Actually, neither was a story at all. Like most people, they had lived through a series of episodes, most of which were frustrating and unsatisfactory.

1899

‘A whole new century’

Everyone saw the imperious man standing under the lamppost in Vienna’s Ringstrasse, and yet no one looked directly at him. He was very slim, about thirty years old, pale-faced, with quick, angry eyes and a neatly trimmed black moustache. His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his shiny silk top hat, and the gaslight picked out the diamond pin in his cravat. He wore a long black chesterfield overcoat with a fur collar. It was an especially fine-looking coat, the sort of overcoat that came from the exclusive tailors of Berlin. ‘I can’t wait a moment longer,’ he said. And his German was spoken with the accent of Berlin. No one – except perhaps some of the immigrants from the Sudetenland who now made up such a large proportion of the city’s population – could have mistaken Harald Winter for a native of Vienna.

The crowd that had gathered around the amazing horseless carriage – a Benz Viktoria – now studied the chauffeur who, having inspected its engine, stood up and wiped his hands. ‘It’s the fuel,’ said the chauffeur, ‘dirt in the pipe.’

‘I’ll walk to the club,’ said the man. ‘Stay here with the car. I’ll send someone to help you.’ Without waiting for a reply, the man pushed his way past a couple of onlookers who were in his way and marched off along the boulevard, jabbing at the pavement with his cane and scowling with anger.

Vienna was cold on that final evening of the 1800s; the temperature sank steadily through the day, until by evening it went below freezing point. Harald Winter felt cold but he also felt a fool. He was mortified when one of his automobiles broke down. He enjoyed being the centre of attention when he was being driven past his friends and enemies in their carriages, or simply being pointed out as the owner of one of the first of the new, expensive mechanical vehicles. But when the thing gave trouble like this, he felt humiliated.

In Berlin it was different. In Berlin they knew about these things. In Berlin there was always someone available to attend to its fits and starts, its farts and coughs, its wheezes and relapses. He should never have brought the machine to Vienna. The Austrians knew nothing about such modern machinery. The only horseless carriage he’d seen here was electric-powered – and he hated electric vehicles. He should never have let his wife persuade him to come here for Christmas: he hated Vienna’s rainy winters, hated the political strife that so often ended in riots, hated the food, and hated these lazy, good-for-nothing Viennese with their shrill accent, to say nothing of the wretched, ragged foreigners who were everywhere jabbering away in their incomprehensible languages. None of them could be bothered to learn a word of proper German.

He was chilled by the time he turned through big gates and into an entranceway. Like so many of the buildings in this preposterous town, the club looked like a palace, a heavy Baroque building writhing with nymphs and naiads, its portals supported by a quartet of herculean pillars. The doorman signalled to the door porters so that he was admitted immediately to the brightly lit lobby. It was normally crowded at this time of evening, but tonight it was strangely quiet.

‘Good evening, Herr Baron.’

Winter grunted. That was another thing he hated about Vienna: everyone had to have a title, and if, like Winter, a man had no title, the servants would invent one for him. While one servant took his cane and his silk hat, another slipped his overcoat from his shoulders.

Without hat and overcoat, it was revealed that Harald Winter had not yet changed for dinner. He wore a dark frock coat with light-grey trousers, a high stiff collar and a slim bow-tie. His pale face was wide with a pointed chin, so that he looked rather satanic, an effect emphasized by his shiny black hair and centre parting.

‘Winter! What a coincidence! I’m just off to see your wife now.’ The speaker was Professor Doktor Franz Schneider, fifty years old, the best, or at least the richest and most successful, gynaecologist in Vienna. He was a small, white-faced man, plump in the way that babies are plump, his skin flawless and his eyes bright blue. Nervously he touched his white goatee beard before straightening his pince-nez. ‘You heard, of course…. Your wife: the first signs started an hour ago. I’m going to the hospital now. You’ll come with me? My carriage is here, waiting.’ He spoke hurriedly, his voice pitched higher than normal. He was always a little nervous with Harald Winter; there was no sign now of the much-feared professor who met his students’ questions with dry and savage wit.

Winter’s eyes went briefly to the door from which Professor Schneider had come. The bar. Professor Schneider flushed. Damn this arrogant swine Winter, he thought. He could make a man feel guilty without even saying a word. What business of Winter’s was it that he’d had a mere half-bottle of champagne with his cold pheasant supper? It was Winter’s wife whose pangs of labour had come on New Year’s Eve, and so spoiled his chance of getting to the ball at anything like a decent time.

‘I have a meeting,’ said Winter.

‘A meeting?’ said Professor Schneider. Was it some sort of joke? On New Year’s Eve, what man would be attending a meeting in a club emptied of almost everyone but servants? And how could a man concentrate his mind on business when his wife was about to give birth? He met Winter’s eyes: there was no warmth there, no curiosity, no passion. Winter was said to be one of the shrewdest businessmen in Germany, but what use were his wealth and reputation when his soul was dead? ‘Then I shall go along. I will send a message. Will you be here?’

Winter nodded almost imperceptibly. Only when Professor Schneider had departed did Winter go up the wide staircase to the mezzanine floor. Another member was there. Winter brightened. At last, a face he knew and liked.

‘Foxy! I heard you were in this dreadful town.’

Erwin Fischer’s red hair had long since gone grey – a great helmet of burnished steel – but his nickname remained. He was a short, slight, jovial man with dark eyes and sanguine complexion. His great-grandparents had been Jews from the Baltic city of Riga. His grandfather had changed the family name, and his father had converted to Roman Catholicism long before Erwin was born. Fischer was heir to a steel fortune, but at seventy-five his father was fit and well and – now forty-eight years old – Fuchs Fischer had expectations that remained no more than expectations. Erwin was a widower. He wasn’t kept short of money, but he was easily bored, and money did not always assuage his boredom. His life had lately become a long, tedious round of social duties, big parties, and introductions to ‘suitable marriage partners’ who never proved quite suitable enough.

‘You give Bubi Schneider a bad time, Harald. Is it wise? He has a lot of friends in this town.’

‘He’s a snivelling little parasite. I can’t think why my wife consulted such a man.’

‘He delivers the children of the most powerful men in the city. The wives confide in him, the children are taught to think of him as one of the family. Such a man wields influence.’

Winter smiled. ‘Am I to beware of him?’ he said icily.

‘No, of course not. But he could cause you inconvenience. Is it worth it, when a smile and a handshake are all he really wants from you?’

‘The wretch insisted that Veronica could not travel back to Berlin. My son will be born here. I don’t want an Austrian son. You are a German, Foxy; you understand.’

‘So it’s to be a son. You’ve already decided that, have you?’

Winter smiled. ‘Shall we crack a bottle of Burgundy?’

‘You used to like Vienna, Harald. When you first bought the house here you were telling us all how much better it was than Berlin.’

‘That was a long time ago. I was a different man then.’

‘You’d discovered your wonderful wife in Berlin and Veronica here in Vienna. That’s what you mean, isn’t it.’

‘Don’t go too far, Foxy.’

The older man ignored the caution. He was close enough to Winter to risk such comments, and go even further. ‘Surely you’ve taken into account the possibility that it was Veronica’s idea to have the baby here.’

‘Veronica?’

‘Consider the facts, Harald. Veronica met you here when she was a student at the university. This is where she first learned about love and life and all the things she’d dreamed about when she was a little girl in America. She adores Vienna. No matter that you see it as a second-rate capital for a fifth-rate empire; for Veronica it’s still the home of Strauss waltzes and parties where she meets dukes, duchesses, and princes of royal blood. No matter what you say, Harald, Kaiser Wilhelm’s Berlin cannot match Vienna in the party season. Would you really be surprised to find that she had contrived to have the second child here?’

‘I hope you haven’t…’

‘No, I haven’t spoken with her, of course I haven’t. I’m simply telling you to ease the reins on Bubi Schneider until you’re quite sure it’s all his fault.’

Winter stepped away and leaned over the gilt balcony. Resting his hand upon a cherub, he signalled to a club servant on the floor below. ‘Send a bottle of the best Burgundy up to us. And three glasses.’

They went to a long, mirrored room, the chandeliers blazing from a thousand reflections. A fire was burning at the far end of the room. The open fireplace was a daring innovation for Vienna, a city warmed by stoves, but the committee had copied the room from a gentlemen’s club in London.

Over the fireplace there was a huge painting of the monarch who combined the roles of emperor of Austria and king of Hungary and insisted upon being addressed as ‘His Apostolic Majesty, our most gracious Emperor and Lord, Franz Joseph I.’ The room was otherwise empty. Winter chose a table near the fire and sat down. Fischer stood with his hands in his pockets and stared out the window. Winter followed his gaze. Across the dark street a wooden stand had been erected for a political meeting held that morning. Now no one was there except two uniformed policemen, who stood amongst the torn slogans and broken chairs as if such impedimenta did not exist for them.

‘I’ve never understood women,’ said Winter finally.

‘You’ve always understood women only too well,’ said Fischer, still looking out the window. ‘It’s Americans you don’t understand. It’s because Veronica is an American that your marriage is sometimes difficult.’

‘You told me at the time, Foxy. I should have listened.’

‘No European man in his right senses marries an American girl. You’ve been lucky with Veronica: she doesn’t fuss too much about your other women or try to stop you drinking or going to those parties at Madame Reiner’s mansion. For an American woman she’s very understanding.’ There was a note of humour in Fischer’s voice, and now he turned his head to see how Winter was taking it. Noticing this, Winter permitted himself the ghost of a smile.

A waiter entered and took his time showing Winter the label and then pouring two glasses of wine with fastidious care.

Fischer sipped his wine, still looking down at the street. The plain speaking had divided the two men, so that now they were isolated in their thoughts. ‘The wine steward found you something good, Harald,’ said Fischer appreciatively, pursing his lips and then tasting a little more.

‘I have my own bin,’ said Winter. ‘I no longer drink from the club’s cellar.’

‘How sensible.’

Winter made no reply. He drank the wine in silence. That was the difference between them. Fischer, the rich man’s son, took everything for granted and left everything to chance. Harald Winter, self-made tycoon, trusted no one and left nothing to chance.

‘I was here this morning,’ said Fischer. He motioned down towards the street where the political demonstration had been held. ‘Karl Lueger spoke. After he’d stepped down there was fighting. The police couldn’t handle it; they brought in the cavalry to clear the street.’

‘Lueger is a rogue,’ said Winter quietly and without anger.

‘He’s the mayor.’

‘The Emperor should never have ratified the appointment.’

‘He blocked it over and over again. Finally he had to do as the voters wanted.’

‘Voters? Riffraff. Look at the slogans down there – “Save the small businessman”; “Bring the family back into church”; “Down with Jewish big business” – the Christian Socials just pander to the worst prejudice, fears, and bitter jealousy. “Handsome Karl” is all things to all men. For those who want socialism he’s a socialist; for churchgoers he’s a man of piety; for anyone who wants to hang the Jews, or hound Hungarians back across the border, his party is the one to vote for. What a rascal.’

‘You’re a man of the world; you must realize that hating foreigners is a part of the Austrian psyche. How many votes would you get for telling those people down there that the Jew is brainier than they are, or that these immigrant Czechs and Hungarians are more hard working?’

‘I don’t like it, Foxy. Lueger is becoming as popular as the Emperor. Sometimes I have the feeling that Lueger could become the Emperor. Suppose all this hatred, all this Judenhass, was organized on a national scale. Suppose someone came along who had Lueger’s cunning with the crowd, the Emperor’s sway with the army, and a touch of Bismarck’s instinct for Geopolitik. What then, Foxy? What would you say to that?’

‘I’d say you need a holiday, Harald.’ He tried to make a joke of it, but Winter did not join in his forced laugh. ‘Who is the third glass for, Harald? Am I allowed to know that?’ He knew it wasn’t a woman: no women were ever permitted on the club premises.

‘The mysterious Count Kupka sent a messenger to my home today.’

‘Kupka? Is he a personal friend?’ There was a strained note in Fischer’s normally very relaxed voice.

‘Personal friend? Not at all. I have met him, of course, at parties and even at Madame Reiner’s mansion, but I know nothing about him except that he is said to have the ear of the Emperor and to be some sort of consultant to the Foreign Ministry.’

‘You have a lot to learn about this city, Harald. Count Kupka is the head of the Emperor’s secret police. He is responsible to the Foreign Ministry, and the minister answers only to His Majesty. Kupka’s signature on a piece of paper is all that’s needed to make a man disappear forever.’

‘You make him sound interesting, Foxy. He always seemed such a desiccated and boring little man.’

Fischer looked at his friend. Harald Winter was clearly undaunted by Kupka. It was Winter’s bravery that Fischer had always found attractive. He admired Winter’s audacious, if not to say reckless, business ventures, and his brazen love affairs, and his indifference to the prospect of making enemies like Professor Schneider. Sometimes Fischer was tempted to think that Harald Winter’s courage was the only attractive aspect of this ruthless, selfish man. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Harald. If you’re in trouble, perhaps I can help.’

‘Trouble? With Kupka? I can’t think how I could be.’

‘It’s New Year’s Eve, Harald. At midnight a whole new century begins: the twentieth century. Everyone we know will be celebrating. There is a State Ball where half the crowned heads of Europe will be seen. Why would Count Kupka have to see you tonight of all nights?’

‘It is something that perhaps you should stay and ask him yourself, Foxy. He is already twenty minutes late.’

Fischer finished his glass of wine in one gulp. ‘I won’t stay. The man gives me the shudders.’ He put the glass on the table alongside the polished one that was waiting for Count Kupka. ‘But let me remind you that tonight the streets will be empty except for some drunken revellers. For someone who was going to bundle a man into a carriage, or throw someone into the Danube, tonight would provide a fine opportunity.’

Winter smiled broadly. ‘How disappointed you will be tomorrow, Foxy, when it is revealed that Count Kupka wanted no more than a chance to ride in my horseless carriage.’

In fact, Kupka didn’t want a ride in Winter’s horseless carriage; or if he did, he made no mention of this desire. Nor was Count Kupka the desiccated and boring little man that Winter remembered. Kupka was a broad-shouldered man with large, awkward hands that did not seem to go with his pale, lined face and delicate eyebrows, that had been plucked so that they didn’t meet across the top of his thin, pointed nose. Kupka’s head was large: like a balloon upon which a child had scrawled his simple, expressionless features. And, like paint upon a balloon, his hair – shiny with Macassar oil – was brushed flat against his head.

Kupka was still wearing his overcoat when he strode into the lounge. His silk hat was tilted slightly to the back of his head. He put his cane down and removed his gloves, holding his cigar between his teeth. Winter didn’t move. Kupka tossed the gloves down. Winter continued to sip his Burgundy, watching Kupka with the amused and indulgent interest that he would give to an entertainer coming onto the stage of a variety theatre. Winter could recall only two other men who smoked large cigars while walking about in hat and overcoat, and both of those were menials in his country house. It amused him that Kupka should behave in such a way.

‘I am greatly indebted to you, Winter. It is most kind of you to consent to seeing me at such short notice.’ Kupka flicked ash from his cigar. ‘Especially tonight of all nights.’

‘I knew it would be something that couldn’t wait,’ said Winter with an edge in his voice that he did nothing to modify.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Kupka in a voice that suggested that his mind had already passed on to the next thought. ‘Was that Erwin Fischer I passed on the stairs?’

‘He was taking a glass of Burgundy with me. Perhaps you’d do the same, Count Kupka?’

‘There is nothing that would give me greater pleasure, Herr Winter….’ Before Winter could reach for the bottle and pour, Kupka held up his hand so that gold rings, some inset with diamonds, sparkled in the light of the chandeliers. ‘But, alas, I have an evening of work before me.’ Winter poured wine for himself and Kupka said, ‘And I will be as brief as I can.’

‘I would appreciate that,’ said Winter. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘Sometimes I need to stand. They say that, at the Opera, Mahler stands up to conduct his orchestra. Stands up! Most extraordinary, and yet I sympathize with the fellow. Sometimes I can think better on my feet. Yes … your wife. I saw Professor Doktor Schneider earlier this evening. Women are such frail creatures, aren’t they? The problem concerning which I must consult you comes about only because of my dear wife’s maternal affection for a distant cousin.’ Kupka paused a moment to study the burning end of his cigar. ‘He is rather a foolish young man. But no more foolish than I was when young, and no more foolish than you were, Winter.’

‘Was I foolish, Count Kupka?’

Kupka looked at him and raised his eyebrows to feign surprise. ‘More than most, Herr Winter. Have you already forgotten those hotheads you mixed with when you were a student? The Silver Eagle Society you called yourselves, as I remember. And you a student of law, too!’

Despite doing everything he could to remain composed, Winter was visibly shaken. When he spoke his voice croaked: ‘That was no more than a childish game.’ He drank some wine to clear his throat.

‘For you perhaps, but not for everyone who joined it. Suppose I told you that the anarchist who killed our Empress last year could also be connected to an organization calling itself the Silver Eagle?’ Kupka glanced up at the portrait of the Emperor and then warmed his hands at the fire.

‘If you told me that, then I would know that you are playing a childish game.’

‘And if I persisted?’ Kupka smiled. There was no perceptible cruelty in his face. He was enjoying this little exchange and seemed to expect Winter to enjoy it also. But for Winter the stakes were too high. No matter how unfounded such accusations might be, it would need only a few well distributed rumours to damage Winter and his family forever.

‘Then I would call you out,’ said Winter with all the self-assurance he could muster.

Kupka laughed. ‘A duel? Save that sort of nonsense for the Officer Corps. I am no more than an Einjährig-Freiwilliger, and one-year volunteers don’t learn how to duel.’ Kupka sat down opposite Winter and carelessly tapped ash into the fireplace. ‘Now that I see the label on that bottle of wine, perhaps I could change my mind about a glass of it.’

Winter poured a glass. The work of the picador was done, the temper and the weaknesses of the bull discovered: now Kupka the matador would enter the ring.

‘About this lad,’ said Kupka after sipping the wine. ‘He borrowed money from your bank.’

‘Hardly my bank,’ said Winter. He’d come prepared. Kupka’s message had mentioned this client of the bank.

‘The one in which some unnamed discreet person holds eighteen thousand nominee shares. The one in which you have an office and a secretary. The one in which the manager refers all transactions above a prescribed amount to you for approval. My wife’s distant cousin borrowed money from that bank.’

‘You want details?’

‘I have all the necessary details, thank you. I simply want to give you the money.’

‘Buy the debt?’ said Winter.

‘Plus an appropriate fee to the bank.’

‘The name was Petzval; he said his family was from Budapest. The manager was doubtful, but he seemed a sensible lad.’

‘Petzval, yes. My wife worries about him.’

‘A distant cousin, you say?’

‘My wife’s family is a labyrinth of distant cousins and so on. A fine wine, Winter. I have not seen it on the wine list,’ said Kupka, and poured himself some more. ‘She worries about the debt.’

‘What does she think I will do to him?’ Winter asked.

‘Not you, my dear friend. My goodness, no. She worries that he will get behind in his payments to you and go to a money-lender. You know what that can lead to. I see so many lives ruined,’ said Kupka without any sign of being downcast. ‘He wants to write a book. His family have nothing. Believe me, Winter, it’s a debt you will be better without.’

‘I will inquire into the facts,’ said Winter.

‘The payment can be made in any way that you wish it – paper money, gold, a certified cheque – and anywhere – New York, London, Paris, or Berlin.’

‘Your concern about this young man touches me,’ said Winter.

‘I am a sentimental fool, Winter, and now you have discovered the truth of it.’ Ash went down Kupka’s overcoat, but he didn’t notice.

A club servant entered the lounge looking for Winter. ‘There is a telephone call for you, Herr Baron.’

‘It will be the hospital,’ explained Winter.

‘I have detained you far too long,’ said Kupka. He stood up to say goodbye. ‘Please give my compliments and sincere apologies to your beautiful wife.’ He didn’t press for an answer; men such as Kupka know that their requests are never refused.

‘Auf Wiedersehen, Count Kupka.’

‘Auf Wiedersehen, my dear Winter.’ He clicked his heels and bowed.

Winter followed the servant downstairs. The club had only recently been connected to the telephone. Even now it was not possible for a caller to speak to the staff at the entrance desk; the facility whereby wives could inquire about their husbands’ presence in the club would not be a welcome innovation. The instrument was enshrined upon a large mahogany table in a room on the first floor. A servant was permanently assigned to answer it.

‘Winter here.’ He wanted to show both the caller and the servant that telephones were not such rarities in Berlin.

‘Winter? Professor Schneider speaking. A false alarm. These things happen. It could be two or three days.’

‘How is my wife?’

‘Fit and well. I have given her a mild sedative, and she will be asleep by now. I suggest you get a good night’s sleep and see her tomorrow morning.’

‘I think I will do that.’

‘Your baby will be born in 1900: a child of the new century.’

‘The new century will not begin until 1901. I would have thought an educated man like you would know that,’ said Winter, and replaced the earpiece on the hook. Already the bells were ringing. Every church in the city was showing the skills of its bellringers to welcome the new year. But in the kitchen a dog was whining loudly: the bells were hurting its ears. Dogs hate bells. So did Harald Winter.

‘What good jokes you make, Liebchen’

Martha Somló was beautiful. This petite, dark-haired, large-eyed daughter of a Jewish tailor was one of twelve children. The family had originally come from a small town in Rumania. Martha grew up in Hungary, but she arrived in Vienna alone, a sixteen-year-old orphan. She was working in a cigar shop when she first met Harald Winter. Within three weeks of that meeting he had installed her in an apartment near the Votivkirche. Now she was eighteen. She had a much grander place to live. She also had a lady’s maid, a hairdresser who came in every day, an account with a court dressmaker, some fine jewellery, and a small dog. But Harald Winter’s visits to Vienna were not frequent enough for her, and when he wasn’t with her she was dispirited and lonely.

Harald Winter’s mistress was no more than a small part of his curious and complex relationship with Vienna. He’d spent a lot of time in finding this wonderful apartment with its view of the Opera House and the Wiener Boulevard. From here she could watch ‘Sirk-Ecke’, a sacred meeting place for Vienna’s high society, who paraded up and down in their finest clothes every day except Sunday.

Once found, the apartment had been transformed into a showplace for Vienna’s newly formed ‘Secession’ art movement. A Klimt frieze went completely round the otherwise shiny black dining room, where the table and chairs were by Josef Hoffmann. The study, from writing desk to notepaper, was completely the work of Koloman Moser. Everywhere in the apartment there were examples of Art Nouveau. Martha Somló felt, with reason, that she was little more than a curator for an art museum. She hated everything about the apartment that Harald Winter had so painstakingly put together, but she was too astute to say so. Winter’s American wife, Veronica, had made no secret of her dislike for modern art, and the end result of that was the apartment in Kärntnerstrasse and Martha. If Martha made her true feelings known, there was little chance that Winter would get rid of his treasures; he’d get rid of her. It would be easier, quicker, and cheaper.

‘I love you, Harry,’ she said suddenly and without premeditation.

‘What was that?’ said Winter. He was in his red silk dressing gown, the one she’d chosen for him for his thirtieth birthday. It had been a wonderful day of shopping, followed by an extravagant party at Sachers. That was six months ago: now they hardly ever went anywhere together. Since his wife had become pregnant with this second child, he’d become more distant, and she worried that he was trying to find some way to tell her he didn’t want her any more. ‘I think I must be getting deaf; my father went deaf when very young.’

She went to him and threw her arms round his neck and kissed him. ‘Harry, you fool. You’re not going deaf; you’re the strongest, fittest man I ever met. I say I love you, Harry. Smile, Harry. Say you love me.’

‘Of course I love you, Martha.’ He kissed her.

‘A proper kiss, Harry. A kiss like the one you gave me when you arrived this afternoon hungering for me.’

‘Dear Martha, you’re a sweet girl.’

‘What’s wrong, Harry? You’re not yourself today. Is it something to do with the bank?’

He shook his head. Things were not too good at the bank, but he never discussed his business troubles with Martha and he never would. Women and business didn’t mix. Winter wasn’t entirely sure about women being admitted to universities. On that account he sometimes felt more at ease with women like Martha than with his own wife. Martha understood him so well.

‘Do you know who Count Kupka is?’

‘My God, Harry. You’re not in trouble with the secret police? Oh, dear God, no.’

‘He wants a favour from me, that’s all.’

She sat down and pulled him so that he sat with her on the sofa. He told her something about the conversation he’d had with Kupka.

‘And you found out what he wanted to know?’ She stroked his face tenderly. Then she looked at the leather document case that Winter had brought with him to the apartment. He rarely carried anything. Many times he’d told her that carrying cases, boxes, parcels, or packages was a task only for servants.

‘It’s not so easy,’ said Winter. She could see he wanted to talk about it. ‘My manager asked for collateral. This fellow owns land on the Obersalzberg. All the paperwork has been done to make the land the property of the bank if he defaults on the loan. I have now changed matters so that the loan has come from my personal account. Luckily the land deed is already made over to a nominee, so I get it in case of a default.’

‘Salzburg, Harry? Austria?’

‘Not Salzburg; the Obersalzberg. It’s a mountain a thousand metres high. It’s not in Austria: it’s just across the border, in Bavaria.’

‘In Germany?’

‘And that’s going to be another problem. I’m not sure it’s possible to turn everything over to Kupka.’

‘He’ll say you’re not cooperating,’ she said. She had heard of Kupka. What Jew in the whole of the empire had not heard of him. She was sick with fear at the mention of his name.

‘Kupka is a lawyer,’ said Winter confidently.

‘That’s like saying Attila the Hun was a cavalry officer,’ she said.

Winter laughed loudly and embraced her. ‘What good jokes you make, Liebchen. I’m tempted to tell Kupka that one.’

‘Don’t, Harry.’

‘You mustn’t be frightened, my darling. I am simply a means to an end in this matter.’

‘Just do what he says, Harry.’

‘But not yet, I think. Tonight I’m meeting this mysterious fellow Petzval at the Café Stoessl in Gumpendorfer Strasse. Damn him – I’ll get from him everything that Kupka won’t tell me.’

‘Remember he’s a relative of Kupka’s, and close to his wife.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Winter. ‘That was just a smokescreen to hide the true facts of the matter.’

‘Send someone,’ she suggested.

He smiled and went to the leather case he’d brought with him. From it he brought a small revolver and a soft leather holster with a strap that would fit under his coat.

‘If Kupka has his men there, a pistol won’t save you.’

‘Little worrier,’ he said affectionately and kissed her.

She held him very tight. How desperately she envied his wife; the children would always bind Harry to her in a way that nothing else could. If only Martha could give him a wonderful son.

1900

A plot of land on the Obersalzberg

It was dark by the time that Winter pushed through the revolving door of the Café Stoessl in the Gumpendorfer Strasse and looked around. The café was long and gloomy, lit by gaslights that hissed and popped. There were tables with pink marble tops and bentwood chairs and plants everywhere. He recognized some of the customers but gave no sign of it. They were not people that Winter would acknowledge: the usual crowd of would-be intellectuals, has-been politicians, and self-styled writers.

Petzval was waiting. ‘A small Jew with a black beard,’ the bank manager had told Winter. Well, that was easy. Petzval sat at the very end table facing towards the door. He was a white-faced man in his late twenties, with bushy black hair and a full beard so that his small eyes and pointed nose were all you noticed of his face.

Winter put his hat on a seat and then sat down opposite the man and ordered a coffee, and brandy to go with it. Then he apologized vaguely for being late.

‘I said you’d go back on your word,’ said Petzval.

It wasn’t a good beginning, and Winter was about to deny any such intention, but then he realized that such an opening would leave him little or no room for discussion. ‘Why did you think that?’ asked Winter.

‘Count Kupka, is it?’ Petzval leaned forward and rested an elbow on the table.

Winter hesitated but, after looking at Petzval, decided to admit it. Kupka had claimed Petzval as a relative and had not asked Winter to keep his name out of it. ‘Yes, Count Kupka.’

‘He wants to buy my debt?’

‘Something along those lines.’

Petzval pushed his empty coffee cup aside so that he could lean both arms on the table. His face was close to Winter, closer than Winter welcomed, but he didn’t shrink away. ‘Secret police,’ said Petzval. ‘His spies are everywhere.’

‘Are you related to Kupka?’ said Winter.

‘Related? To Kupka?’ Petzval made a short throaty noise that might have been a laugh. ‘I’m a Jew, Herr Winter. Didn’t you know that when you made the loan to me?’

‘It would have made no difference one way or the other,’ said Winter. The coffee came, and Winter was glad of the chance to sit back away from the man’s glaring eyes. This was a man at the end of his tether, a desperate man. He studied the angry Jew as he sipped his coffee. Petzval was a ridiculous fellow with his frayed shirt and gravy-spattered suit, but Winter found him rather frightening. How could that be, when everyone knew that Winter wasn’t frightened of any living soul?

‘I’m a good risk, am I?’

‘The manager obviously thought so. What do you do, Herr Petzval?’

‘For a living, you mean? I’m a scientist. Ever heard of Ernst Mach?’

He waited. It was not a rhetorical question; he wanted to know whether Winter was intelligent enough to understand.

‘Of course: Professor Mach is a physicist at the university.’

‘Mach is the greatest scientific genius of modern times.’ He paused to let that judgement sink in before adding, ‘A couple of years ago he suffered a stroke, and I’ve been privileged to work for him while pursuing my own special subject.’

‘And what is your subject?’ said Winter, realizing that this inquiry, or something like it, was expected of him.

‘Airflow. Mach did the most important early work in Prague before I was born. He pioneered techniques of photographing bullets in flight. It was Mach who discovered that a bullet exceeding the speed of sound creates two shock waves: a headwave of compressed gas at the front and a tailwave created by a vacuum at the back. My work has merit, but it’s only a continuation of what poor old Professor Mach has abandoned.’

‘Poor old Professor Mach?’

‘He’s too sick. He’ll have to resign from the university; his right side is paralysed. It’s terrible to see him trying to carry on.’

‘And what will you do when he resigns?’ He sipped some of the bitter black coffee flavoured with fig in the Viennese style. Then he tasted the brandy: it was rough but he needed it.

Petzval stared at Winter pityingly. ‘You don’t understand any of it, do you?’

‘I’m not sure I do,’ admitted Winter. He dabbed brandy from his lips with the silk handkerchief he kept in his top pocket, and looked round. There was a noisy group playing cards in the corner, and two or three strange-looking fellows bent over their work. Perhaps they were poets or novelists, but perhaps they were Kupka’s men keeping an eye on things.

‘Don’t you realize the difference between a high-velocity artillery piece and a low-muzzle-velocity gun?’

Winter almost laughed. He’d met evangelists in his time, but this man was the very limit. He talked about the airflow over missiles as other men spoke of the second coming of our Lord. ‘I don’t think I do,’ admitted Winter good-naturedly.

‘Well, Krupp know the difference,’ said Petzval. ‘They have offered me a job at nearly three times the salary that Mach gets from his professorship.’

‘Have they?’ said Winter. He was impressed, and his voice revealed it.

Petzval smiled. ‘Now you’re beginning to see what it’s all about, are you? Krupp are determined to build the finest guns in the world. And they’ll do it.’

Winter nodded soberly and remembered how the Austrian army had been defeated not so long ago by Prussians using better guns. It was natural that the Austrians would want to know what the German armament companies were doing. ‘Count Kupka is interested in your job at Krupp? Is that it?’

‘He wants me to report everything that’s happening in their research department. By taking over the debt he can put pressure on me. That’s why I want the bank to fulfil its obligations.’ Petzval kept his voice to a whisper, but his eyes and his flailing hands demonstrated his passion.

‘It’s not so easy as that.’

‘You have the land on the Obersalzberg. It’s valuable.’

‘Even so, it might be better to do things the way Count Kupka wants them done.’

‘You, a German, tell me that?’

Warning bells rang in Winter’s head. Was Petzval an agent provocateur, sent to test Winter’s attitude towards Austria? It seemed possible. Wouldn’t such military espionage against Krupp be arranged by Colonel Redl, the chief of Austria’s army intelligence? Or was Count Kupka just trying to steal a march on his military rival? ‘It might be best for everyone,’ said Winter.

‘Not best for me,’ said Petzval. ‘I’m not suited to spying. I leave that sort of dirty work to the people who like it. Can you imagine what it would be like to spend every minute of the day and night worrying that you’d be discovered?’

‘You could make sure you’re not discovered,’ said Winter.

‘How could I?’ said Petzval, dismissing the idea immediately. ‘They’d want me to photograph the prototypes and steal blueprints and sketch breech mechanisms and so on.’ He’d obviously thought about it a lot, or was this all part of Count Kupka’s schooling?

‘It would be for your country,’ said Winter, now convinced that it was an attempt to subvert him.

‘Have you ever been in an armaments factory?’ said Petzval. ‘Or, more to the point, have you ever gone out through the gate? At some of those places they search every third worker. Now and again they search everyone. Police raid the homes of employees. I’d be working in the research laboratory and I am a Jew. What chance would I have of remaining undetected?’

Winter glanced round the café. Despite their lowered voices, this fellow’s emotional speeches would soon be attracting attention to them. ‘I’m sorry, Herr Petzval,’ Winter said, ‘but I can’t help you further.’

‘You’ll pass it to him?’ Was it fear or contempt that Winter saw in those dark, deep-set eyes?

‘You read the agreement and signed it. There was nothing to say it couldn’t be passed on to a third party.’

‘A third party? The secret police?’

‘Raise money from another source,’ said Winter. It seemed such a lot of fuss about nothing.

‘I’m deeply in debt, Herr Winter. I beg you to take the land in full payment for the debt.’

‘I couldn’t agree to that. Your prospects…’

‘What prospects do I have if Kupka prevents me from leaving the country?’

‘If Kupka prevents you from leaving Austria…’ For a moment Winter was puzzled. Then he realized what the proposal really was. ‘Do you mean that you came here hoping that I would refuse to do as Kupka demands but not tell him so until you were across the border?’

‘You’re a German.’

‘So you keep reminding me,’ said Winter. He gulped the rest of his brandy. ‘But I have business interests here, and a house. How can you expect me to defy the authorities for a stranger?’

‘For a client,’ said Petzval. ‘I’m not a stranger; I’m a client of the bank.’

‘But you ask too much,’ said Winter. He got up, reached for his hat, and tossed some coins onto the table. It was more than enough to pay for his coffee and the brandy, as well as any coffees and brandies that Petzval might have consumed while waiting for him. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Petzval.’ As Winter walked down the café he heard some sort of commotion, but he didn’t turn until he heard Petzval shouting.

Petzval was standing and shaking his fist. Then he grabbed the coins and with all his might threw them at Winter. At least two of the coins hit the glass of the revolving doors. Winter flinched. There was a demon in this fellow Petzval. Two waiters grabbed him, but still he struggled to free himself, so that a third waiter had to clamp his arms round Petzval’s neck.

‘Damn you, Winter! And damn your money! I curse you, do you hear me?’

Winter was trembling as he pushed his way through the revolving doors and out into the darkness of Gumpendorfer Strasse. Of course the fellow was quite mad, but his curses were still ringing in Winter’s head as he climbed into his horseless carriage. He couldn’t help thinking it was a bad omen: especially with his second child about to be born at almost any moment.

Winter woke up and wondered where he was for a moment before remembering that he was in his Vienna residence. It seemed so different without his wife. Usually a good night’s sleep was all that Harald Winter needed to recuperate from the stresses and anxieties of his business. But next morning, sitting in his dressing room with a hot towel wrapped across his face, he had still not forgotten his encounter with the violent young man.

Winter removed the hot towel and tossed it onto the marble washstand. ‘Will there be a war, Hauser?’ Winter asked while his valet poured hot water from the big floral-patterned jug and made a lather in the shaving cup.

The valet lathered Winter’s chin. He was an intelligent young man from a village near Rostock. He treasured his job as Winter’s valet; he was the only member of Winter’s domestic household who unfailingly travelled with his master. ‘Between these Austrians and the Serbs, sir? Yes, people say it’s sure to come.’ The razors, combs and scissors were sterilized, polished bright, and laid out precisely on a starched white cloth. Everything was always arranged in this same pattern.

‘Soon, Hauser?’

The valet stopped the razor. He was too bright to imagine that his master was consulting him about the likelihood of war. Such predictions were better left to the generals and the politicians, the sort of men whom Winter rubbed shoulders with every day. Hauser was being asked what people said in the streets. The sort of people who lived in the huge tenement blocks near the factories; workers who lived ten to a room, with all of them paying a quarter of their wages to the landlords. Men who worked twelve-and even fourteen-hour days, with only Sunday afternoons for themselves. What were these men saying? What were they saying in Berlin, in Vienna, Budapest and London? Winter always wanted to know such things and Hauser made it his job to have answers. ‘These Austrians like no one, sir. They are jealous of us Germans, hate the Czechs and despise the Hungarians. But the Serbs are the ones they want to fight. Sooner or later everyone says they’ll finish them off. And Serbia is not much; even the Austrians should be able to beat them.’ He spoke of them all with condescension, as a German has always spoken of the Balkan people and the Austrians, who seemed little different.

Winter smiled to himself. Hauser had all the pride – arrogance was perhaps the better word – of the Prussian. That’s why he liked him. Hauser steadied his master’s chin with finger and thumb as he drew the sharpened razor through the lather and left pink, shiny skin. As Hauser wiped the long razor on a cloth draped over his arm, Winter said, ‘The terrorists and the anarchists with their guns and bombs …murdering innocent people here in the streets. They are all from Serbia. Trained and encouraged by the Serbs. Wouldn’t you be angry, Hauser?’

‘But I wouldn’t join the army and march off to war, Herr Winter.’ He lifted Winter’s chin so that he could bring the razor up the throat. ‘There are lots of people I don’t like, but I can see no point in marching off to fight a war about it.’

‘You’re a sensible fellow, Hauser.’

‘Yes, Herr Winter,’ said Hauser, twisting Winter’s head as he continued his task.

‘We are fortunate to live in an age when wars are a thing of the past, Hauser. No need for you to have fears of riding off to war.’

‘I hope not,’ said Hauser, who had no fears about riding off to war: only gentlemen like Herr Winter went off to war on chargers; Hauser’s class marched.

‘Battles, yes,’ said Winter. ‘The Kaiser will have to teach the Chinese a lesson, the English send men into the Sudan or to fight the Boers – but these are just police actions, Hauser. For us Europeans, war is a thing of the past.’

Hauser turned his master’s head a little more and started to trim the sideburns. He cut them a fraction shorter each time. Side whiskers were fast going out of fashion and, like most domestic servants, Hauser was an unrepentant snob about fashions. He always left Winter’s moustache to the end. Trimming the blunt-ended moustache was the most difficult part. He kept another razor solely for that job. ‘So the Austrians won’t fight the Serbs?’ said Hauser as if Winter’s decision would be final.

‘The Balkans are not Europe,’ said Winter, turning to face the wardrobe so that Hauser could trim the other sideburn. ‘Those fellows down in that part of the world are quite mad. They’ll never stop fighting each other. But I’m talking about real Europeans, who have finally learned how to live together, and settle differences by negotiation: Germans, Austrians, Englishmen … even the French have at last reconciled themselves to the fact that Alsace and Lorraine are German. That’s why I say you’ll never ride off to war, Hauser.’

‘No, Herr Winter, I’m sure I won’t.’

There was a light tap at the door. Hauser lifted his razor away in case his master should make a sudden move. ‘Come in,’ said Winter.

It was one of the chambermaids; little more than fourteen years old, she had a Carinthian accent so strong that Winter had her repeat her message three times before he was sure he had it right. It was the senior manager from the Vienna branch of the bank. What could have got into the man, that he should come disturbing Winter at nine-thirty in the morning at his residence? And yet he was usually a sensible and restrained old man. ‘Very urgent,’ said the little chambermaid. Her face was bright red with excitement at such unusual goings-on. She’d seen the master being shaved; that would be something to brag about to the parlourmaid. ‘Very, very urgent.’

‘That’s quite enough, girl,’ said Hauser. ‘Your master understands.’

‘Show him up,’ said Winter.

Hauser coughed. Show him up to see Winter when he was not even shaved? And this was the tricky part: shaving round the master’s moustache. Hauser didn’t want to be doing that with an audience, and there was the chance that Winter would start talking; then anything could happen. Suppose his hand slipped and he made a cut? Then what would happen to his good job?

‘I’m deeply sorry to disturb you, Herr Winter,’ said the senior manager as he was shown into the room. This time the butler was with the visitor, instead of that scatterbrained little chambermaid. Hauser noticed that the butler’s fingers were marked with silver polish. That job should have been completed last night. These damned Austrians, thought Hauser, are all slackers. He wondered if Winter would notice.

‘It’s this business with Petzval,’ said the senior manager. He had big old-fashioned muttonchop whiskers in the style of the Emperor.

Winter nodded and tried not to show any particular concern.

‘I wouldn’t have disturbed you, but the messenger from Count Kupka said you should be told immediately…. I felt I should come myself.’

‘Yes, but what is it?’ said Winter testily.

‘He died by his own hand,’ said the senior manager. ‘The messenger emphasized that there is no question of foul play. He made that point most strongly.’

‘Suicide. Well, I’m damned,’ said Winter. ‘Did he leave a note?’ He held his breath.

‘A note, Herr Direktor?’ said the old man anxiously, wondering if Winter was referring to a promissory note or some other such valuable or negotiable certificate. And then, understanding what Winter meant, he said brightly, ‘Oh, a suicide note. No, Herr Direktor, nothing of that sort.’

Winter tried not to show his relief. ‘You did right,’ he said. He felt sick, and his face was flushed. He knew only too well what could happen when things like this went wrong.

‘Thank you, Herr Direktor. Of course I went immediately to the records to make sure the bank’s funds were not in jeopardy.’

‘And what is the position?’ asked Winter, wiping the last traces of soap from his face while looking in the mirror. He was relieved to notice that he looked as cool and calm as he always contrived when with his employees.

‘It is my understanding, Herr Winter, that, while the death of the debtor irrevocably puts the surety wholly into the possession of the nominated beneficiary, the bank’s obligation ends on the death of the other party.’

‘And how much of the loan has been paid to Petzval so far?’

‘He had a twenty-crown gold piece on signature, Herr Direktor. As is the usual custom at the bank.’

‘So this small tract of land on the Obersalzberg has cost us no more than twenty crowns?’

‘The money was to be paid in ten instalments….’

‘Never mind that,’ said Winter. ‘There was no message from Count Kupka?’

‘He said I was to give you his congratulations, Herr Winter. I imagine that…’

‘The baby,’ supplied Winter, although he knew that Count Kupka did not send congratulations about the birth of babies. Count Kupka obviously knew everything that happened in Vienna. Sometimes perhaps he knew before it happened.

‘My darling!’ said Winter. ‘Forgive me for not being here earlier.’ He kissed her and glanced round the room. He hated hospitals, with their pungent smells of ether and disinfectant. Insisting that his wife go into a hospital instead of having the baby at home was another grudge he had against Professor Schneider. ‘It’s been the most difficult of days for me,’ said Winter.

‘Harry! You poor darling!’ his wife cooed mockingly. She looked lovely when she laughed. Even in hospital, with her long fair hair on her shoulders instead of arranged high upon her head the way her personal maid did it, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her determined jaw and high cheekbones and her tall elegance seemed so American to him that he never got used to the idea that this energetic creature was his wife.

Winter flushed. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean that. Obviously you’ve had a terrible time, too.’

She smiled at his discomfort. It was not easy to disconcert him. ‘I have not had a terrible time, Harry. I’ve had a son.’

Winter glanced at the baby in the cot. ‘I wanted to be here sooner, but there was a complication at the bank this morning. The senior manager came to talk to me while I was shaving. At home, while I was shaving! One of our clients died…. It was suicide.’

‘Oh, how terrible, Harry. Is it someone I know?’

‘A Jew named Petzval. To tell you the truth, I think the fellow was up to no good. The secret police have been interested in him for some time. He might have been a member of one of these terrorist groups.’

‘How do you come to have dealings with such people, darling?’ She lolled her head back and was glazy-eyed. It was, of course, the after effects of the anaesthetic. The nurse had said she was still weak.

‘It was one of the junior managers who dealt with him. Some of them have no judgement at all.’

‘Suicide. Poor tormented soul,’ said Veronica.

Winter watched her cross herself and then glance at the carved crucifix above her bed. He hoped that she was not about to become a Roman Catholic or some sort of religious fanatic. Winter had quite enough to contend with already without a wife going to Mass at the crack of dawn each day. He dismissed the idea. Veronica was not the type; if Veronica became a convert, she was more likely to be a convert to Freud and his absurd psychology. She’d already been to some of Freud’s lectures and refused to laugh at Winter’s jokes about the man’s ideas. ‘It’s a good thing you’re not running the bank, my dearest Veronica. You’d be giving the cash away to any bare-arsed beggar who arrived with a hard-luck story.’ He moved a basket of flowers from a chair – the room was filled with flowers – and noticed from the card that the employees of the Berlin bank had sent them. He sat down.

‘I want to call him Paul,’ said his wife. ‘Do you hate the name Paul?’

‘No, it’s a fine name. But I thought you’d want to name him after your father.’

‘Peter and Paul, darling. Don’t you see how lovely it will be to have two sons named Peter and Paul?’

‘Have you been saving up this idea ever since our son Peter Harald was born, more than three years ago?’

She smiled and stretched her long legs down in the bedclothes. She’d chosen two names her American parents would find equally acceptable. She wondered if Harry realized that. He probably did; Harry Winter was very sharp when it came to people and their motives.

‘All that time?’ said Winter. He laughed. ‘What a mad Yankee wife I have.’

‘You are pleased, Harry? Say you’re pleased.’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Then go and look at him, Harry. Pick him up and bring him to me.’

Winter looked over his shoulder hoping that the nun would return, but there was no sign of her. She was obviously giving them a chance for privacy. Awkwardly he picked up his newly born son. ‘Hello, Paul,’ he said. ‘I have a present for you, child of the new century.’ He was a pudgy little fellow with a screwed-up face that seemed to scowl. But the baby’s eyes were Veronica’s: smoky-grey eyes that never did reveal her innermost thoughts. Winter put the baby back into the cot.

‘Do you really, Harry? How wonderful you are. What is it, darling? Let me see what it is.’

‘It’s a plot of land,’ said Winter. ‘A small piece of hillside on the Obersalzberg.’

‘A plot of land? Where’s Obersalzberg?’

‘Bavaria, Germany, the very south. It’s the sort of place where a man could build himself a comfortable shooting lodge. A place a man could go when he wants to get away from the world.’

‘A plot of land on the Obersalzberg. Harry! You still surprise me, after all this time we’ve been married.’ Through the haze of the ether that was still making her mind reel, she wondered if that represented some deep-felt desire of her husband. Did he yearn to go somewhere and get away from the world? He already had that beastly girl Martha to go to. What else did he want?

‘What’s wrong?’ said Winter.

‘Nothing, darling. But it’s a strange present to give a newborn baby, isn’t it?’

‘It’s good land: a fine place with a view of the mountains. A place for a man to think his own thoughts and be his own master.’ He looked at the baby. It was happier now and managed a smile.

1906

‘The sort of thing they’re told at school’

‘You have two delightful little boys, Veronica,’ said her father. He watched through the window of the morning room as the solemn ten-year-old Peter pushed his radiantly joyful little blond brother across the lawn on a toy horse. The children were in the private gardens of a big house in London’s Belgravia. It was a glorious summer’s day, and London was at its shining best. An old gardener scythed the bright-green grass to make scallop patterns across the lawn. The scent of newly cut grass hung heavily in the still air and made little Pauli’s eyes red and weepy. Cyrus sniffed contentedly. Their English friends urged them to come to London in ‘the season’, but the Rensselaers preferred to cross the Atlantic at this time of year, when the seas were calmer. ‘No matter what I’m inclined to say about that rascally husband of yours, at least he’s given you two fine boys.’

‘Now, now, Papa,’ said Veronica mildly, ‘let’s not go through all that again.’ She was wearing a long ‘tea gown’ of blue chiffon with net over darker-blue satin. Such afternoon gowns gave her a few hours’ escape from the tight corsets that fashion forced her into for most of the day. It was a lovely, loose, flouncy creation that made her feel young and beautiful and able even to take on her parents. She pulled the trailing hem of it close and admired it.

‘She’s given Harry two fine boys,’ Mrs Rensselaer scoffed. ‘Isn’t it just like a man to put it the wrong way around? Who endured that dreadful hospital in Vienna, when there was a bedroom and our own doctor waiting for her in New York City?’ They were getting at her again, but she was used to it by now. She noticed how much stronger her mother’s high-pitched Yankee twang sounded compared with her father’s softly accented low voice. She noticed all the accents much more now that her life was spent amongst Germans. She wondered if her spoken English had now acquired some sort of German edge to it. Her parents had never mentioned it, and she knew better than to ask them.

‘I couldn’t have come home to have the baby, Mother. You know I couldn’t.’ She suppressed a sigh. For six years they’d nursed this resentment, and still it persisted.

Her father watched the children cross the road hand in hand with their nanny and heard the front door as they came in time to have a wash before tea. He said, ‘I travel across the Atlantic regularly, Veronica, and your mother usually accompanies me. It’s ridiculous for you to go on pretending that you can’t come home for a visit when we come here to London every year without fail.’ He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘By golly, when I first came to Europe, I sailed on a four-masted barque, now your mother and I sleep in state rooms with running water, and eat dinners that wouldn’t disgrace the Ritz.’

Cyrus G. Rensselaer was a distinguished-looking man in his mid-fifties. He had a shock of black hair combed straight back, pale-blue eyes, and a large moustache. He made no concessions to the warm weather: he wore a black barathea morning suit with a fancy brocaded waistcoat, and a loose tie with a silver pin through the knot. Yet there was a certain unconventional look to him – his hair was longer than was fashionable – so that sometimes, on the steamship coming over, fellow passengers thought he might be a famous musician or a successful painter. This always pleased Cyrus Rensselaer because he often said that he would have become a painter had his father not thrashed him every time he wanted to stop studying engineering.

‘I know, Father. You’ve told me all that in your letters. But Harry is a German; the boys are German. I think of Germany as my home now.’ The difficulty was that her parents spoke no foreign languages, and their one visit to Berlin for the wedding in 1892 seemed to have deterred both of them from ever going to the continent of Europe again.

‘You were able to go to Vienna and have the baby, darling,’ explained her mother. ‘Papa feels that coming back to New York wouldn’t have been all that much more of a strain.’

‘The baby was early, Mother. We were in Vienna and the doctor said I shouldn’t travel.’ She looked at her parents; they were unconvinced. ‘Harry was furious about it. He’d made all the arrangements in Berlin. Poor little Paul – Harry used to call him “the little Austrian dumpling” until I made him stop saying it.’

Her father pulled a gold hunter from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it. ‘Didn’t your Harry say he’d be back for tea?’

‘He’s lunching at the club.’

‘He likes clubs,’ said her father.

‘It’s some mining deal…’ explained Veronica. ‘Someone has discovered a cure for malaria. They think it’s something to do with mosquitoes. Harry says that if it works it will really open up the darkest part of Central Africa.’

‘It’s not a woman, is it?’ whispered her mother.

‘No, it’s not a woman, Mother.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ her mother asked.

‘I’m sure, Mother. Harry’s not so smart about women as he is about money.’

Mr Rensselaer did not like hearing Harald Winter praised, and he certainly didn’t like to hear him praised about his investing and banking skills, at which he considered himself pre-eminent. ‘I’m surprised your Harry isn’t investing in flying machines,’ he said sardonically.

Veronica looked up at him sharply. ‘You underestimate Harry, Papa. You think he’ll invest money into any crazy scheme put up to him. But Harry is clever with money; he would never put it into the hands of people like that.’

‘I’m darned if I ever know what to make of your Harry,’ said her father. ‘He spends money on such toys as this Daimler Mercedes and then takes you down to a cabin on the Obersalzberg and makes you manage with only a couple of local servants. I didn’t pay for your education so that you could wash dishes and sweep the house.’

‘It’s not a cabin, Papa, more like a hunting lodge. The land passed to Harry because of a bad debt. He gave it to Pauli as a christening present. Now he’s built the house there. I love going there. It’s the only time I have Harry all to myself. And we take two maids from the Berlin house, as well as the cook, Harry’s valet and the chauffeur.’

‘It sounds like a lot of work for you, darling,’ said her mother. ‘And walking for five miles! We could hardly believe it when we read your letter. We couldn’t picture you walking so far. Don’t you get lonely?’

Veronica smiled. ‘I have Harry and the children; how could I ever be lonely? And, anyway, we have plenty of neighbours.’

‘What sort of neighbours? Peasants? Woodcutters?’

‘No, Papa. Some fine families have houses there. It’s become very fashionable; musicians and writers …some of them live there all year round.’

‘It sounds like an odd kind of christening present. Harry should have sold it and put the money into some investments for your Pauli.’

‘I want Pauli to have it, Papa. Last year the woodcarver in the village carved a big sign – “Haus Pauli” – that will be fixed over the gate. It’s the most beautiful place in the whole world: meadows, pine trees, and mountains. Behind us there is the Hohe Göll and the Kehlstein mountain. From the window of the breakfast room we can see for miles, right across Berchtesgaden or into Austria.’

‘It’s southernmost Bavaria. I looked on the atlas. That’s too far for us to travel,’ said Rensselaer in a voice that precluded any further discussion.

The Scots nanny brought the boys in promptly at four. Their hands and faces were polished bright pink, and a brown circle of iodine had been painted on Paul’s newly grazed arm. It was always blond Pauli who fell: he was the unlucky one. Or was he careless or clumsy, either way he was always cheery and smiling. Peter was quite different; he was dark, sober, and composed, a thoughtful little boy who’d never been babyish like his young brother. They kissed their mother and Granny and Grandpa dutifully and then, in response to the bellpull, the maids brought high tea, with the best china teacups and silver pots. And there was Cook’s homemade strawberry jam, which went onto the freshly cooked scones together with a spoonful of pale-yellow Cornish cream.

Tea was poured, plates distributed, cakes cut, and sugar spooned out. Throughout the hubbub of the afternoon tea, Rensselaer remained standing by the window; his teacup and saucer and a plate with scones and cream were on the table untouched. He had started his engineering career out west, working in places where a man soon learned how to handle hard liquor, his two fists, and sometimes a gun. The way in which he’d gained admittance to New York’s toughest business circles, and then to its snobby society families, was as much due to Rensselaer’s clumsy honesty, disarming directness, and awkward charm as to his luck and mining skills. But he’d never acquired the social grace that his wife expected of him, and this sort of fancy English tea was a ceremony he didn’t enjoy.

‘Are you keeping up the Latin?’ Rensselaer asked Peter. He was a thin, wiry child, dressed, like his little brother, in cotton knicker-bocker trousers with a sailor-suit top. He had the same dark hair that his grandfather had, and the same pale-blue eyes. There was no other noticeable resemblance, but it was enough to make them recognizably kin.

‘Yes, sir.’ Peter was a graceful little boy, slim and upright, standing face to face with his grandpa and answering in clear and excellent English.

‘Good boy. You must keep up the Latin and the mathematics. Your mother always got top grades in mathematics when she was at school in Springtown. Did she tell you that?’

‘No, sir. She didn’t tell me that.’ There was an awkward relationship between Veronica’s parents and her sons. The Rensselaers were unbending, not understanding that children were no longer treated in the formal and distant way that they had treated their daughter.

‘And what are you going to be when you grow up, young Peter?’ Rensselaer asked him. How he wished the children hadn’t had these very short Prussian haircuts. He was used to children having longer hair. These ‘bullet heads’ were unbecoming for his grandchildren, and he resented Veronica’s allowing it.

‘I’m going to fly in the airship with Count Zeppelin,’ said Peter.

His little brother looked at him with respect bordering on awe, but Mr Rensselaer laughed. ‘Airship! That’s rich!’ he said and laughed again.

Pauli laughed, too, but Peter went red. To help cover his embarrassment, Mary Rensselaer said, ‘Would you like to come and see us in America, Peter? We’d love to have you visit with us.’

‘Next year I go to my new school,’ said Peter.

‘You’re boarding them, Veronica?’ she asked her daughter.

‘No, Mother. It’s a day school. Harry doesn’t like boarding schools except well-supervised military schools. He says there are always bullies. Harry says it makes the English the way they are.’

‘No harm those Germans of yours becoming more like the English,’ said Mr Rensselaer. ‘A little bullying at boarding school might have done that bellicose little Kaiser Wilhelm a power of good.’ He marked this observation with a sound that might have been a chuckle or a snort, then wiped his nose on a very big red cotton handkerchief.

Veronica glanced nervously at the boys, then said, ‘Harry says the Kaiser has done wonders for Germany. He’s brought us closer to Austria, and that’s a good thing.’

‘It’s a good thing for Harry, because of his business interests in Austria, but the Dual Alliance, as they call it, has frightened Russia and France into closer ties, and whatever France does, Britain does too. The Kaiser’s heading himself into a lot of trouble, Veronica. I want you to remember that when you are reading your newspapers.’

‘Harry says all that war talk is just nonsense the newspaper writers invent to sell their papers.’

Mr Rensselaer leaned down to talk to Peter. ‘You remember that your mother is an American, young man. And that makes you half American, too. Never mind about flying in airships with Count Zeppelin; you come to New York City and you’ll see things that will make your eyes pop. America is the only country for a young man like you: farmlands that stretch to the horizon and beyond, and railroads crisscrossing the whole continent. You come to America and discover what it’s like to breathe the air of free men.’ He reached out to put his hand on the child’s shoulder.

Peter pushed his grandfather’s hand away and turned on him. ‘I don’t want to go with you. I hate you. You’re a bad man to say nasty things about His Majesty. He’s my Emperor. Germany has to be strong, to fight the French and the English and the Russians. Then the world will respect the Kaiser. I’ll never go to America – never, never.’

The smile froze on Pauli’s face. For a moment the four grownups were too embarrassed to react. They watched this ten-year-old’s outburst without knowing what to do about it. Cyrus Rensselaer felt a sudden sense of isolation. He’d spent a lot of time looking forward to this meeting with his daughter and his grandsons. They were his only heirs. But instead of the two amiable, tousled, freckle-faced kids he was expecting to see, he was suddenly faced with two militant Teutons. Rensselaer was shocked and speechless. No one moved until six-year-old Paul – sensing that something awful had happened – let out a howl and began to cry more loudly than he’d ever cried before. Then the nanny grabbed the hand of little Paul and tried to grasp Peter’s hand, too, but he ran from the room and slammed the door behind him with all his might.

Veronica said, ‘Take them both up to their room, Nanny. You can tell Peter that his father will hear about this when he gets home.’

‘Yes, madam,’ said the nurse. ‘I really don’t know…It’s not like Peter….’

‘That will be all, Nanny,’ said Grandpa Rensselaer. When the children and nanny had gone, he went to the sidetable and poured himself a whiskey. He downed it in one gulp.

‘It’s the journey …and the excitement,’ said Veronica when her father turned back to face her. ‘Peter is usually the quiet one. Peter is polite and thoughtful. It’s Pauli who gets over excited.’ She spoiled the little one, and she knew it. Did this sudden outburst mean that Peter felt neglected and was demonstrating his discontent?

‘It’s that husband of yours,’ said Rensselaer. ‘You can see what sort of ideas he puts into the children’s heads …Count Zeppelin … airships, and all this nonsense about Kaiser Wilhelm, “my Emperor”. It’s time I had a word with your Harald.’

‘Please don’t, Father. It’s none of Harald’s doing. He spends little enough time with the children.’ She smoothed her satin dress nervously.

‘Someone’s been filling the boy’s head with mischievous twaddle,’ said Rensselaer.

‘It’s the school, Father. It’s the sort of thing they’re told at school.’

Cyrus Rensselaer’s influence and popularity were evident that evening. His twenty-two dinner guests provided a cross section of Britain at the height of its power. On Mary Rensselaer’s right sat an Indian prince, a delicate old man with an Eton accent so pronounced that sometimes even the other English guests had trouble understanding him. Facing her there was a weatherbeaten infantry colonel who’d soldiered through the empire. In Transvaal he’d won his Queen’s newly founded Victoria Cross, and in Afghanistan he’d left an arm.

Dominating the table with his anecdotes there was a plain-speaking Yorkshireman, sole owner of a steel works from which had come enough metal to build a complete Royal Naval Battle Squadron. And listening with delight there was a Peer of the Realm: a handsome, bearded youth who’d inherited half a million acres of northern England. He was rich on coal from a couple of mines he’d never seen, and on rents from a dozen villages that he couldn’t, when asked, name.

The women were as formidable as the men, and just as surprising. The Indian princess could speak a dozen languages, and her German was faultless. The wife of the steelmaster had been painted by Degas, and the bank official’s wife had been a lady-in-waiting to the late Queen. A buxom woman with a glittering diamond collar had run a hospital in the Sudan before marrying a man who owned several thousand miles of Latin American railways.

The dining room was designed to complement such eminent company: fine paintings, carpets, linen, crystal and silver. And the food and wines were memorable.

Harald Winter was overwhelmed. Even his Berlin-tailored evening dress felt wrong, especially when he found all the other men wearing white waistcoats instead of the black ones that were still fashionable in Berlin. In Berlin he was treated as a wealthy and influential – not to say powerful – man. But he felt diffident in the presence of these people. They were relaxed and courteous, but Winter was not such a fool that he didn’t see their arrogant self-confidence. Though they complimented him on his excellent English, he knew the way they ridiculed any sort of foreign accent. Their exaggerated politeness and modest disclaimers were the veneer that overlaid their rough contempt for foreigners such as Winter, and for his banking house, of which they all told him they’d never heard.

‘I’m completely out of touch nowadays,’ one of the guests – a financial expert – told him apologetically. ‘The only bankers I remember are the really big ones…. Getting old, you see.’ He tapped his head and turned away to speak with someone else. Winter felt humiliated.

Rensselaer was just as bad. He’d spent most of the meal talking to the Indian princess. Winter wondered if his father-in-law guessed that he urgently wanted to put a financial proposition to him. He’d been trying to have a private word with his host since arriving back from a disappointing business lunch. Was he avoiding him? Surely not. Rensselaer was as keen on a profit-able deal as any other man in the financial world. It was just as well they were house guests. Perhaps he could have a word with Rensselaer after these dinner guests had gone.

‘You look pensive, darling,’ Veronica told her husband when the men joined the ladies in the drawing room. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything is fine,’ said Winter. It was no good telling his wife how much he disliked these people. Veronica and her family were the same as the rest of them, so he simply told her she was looking wonderful in her long pale-green silk dress. She’d never perceive the way in which these rich and powerful guests of her father’s despised the little German banker and the nation from which he came.

‘I’m not a pork butcher,’ he peevishly responded when the woman with the diamond collar asked him what he did for a living in Berlin. It was a silly remark and simply revealed his nervous exasperation.

‘My grandfather was a butcher in Leeds,’ she cheerfully told him. ‘Even now I can remember the wonderful roast beef we always had at his house.’

Winter was embarrassed at her response. He desperately tried to make amends for his gratuitous rudeness. ‘I have a bank,’ he said and, in keeping with this English obsession for modesty, added, ‘a very small bank.’ She laughed. No matter what one did, somehow the English always knew how to make a foreigner feel a fool.

The two boys, in the nursery bedroom at the very top of the house, heard the clatter of carriages and the sounds of the guests leaving soon after midnight. Peter, lost in a dream about airships, went back to sleep almost immediately, but little Pauli was still worried about his brother’s outburst that afternoon. Paul had none of the cleverness that distinguished his elder brother but, perhaps in compensation for this, the little blond child had an instinct about what went on in other people’s minds. He knew that his grandfather was deeply hurt by what his brother had said. Peter was like that: he had the capacity for cruelty that comes so easily to the self-righteous.

Now Pauli stayed awake worrying about what would happen to Peter. Perhaps he’d be sent away. He’d heard of children being sent away. They were sent away to jobs, and to schools, and sometimes sent away to the army or the navy. Pauli had no idea of what happened to those who were ‘sent away’ but now it was dark, and the flickering nightlight made strange shadows on the ceiling and on the wall, and all sorts of frightening ideas about being sent away occurred to him.

He called to his brother, but Pauli’s voice was faint and Peter’s sleep was not interrupted. Pauli got out of bed and decided to wake up Nanny; she’d be angry, of course, but he knew she’d pick him up and cuddle him and put him back to bed with reassuring words that sometimes little boys like Pauli want to hear in the middle of the dark night.

Pauli was halfway down the top flight of the back stairs by the time he fully realized that he wasn’t in his home in Berlin. He walked up and down the line of closed bedroom doors trying to decide which one to try. It was then that he heard voices from somewhere below. He continued down the servant’s stairs until he got to the ground floor. The voices were coming from a room at the back of the house. It was Grandpa’s study – a small back room where Cyrus Rensselaer went to smoke. Here he kept a comfortable old leather chair, a desk where he could write, and a locked cabinet that contained his very finest French brandy and his favourite sourmash bourbon, which he brought with him because the London wine merchants had never heard of it.

From his position on the landing, Pauli could squeeze into a space where empty steamer trunks were stored, and from there he could look through an open fanlight and see into the room.

Grandpa was sitting in the big leather chair, alongside the coal fire that was now only red embers and grey ash. Pauli’s father was perched on the edge of the writing desk. His father looked uncomfortable. Both men had cut-glass tumblers in their hands. Grandpa was smoking a big cigar and Daddy was lighting one too. Pauli could smell the smoke as it curled up into his hiding place. Grandpa took the cigar from his mouth and said, ‘Never mind all the stories about a cure for malaria, Harry. If you are trying to raise capital for your bank, it means your bank is in trouble.’

‘It’s not in trouble,’ said Winter. He tugged at the hem of his black waistcoat and silently cursed his Berlin tailor for not knowing that in England it was passé.

‘When people start saying a bank is in trouble, it’s in trouble.’

Harald Winter said, ‘It’s a chance to expand.’

Rensselaer interrupted him. ‘Never mind the bullshit, Harry; save that for the suckers. My friends in the City tell me you’re not sound.’

Winter stiffened. ‘Of course it’s sound. Half the money still remains in German government bonds.’

‘Damnit, Harry, don’t be so naive. It’s not sound because your aluminium factory may not be a success. Suppose the aluminium market doesn’t come up to your expectations? How are you going to pay back the money? Your investors think all their money is in government bonds. It’s bordering on the dishonest, Harry.’

Winter sipped his drink. ‘The electrolytic process has changed aluminium production. The metal is light and very strong; they’re experimenting with all kinds of mixtures, and these alloys will revolutionize building and automobiles, and they’ll find other industrial uses for it.’

‘Sure, sure, sure,’ said Rensselaer. ‘I’ve heard all these snake-oil stories…. There’s always a claim where some guy will strikegold or oil…and it’s always next week. I grew up on all that stuff.’

‘I’m not talking about something that might never happen,’ said Winter. ‘I’m talking about using aluminium alloys.’

‘Aluminium: okay. I made a few inquiries. In 1855 it cost a thousand Reichsmarks per kilo; in 1880, twenty Reichsmarks; now I can buy it for two Reichsmarks a kilo. What price will it be by the time your factory comes into full-scale production?’

‘I’m not selling aluminium, Mr Rensselaer.’ He always addressed his father-in-law as ‘Mr Rensselaer’, always expecting him to suggest he called him Cyrus or Cy as his friends did; but Cyrus Rensselaer never did suggest it, even though he called his son-in-law Harry. It was another example of the way Harald Winter was deliberately humbled. Or that was how it seemed to him. ‘I’ll be selling manufactured components that bolt together to make the rigid framework for airships.’

‘Then why the aluminium factory? Buy your materials on the open market.’

‘I have to have an assured supply. Otherwise I could sign a contract and then be held to ransom by the aluminium manufacturers.’

‘It’s my daughter I’m thinking of, Harry. You haven’t told her that you are going to put every penny you can raise into producing metal components for flying machines. I sounded her out this afternoon: she thinks you’re cautious with money. She trusts you to look after the family.’

Winter drew on his cigar. ‘These zeppelins are going to change the world, Mr Rensselaer. A year ago I would have shared your scepticism. But I’ve seen Zeppelin’s first airship flying – as big as a city block and as smooth as silk.’

‘And as dangerous as hell. Don’t you know those ships are full of hydrogen, Harry? Have you ever seen hydrogen burn?’

‘I know all the problems and the dangers,’ said Winter, ‘but, just as you have your contacts here in London, I have friends in the Berlin War Office. At present the General Staff is showing strong opposition to all forms of airship; the soldiers don’t like new ideas. But the Kaiser has personally ordered the setting up of a Motorluftschiff-Studien-Gesellschaft: a technical society for the study of airships. It’s still very secret, but it’s just a matter of time until the army orders some big rigids from Count Zeppelin.’

‘That’s all moonshine, Harry. I hear that Zeppelin’s second ship, which flew in January, turned out to be a big flop. They say its first flight is going to be its one and only flight.’

‘But Count Zeppelin is already building LZ3, and it will fly in about twelve weeks from now. Make no mistake: he’ll go on building them.’

‘Maybe that just shows he doesn’t know when he’s licked. And who can say how the airships will shape up when the army tests them?’

‘Do you realize how much aluminium goes into one of those airships? They weigh almost three tons. Thousands of girders and formers go into each ring. I’ve done some sums. Using Count Zeppelin’s first airship as a yardstick, I’d need only six-point-seven-three per cent of an airship’s aluminium requirement to break even and pay back the interest.’

Even Rensselaer was visibly impressed. ‘But we’re talking about every red cent you possess, Harry. Why not a smaller investment?’

‘I could have a smaller investment; I could do without the aluminium factory and be at the mercy of my suppliers. I could have half an interest and have only nonvoting shares, but that would mean someone else was making the decisions about who, what, why and where we sell. That’s not my way, Mr Rensselaer: and it’s not your way, either.’

Rensselaer scratched his chin. ‘I’ve spent half my working life trying to talk people out of these kinds of blue-sky investments. But I can see I’d be wasting my time trying to talk you out of it.’ Rensselaer got up from his chair for enough time to flick ash into the fire. ‘J. P. Morgan bought up steel companies to make U.S. Steel, and he’s made himself one of the most powerful men in the U.S., maybe one of the most powerful men in the whole damned world. It looks easy, but don’t think that you can corner the market in aluminium and become the J. P. Morgan of Germany. The European market just doesn’t work that way.’

‘I know that, Mr Rensselaer.’

‘Do you?’ He slumped back into his chair. ‘That’s good, because I meet a whole lot of people who try to get me involved in financing crackpot schemes like that.’

‘It’s just bridging.’

‘It’s not bridging, Harry!’ Suddenly Rensselaer’s voice was louder. Then, as if determined to control his temper, he lowered it again to say, ‘We’re talking about guarantees that will go on until 1916. Ten years! A hell of a lot of things could happen between now and then.’

‘I have most of it, Mr Rensselaer.’

‘You need nearly a million pounds sterling, Harry, and that’s a hell of a lot of dough when you’ve got no collateral that I’d want to try and realize on.’

Winter knew that his father-in-law had decided to let him have the money. He smiled. ‘It’s a great opportunity, Mr Rensselaer. You’ll never regret it.’

‘I’m regretting it already,’ said Rensselaer. ‘I’ve always tried to stay clear of government agencies in all shapes and forms. Especially I’ve avoided armies and navies. Now I’m going to find myself with a million pounds sterling invested in the army of the Kaiser: a man I wouldn’t trust to look after my horses. What’s worse, I’m going to have the security of my investment depending upon his bellicose ambitions.’

Rensselaer knew his words would offend his son-in-law but he was angry and frustrated at the trap he found himself in. When Winter wisely made no reply, Rensselaer said, ‘It’s for Veronica’s sake – you know that, of course – and I’ll want proper safeguards built into the paperwork. I’ll want your life insured with a U.S. company for the full amount of the loan.’

‘It’s the Kaiser’s life you should insure,’ said Winter. ‘My death would make no difference to the investment.’

‘Here’s to the Kaiser’s health,’ said Rensselaer sardonically. He raised his glass and drank the rest of his whiskey.

Winter smiled and decided not to drink to the Kaiser’s health. In the circumstances it would seem like lese-majesty.

Little Pauli crawled out of his hiding place and went slowly upstairs, trying to figure out what the two grownups had been talking about. By the time he found his bedroom again, only one part of the scene he’d witnessed was clear to him. He shook Peter awake and said, ‘I saw Daddy and Grandpa. They were smoking cigars and talking. Daddy made Grandpa drink to the health of His Majesty the Emperor. He made him do it, Peter.’

Peter came awake slowly, and when he heard Pauli’s story he was sceptical. Little Pauli hero-worshipped his father in a way that Peter would never do. ‘Go to sleep, Pauli, you’ve been dreaming again.’ He turned over and snuggled deep into the soft down pillow.

‘I haven’t been dreaming,’ said Pauli. He wanted Peter to believe him; he wanted his big brother to treat him as an equal. ‘I saw them.’ But by the time morning came, he was no longer quite certain.

1908

‘Conqueror of the air – hurrah!’

In Friedrichshafen it was cold, damned cold. There was very little wind – the zeppelins could not take off in a wind – but November is not a time of year when anyone goes to the shores of the grim, grey Bodensee unless he has business there. Across the calm water of the lake, the Swiss side was clearly visible and the Alps were shining in the watery winter sunlight.

Harald Winter had persuaded his wife to stay in the car. It was Winter’s pride and joy. A huge seven-and-a-half litre Italian car, just like the one that won the Peking-to-Paris Road Race with twenty days’ lead! And yet, with its four-speed gearbox, so reliable and easy to use that Winter sometimes took the wheel himself. He’d had it parked down by the waterfront under the trees near the Schlosskirche, so that Veronica would have a good view of the airship and the shed that floated on the lake. She was well wrapped up, and under her feet was a copper foot-warmer that could be refilled with boiling water. And if she got too cold, the chauffeur would drive her back to the Kurgarten Hotel in Friedrichshafen, where the zeppelin people had provided for the Winter family a comfortable suite of rooms.

But Harald Winter was at the lakeside, nearer to the activity. He was excited; he would not have missed this occasion for all the world. Together with his two boys – Peter twelve and Pauli eight – he’d been given a place from which he could see everything. He would have been flying in the zeppelin but for the stringent terms of the life insurance that his father-in-law had made a condition of the loan.

They’d seen the floating shed being revolved to eliminate any chance of a crosswind damaging the airship as it came from out of its tight-fitting hangar. Now they watched as the white motorboat took its distinguished guests out to LZ3; the new modifications made her the finest of the airships. The crowd cheered spontaneously. After the tragic destruction of LZ4 last year – in a gesture that no foreigner would ever understand – the spontaneous generosity of the whole nation brought Count Zeppelin six million marks in donations. Much of the money had been sent within hours of the disaster. So these cheers were not just for the airship. There was something exhilarating in the atmosphere here today. The zeppelin was fast becoming a symbol of a new, exciting Germany, whose scientific inventions, paintings, music, and, more importantly, growing naval strength had made a real nation from a collection of small states. And not just a nation, but an international power of the first rank.

‘That’s the Kaiser,’ whispered Winter to his sons. ‘He’s wearing that long cloak or you’d see all his medals. Next to him is Prince Fürstenberg and then Admiral Müller and General von Plessen. The thin one is the Crown Prince.’

‘Why isn’t Count Zeppelin with them?’ Peter asked. The boys were wearing grey flannel suits, specially tailored for the occasion, and large cloth caps that their mother thought were ‘too grown-up-looking’ for them.

‘He is,’ said Winter. He was wearing a tight-fitting chesterfield and top hat, a formal outfit suited to someone who would be presented to the Kaiser. ‘He’s facing His Majesty, but he’s not wearing his old white cap today; he’s dressed up for the occasion.’

They watched the airship come out on the surface of the lake, and then there was an interminable delay while the royal party inspected the airship, and another while it was given the final adjustments for the flight. After the Prince and Princess of Fürstenberg were safely aboard, the ballast was offloaded piece by piece, until the moment came when the great silver machine shuddered and floated free.

The roar of the engines echoed across the cold still water of the Bodensee, and then the nose tilted up and the airship climbed slowly into the grey sky and, rolling slightly as it went, headed down the lake. The airship’s silver fabric was shining in the pale sunlight as it came steadily back to where the shore was black with onlookers. There were more loud, uncoordinated cheers as it passed over the boat from which the Kaiser and his entourage watched.

But it was after the landing of LZ3 that the boys were proudest of their father. For Harald Winter was invited to take his two sons out to the floating shed to watch Kaiser Wilhelm making his speech.

Every available inch of space was used. Illustrious generals, spiked helmets on their heads and chests crammed with medals, and admirals with high, stiff collars and arms garlanded with gold, were all crowded shoulder to shoulder. Standing behind von Zeppelin – the seventy-one-year-old ex-cavalry officer whose single-minded endeavour was today celebrated – they saw Dr Hugo Eckener, whose conversion to the zeppelin cause had made him even more zealous than his master. Next came Dürr, the engineer, Winter with the two children, and then senior design staff and an official from the engine factory.

‘In my name,’ began the Kaiser suddenly, his voice unexpectedly shrill, ‘and in the name of our entire German people, I heartily congratulate Your Excellency on this magnificent work which you have so wonderfully displayed before me today. Our Fatherland can be proud to possess such a son – the greatest German of the twentieth century – who through his invention has brought us to a new point in the development of the human race.’ At this, one or two of the generals and admirals nodded. One of the design staff edged aside to give little Pauli a better view.

The Kaiser looked round his audience, drew himself up into an even more erect posture, and continued: ‘It is not too much to say that we have today lived through one of the greatest moments in the evolution of human culture. I thank God, with all Germans, that He has considered our people worthy to name you as one of us. Might it be permitted to us all, as it has been to you, to be able to say with pride in the evening of our life, that we had been successful in serving our dear Fatherland so fruitfully. As a token of my admiring recognition, which certainly all your guests gathered here share with the entire German people, I bestow upon you herewith my high Order of the Black Eagle.’

Count Zeppelin stepped one pace forward. Over his head the Kaiser put the sash, and then embraced him three times and called, ‘His Excellency Count Zeppelin, the conqueror of the air – hurrah!’

From the crowd in the distance, cheers could be heard. For Winter and his two sons it was a day they would never forget.

It was already getting dark by the time Winter and the boys got back to the hotel in Friedrichshafen. Nanny was sent to have dinner alone in the restaurant so that the boys could have theirs served in the sitting room of their suite. Harald Winter was excited by the events of the day, and at times like this he liked to have a few extra moments with his sons.

A solicitous waiter in a white jacket brought the meal and served it to the children course by course. There was turtle soup and breaded schnitzels with rösti potatoes, which the Swiss, across the lake, did so perfectly. When no one was looking, Peter took forkfuls of Pauli’s cabbage – Pauli hated cabbage – so that he wouldn’t get into trouble for leaving it on his plate. And after that the waiter flamed crêpes for them. It was the first time that their father had permitted them to have a dish containing alcohol and, despite the strong flavour, the boys devoured their pancakes with great joy, slowing their eating to prolong this happy day forever.

After Nanny had taken the boys off to bed, Harald had a chance to express his happiness to his wife. They were in the bedroom; Veronica’s maid had gone. Harry was fully dressed in his evening clothes and his wife was making a final selection of jewellery. She had already put three different diamond brooches on her low-cut ballgown and rejected each. She was wearing a wonderful new Poiret dress from Paris, a simple tubular design with a high waist. She knew the new Paris look would create a sensation at the ball tonight. But on such a neoclassical design the jewellery would be all-important. She didn’t want to get it wrong. ‘What do you think, Harry?’ She turned away from the mirror enough for him to see her hold the diamond-studded gold rose against her.

‘You’re very beautiful, my darling,’ he told her.

‘I’m thirty-four, Harry, and I feel every year of it. My shoes hurt already, and the evening has not even started.’

‘Change them,’ said Harry.

‘The pink silk shoes would look absurd,’ she said.

He smiled. That was the way women were: the pink shoes looked absurd, the white ones hurt; there was really no answer. Perhaps women liked always to have some problem or other: perhaps it was the way they accounted for their disappointments. ‘Did you see His Majesty?’

‘I got so cold, Harry. I just waited until the airship lifted away. Then I came back for a hot bath.’

‘The boys saw him. He looked magnificent. He’s a great man.’

‘I’ll just have to slip them off at dinner.’

‘The LZ3 is to be delivered to the army right away. And as soon as the LZ5 is completed – and has done a twenty-four-hour endurance flight – they want that, too.’

‘I know. You told me. It’s wonderful.’

‘You realize what it means, don’t you?’

‘No,’ she said vaguely. She’d heard it all before. She wasn’t listening to him; she was looking at her shoes.

‘It means we’ll be rich, darling.’

‘We’re already rich, Harry.’

‘I mean really rich: tens of millions …perhaps a hundred million before I’m finished.’ He sat down, reaching behind him to flip his coat tails high in the air like a blackbird alighting. You could tell a lot about a man by the way he sat down, she decided. Her father always lifted his coat tails aside carefully, making sure they’d not be creased.

‘We’re happy, Harry. That’s the important thing.’

‘Dollars, I’m talking about, not Reichsmarks.’

‘What does it matter, Harry? We’re happy, aren’t we?’ She looked up at him. Somewhere deep inside her there arose a desperate hope that he would embrace her and tell her that he would give up his other women. But she knew he would not do that. He needed the women, the way he needed the money. He had to be reassured, just as little Pauli needed so much reassurance all the time.

‘It doesn’t matter to you,’ he said, and she was surprised at the bitterness in his voice. He was like that; his mood could change suddenly for no accountable reason. ‘You were born into wealth. You have your own bank account and your father’s allowance every year. But now I’ll have as much money as he’s got. I won’t have to kowtow to him all the time.’

‘I haven’t noticed you displaying servile deference to Papa,’ she said. She gave him all her attention.

He ignored her remark. ‘The army will buy more and more airships, and the navy will buy them, too. I had a word with the admiral today. They’re already planning where the bases should be. Nordholz in Schleswig-Holstein will be the biggest one; then others nearby. Revolving sheds built on turntables – the North Sea is too rough for floating the hangars.’

‘Schleswig-Holstein? Why would they want them so far north? The weather there is not suited to airships. You said they’d need calm weather today.’

‘Use your brains, Veronica. Germany has the only practical flying machine in the world. The experimental little contraptions that the Wright brothers have made can scarcely lift the weight of a man. What use would those things be for bombing?’

‘Bombing? Bombing England?’

‘This has been Count Zeppelin’s idea right from the start. I thought everyone knew that. He conceived these huge rigid airships as a war-winning weapon.’

‘How ghastly!’

‘It’s how progress comes. Leonardo da Vinci developed his great ideas only to help his masters fight wars.’

‘But bombing England, Harry? For God’s sake. What are you saying?’

‘Don’t get excited, Veronica. I wish I hadn’t started talking about it.’

‘War? War with England? But, Harry it is no time at all since the King of England went to Berlin. The children saw them both going through Pariser Platz in the state coach. The Kaiser is King Edward’s nephew. It’s unthinkable. It’s madness!’ This came in a gabble. It was as if she thought that she had only her husband to persuade and everything would be all right.

It was not an appropriate time to remind her that Kaiser Wilhelm made no secret of his hatred for his uncle the English King. Only the previous year, Winter had been one of three hundred dinner guests to whom the Kaiser had confided that King Edward was ‘a Satan’. But his wife needed assurance, so he went to her and put his arms tightly round her. By God, she was beautiful. Even at thirty-four she outshone some of the younger ones he bedded. He hated to see her distressed. ‘There will be no war, my darling. I guarantee that. England will see sense. When the time comes, England will see sense. The English are a nation of compromisers.’

‘I pray to God you’re right.’

‘They say the mustard manufacturers get rich from the dabs of mustard people leave on their plates. And we’ll get rich in the same way, darling. From selling the soldiers weapons they’ll never use.’

1910

The end of Valhalla

Both boys liked to visit Omi. Harald Winter’s widowed mother, Effi, lived in a comfortable little house on the coast, near Travemünde. They went each summer, with Nanny, Mama and Mama’s personal maid. From Berlin they always got a sleeping compartment in the train that left from Lehrter Bahnhof late at night and arrived at Lübeck next morning. They alighted from the train and watched the porters pile the luggage onto carts. The children were taken to see the locomotive, a huge hissing brute that smelled of steam and oil and of the burned specks of coal that floated in the sunlit air. Omi always met them at the station in Lübeck. But this time she wasn’t there – only the taxi. It was a big one – a Benz sixty-horsepower Phaeton, more like a delivery van than a car – and it could seat sixteen people if they all crammed together. The driver was a white-haired old fellow named Hugo who would laboriously clamber up onto the roof. There, on its huge rack, he’d strap a dozen suitcases, Mama’s ten hat boxes, a travelling rug inside which were rolled a selection of umbrellas and walking sticks and four black tin trunks so heavy that he’d almost overbalance with the weight of them.

The house itself was a gloomy old place with lace curtains through which the northern sunlight struggled to make pale-grey shadows on the carpet. Even in the dusty conservatory that ran the length of the house, the warmth of the summer sun was hardly enough to stir the wasps from their winter torpor.

Omi always wore black, the same sort of clothes she’d worn back in 1891, when Grandfather died. She spent most of the day in the room on the first floor: she read, she sewed, and for a lot of the time she just remembered. The room was furnished with her treasures and mementoes. There were two large jade dragons and a whole elephant tusk engraved with hunting scenes. There was a big photo of her with Opa on their wedding day, and portraits of other members of the family, and there were stuffed birds in glass cases and green plants that never bore flowers. She called the little room her salon and she received her visitors there – although visitors were few – and looked out the window across the Lübeck Bight to the coast and the water that became the Baltic Sea.

Peter and Paul wouldn’t have looked forward so much to their visits had it not been for the Valhalla. The Valhalla was a small sailing boat that had once belonged to Opa. In his will Opa had bequeathed the little boat to a neighbour. But whenever the two Winter boys arrived, the Valhalla was theirs. The neighbour didn’t know his sailing boat was called the Valhalla. On its bow was painted the same name that had been there when Winter bought it from a boat builder in Travemünde: Domino. But for the boys it was always called Valhalla: the hall in which slain warriors were received by Odin.

The Valhalla gave the boys a unique chance to be away from any kind of supervision. They took little advantage of this cherished freedom except to laze and, more important, to talk and argue in that spirited and curiously intimate way that children only do when no adults are within earshot.

‘You’ll change your mind again before you are fourteen,’ Peter told his ten-year-old brother with all the mature authority of a fourteen-year-old. ‘I wouldn’t go to cadet school; I’d hate it. I’m going to be an explorer.’ He trailed his hand in the water. The wind had been swinging round for the last hour or more, so that Peter had had to adjust the sail constantly. Now the boat was moving fast through the choppy water of the bight. The sun was a white disc seen fitfully behind hazy clouds. There was little heat in the sun. Visitors did not come to this northern coastline to bask in the sunshine; it was a brisk climate, for active holidaymakers.

The boys were dressed in yellow oilskins and floppy hats, just like the real sailors who sailed the big ships out of Kiel, along the coast from here. The younger boy, Paul, was crouched in the stern, hugging his knees. His hair was long and had become even more blond as he got older. People had said that his hair would darken, but adults had been wrong about that as about most other vital things he’d wanted to know. He said, ‘You’re good at mathematics. You’d have to be good at mathematics for exploring, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Peter, who’d recently come top in mathematics.

‘I’m no good at anything except sport: hockey, I’m good at hockey. Papa says the cadet school will be best for me. I’ll never be any good at mathematics.’

‘No, you won’t,’ said Peter.

Paul looked at his elder brother. It was a simple statement of fact: Paul was no good at mathematics and never would be. Adults all said that he was young and that soon he’d understand such scholastic subjects. The adults perhaps believed it, but it wasn’t true, and Paul preferred to hear his brother’s more brutal answer. ‘And then after cadet school I’ll be a soldier and wear a uniform like Georg.’ Georg was a young soldier who was walking out with one of the housemaids in Berlin.

‘Not like Georg,’ said Peter. ‘You’ll be an officer and ride a horse and parade down Unter den Linden and salute the Kaiser on his birthday.’

‘Will I?’ said Pauli. It didn’t sound at all bad.

‘And go off and fight the Russians,’ said Peter.

‘I wouldn’t like that so much,’ said Paul. ‘It would mean leaving Mama and Papa.’ He loved his parents as only a ten-year-old can. His father was the person he envied, respected and admired more than anyone in the whole world; and Mama was the one he ran to when Papa scolded him.

‘There’s more wind now,’ said Peter. The sail was drumming and there were white crests on the waves. ‘Take the helm while I fix the sail.’

Big storm clouds moved across the hazy sun. It went dark quite suddenly, so that the sky was almost black, with only a shining golden rim on the most distant of the clouds, and a bright shimmer of water along the horizon. ‘Is it a storm?’ said Paul. Two years ago they’d sailed through one of the sudden summer squalls for which this coast was noted. But that was in a bigger boat and with a skilful yachtsman in charge.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Peter. But as he said it, bigger waves struck the hull with enough force to make loud thumping noises and toss the small boat from side to side.

‘Pull the rudder round,’ said Peter.

The little blond boy responded manfully, heaving on the tiller to bring the boat head on to the waves. ‘But we’re heading in the wrong direction now. We’re heading out to sea,’ said Paul. The waves were getting bigger and bigger, and when he looked back towards Omi’s house the coast was so far away that it was lost in the haze of rain. Paul was frightened. He watched his brother struggling with the sail. ‘Do you want me to help?’

‘Stay at the tiller,’ called Peter loudly. He’d heard the note of fear in his young brother’s voice. He let go a rope for long enough to wave to encourage him. It was then that one of those freak waves that the sea keeps for such moments of carelessness hit the boat. The deck was slippery and Peter’s wet shoes provided no grip upon the varnished woodwork. There was a yell and then Pauli saw the sea swaddle his brother into a dirty-green blanket of water and bundle him away into the fast-moving currents.

Peter had never been a strong swimmer and hit by half a ton of icy-cold sea water, the breath knocked out of his lungs, he opened his mouth. Instead of the air he needed, he swallowed cold salty water, and felt his stomach retch at the taste of it. Sucked down into the cold water, he somersaulted through a dim green world until he no longer knew which way was up.

‘Peter! Peter!’ There was nothing but milky-looking waves and mist, and the boat raced on before the gusting wind. Pauli jumped to his feet to pull the sail down, and before he could move aside the tiller was torn from his hands strongly enough to whack him across the leg, so that he cried out with the pain of it. He couldn’t reef in the sail, he knew he couldn’t: it was something his brother always attended to. ‘Peter! Please, God, help Peter.’

Some distance away from the boat, Peter came to the surface, spluttering and desperately flailing his arms so that he got no support from the water. Still encumbered in his yellow oilskin jacket, he slid down again into the hateful green, chilly realm from which he’d just fought his way. He closed his mouth only just in time to avoid a second lungful of sea water, and let the water close over him, twisting his arms in a futile attempt to claw his way back to the surface. The green water darkened and went black.

When Peter saw daylight again, the waves were still high enough to smash across his head. Like leaden pillows, they beat him senseless and scattered a million grey spumy feathers across the heaving sea. He could see no farther than the next wave and hear nothing but the roar of the wind and the crash of water. It seemed like hours since he’d been washed overboard, and – although it was no more than three minutes – he was physically unable to save himself. His small body had already lost heat, till his feet were numb and his fingers stiffening. Besides the temperature drop, his body was bruised and battered by the waves, and his stomach was retching and revolting at the intake of cold salty water.

There was no sign of the Valhalla, but even had it been close there would have been little chance of Peter’s catching sight of it through the grey-green waves and the white, rainy mist that swirled above them.

No one ever discovered why little Pauli jumped off the stern of the Valhalla and into the raging water that frightened him so much. Many years later explanations were offered: his wife said it was a desperate wish to destroy himself; a prison psychologist interpreted it as some sort of baptismal desire; and Peter – who heard Pauli talk about it in his sleep – said it was straightforward heroism and in keeping with Pauli’s desire to be a soldier. Pauli himself said it was fear that drove him from the safety of the boat into the water; he felt safer with his brother in the sea than alone on the boat. But that was typical of Pauli, who tried to make a joke out of everything.

Little Pauli was a strong swimmer and unlike his brother, he was able to divest himself of the oilskin and prepare himself for both the coldness and the strength of the currents into which he plunged. But, like his brother, he was soon disoriented, and couldn’t see past the big waves that washed over him constantly. He swam – or, rather, flailed the heaving ocean top – hoping he was heading back towards the coast. Above him the clouds raced overhead at a speed that made him dizzy.

The squall kept moving. It passed over them as quickly as it had come, moving out towards Bornholm and Sweden’s southern coast. The racing clouds parted enough to let sunlight flicker across the waves, and then Pauli caught sight of the yellow bundle that was Peter.

Had Peter been completely conscious, it’s unlikely that the smaller child would have been able to support his brother. All drowning animals panic; they fight and thrash and often kill anything that comes to save them. But Peter was long past that stage. He’d given up trying to survive, and now the cold water had produced in him that drowsiness that is the merciful prelude to exposure and death.

Peter’s yellow oilskin had kept him afloat. Air was trapped in the back of it, and this had pulled him to the surface when all his will to float had gone. They floated together, Pauli’s arm hooked round his brother’s neck, the pose of an attacker rather than a saviour, and the other arm trying to move them along. The coast was a long way away. Pauli glimpsed it now and again between the waves. There was no chance of swimming that far, even without a comatose brother to support.

They were floating there for a long time before anything came into sight. It was a boy at the oars of a brightly painted rowboat, trying to get to the Valhalla, who saw first a yellow floppy hat in the water, and then the children, too. The oarsman was little more than a child himself, but he pulled the two children out of the water and into his boat with the easy skill that had come from doing the same thing with his big black mongrel dog, which now sat in the front of the boat, watching the rescue.

The youth who’d rescued them was a typical village child: hair cut close to the scalp to avoid lice and nits; teeth uneven, broken and missing; strong arms and heavy shoulders, his skin darkened by the outdoors. Only his height and broad chest distinguished him from the other village youths, that and the ability to read well. To what extent it was his height, and to what extent his literacy, that gave him his air of superiority was debated. But there was a strength within him that was apparent to all, a drive that the priest – in a moment of weakness – had once described as ‘demoniacal’.

The seventeen-year-old Fritz Esser looked at the two half-drowned children huddled together in the bottom of his boat and – despite the pitiful retching of Peter and the shivers that convulsed Pauli’s whole body – decided they were not close to death. He rowed out to where the poor old Valhalla had settled low into the water, its torn sail trailing overboard and its rudder carried away. ‘It will not last long,’ he said, ‘it’s holed.’ Pauli managed to peer over the edge of the rowboat to see what was left of their lovely Valhalla, but Peter was past caring. Esser, aided by the black mongrel, which ran up and down the boat and barked, tried to get the Valhalla in tow, but his line was not long enough, and finally he decided to get the two survivors back to dry land.

He put them in an old boat shed on the beach. It was a dark, smelly place; the only daylight came through the chinks in its ill-fitting boards. Inside there was space enough for three rowboats, but it was evident that only one boat was ever stored here, for most of the interior was littered with rubbish. There were furry pieces of animal hide stretched on racks to dry. There was flotsam, too: a life preserver lettered ‘Germania – Kiel’, torn pieces of sails and old sacks, broken oars and broken crates and barrels of various sizes arranged like seats around a small pot-bellied iron stove.

Esser wrapped sacking round the boys and poked inside the stove until the sparks began to fly, then tossed some small pieces of driftwood into it and slammed it shut with a loud clang. The necessity of closing the stove became apparent as smoke from the damp wood issued out of the broken chimney. It was only after the fire was going that the boy spoke to them. ‘You’re the Berlin kids, aren’t you? You’re from the big house where old Schuster does the garden. Old Frau Winter. Are you her grandchildren?’ He didn’t wait to hear their reply; he seldom asked real questions, they found out soon enough. ‘You come here with your mother, and the flunkeys, and your father comes sometimes, always in some big new automobile.’

Peter and Pauli were huddled together under some sacking that smelled of salt and decaying fish. As the stove flickered into life, and the air warmed, the hut became more and more foul. But the children didn’t notice the odour of old fish or the stink of the tanned hides. They clung together, cold, wet and exhausted; Pauli was looking at the flames in the tiny grate, but Peter’s eyes were tightly closed as he listened to Fritz Esser’s hard and roughly accented voice.

‘I hate the rich,’ Esser said. ‘But soon we’ll break the bonds of slavery.’

‘How will you do that?’ asked Pauli, who, typically, was recovering quickly from his ordeal. It sounded interesting, like something from his 101 Magic Tricks a Bright Boy Can Do.

Esser wracked his brains to remember what the speaker from the German Social Democratic Party had actually said. ‘Capitalism will perish just as the dinosaurs perished, collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Then the working masses will usher in the golden age of socialism.’

Half drowned he might be, but Pauli could perceive the majesty of that pronouncement. ‘Is that how the dinosaurs perished?’ he asked.

‘You can scoff,’ said Esser. ‘We’re used to the sneers of the ruling classes. But when blood is flowing in the gutters, the laughing will stop.’

Pauli had not intended to scoff but decided against saying so while the role of scoffer commanded such a measure of Esser’s respect.

‘We have a million members,’ Esser continued. He spat at the stove and the spittle exploded in steam. ‘We’re the largest political party in the world. Soon they’ll start to arm the workers and we’ll fight to get a proper Marxist government.’

‘Where did you find out all this?’ Pauli asked. It sounded frightening but the strange boy was not unfriendly: just superior. His chin was dimpled and his brown eyes deep and intense.

‘I go to meetings with my father. He’s been a member of the SPD for nearly ten years. Last year Karl Liebknecht came here to give a speech. Liebknecht understands that blood must flow. My father says Liebknecht is a dangerous man, but my uncle says Liebknecht will lead the workers to victory.’

‘Did your father tell you about the dinosaurs and the blood in the streets and all that?’ asked Pauli.

‘No. He’s soft,’ said Esser. He stoked the fire to make it flare. ‘My father still believes in historical evolution. He believes that soon we’ll have enough deputies in the Reichstag to challenge the Kaiser’s power. If Germany had a proper parliamentary democracy, we’d already be running the country.’

Pauli looked at his saviour with new respect. It would be just as well to remain friends with a boy who was so near to running the country. Peter had opened his eyes. He had not so far joined the conversation, but it was Peter who, having studied Fritz Esser, now identified him. ‘You’re the son of the pig man, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, what of it?’ said Fritz Esser defensively.

‘Nothing,’ said Peter. ‘I just recognized you, that’s all.’ Peter coughed and was almost sick. The salt water was still nauseating him, and his skin was green and clammy to the touch, as Pauli found when he hugged his brother protectively.

For Pauli and Peter – and for many other local children – the pig man was a figure of rumour and awful speculation. A small thickset figure with muscular limbs and scarred hands, he was not unlike some of the more fearful illustrations in their books of so-called fairy stories. The ‘pig man’ wore long sharp knives on his belt and went from village to village slaughtering pigs for owners too squeamish, or too inexperienced with a knife, to kill their pigs for themselves. He was to be seen sometimes down by the pond engaged on the lengthy and laborious task of washing the entrails and salting them for sausage making. So this was the son of the pig man. This was a boy who called the pig man ‘soft’.

In an unexpected spontaneous gesture of appreciation, Pauli said goodbye to Fritz Esser with a hug. Forever after, Pauli regarded Fritz Esser as the one who’d saved his life. But Peter’s goodbye was more restrained, his thanks less effusive. For Peter had already decided that little Pauli was his one and only saviour. These varying attitudes that the two boys had to the traumatic events of that terrible day were to affect their entire lives. And the life of Fritz Esser, too.

It was the pig man himself who took the boys home. Still wrapped in the fusty, stinking old sacks that gave so little protection from the remorseless Baltic wind, they rode on the back of his home-made cart drawn by his weary horse. It was more than seven kilometres along the coast road, which was in fact only a deeply rutted cart track. The smell of rancid fish and pork turned their stomachs and they were jolted over every rut, bump, and pothole all the way. When they got to Omi’s, the pig man and his son were given a bright new twenty-mark gold coin and sent away with muted thanks.

It was only after the Essers had gone that the two children were scolded. Who would pay for the boat? How did they come to fall overboard? Didn’t they see that a storm was coming up? How could they not come directly home after being rescued? All three women asked them more or less the same questions; only the manner of asking was different. First came the regimental coldness of Omi’s interrogation, then the operatic hysteria of Mama’s, and finally that of their Scots nanny, who, after their hot bath with carbolic soap, put them under the cold shower and towelled them until their skin was pink and sore.

The children took their chastisings meekly. They knew that such anger was just one of many curious ways in which grownups manifested their love. And they’d long ago learned how to wear a look of contrition while thinking of other things.

Now that they no longer had the Valhalla, the children spent their days on the beach. They walked back along the coast road to Fritz Esser’s boathouse. Very early each morning, Esser went out in his boat to fish. He caught little: he had neither tempting bait, good nets, nor the skills and patience of the successful fisherman.

The boys always arrived in time to welcome him back. But Fritz never showed any disappointment when his long hours of work had provided nothing in return. He was always able to manage the crooked smile that revealed a wide mouth crowded with teeth. Every day, of course, the children hoped to see him towing the Valhalla back to them. And each day their hopes diminished, until finally they went to Fritz just for something to do.

Despite the disparity in age, Fritz Esser enjoyed the company of the two children. He let them help him with painting and repairing the boats he was paid to look after. He showed them how to sew up torn sails and caulk the seams of boats that belonged to holidaymakers who’d left them too long out of the water. And all the time he lectured them with the political ideas that came from the booklets he read and the conversations he liked to listen to in the bar of the Golden Pheasant on the Travemünde road, and to the words of his hero Karl Liebknecht.

At the back of the Golden Pheasant there was a big room that was used for weddings and christenings and meetings of the SPD. That was where, last year, Fritz had listened enraptured to the fiery little Karl Liebknecht. In his pince-nez, neatly shaped black moustache, well-brushed black suit and high, stiff collar, this thirty-nine-year-old member of the Prussian Diet looked more like a clerk than a revolutionary, but from his very first words his speech revealed his passions. He denounced the international armaments industry, ‘the clique who mint gold from discord’. He denounced the Kaiser and Bendlerstrasse, where the generals ‘at this very moment are planning the next war’. He denounced the Russian Tsar and all the ‘parasites’ that made up Europe’s royal families. He denounced the capitalists who owned the factories and the police who were their lackeys. He denounced the rich for exploiting their riches and the poor for enduring their poverty.

A big crowd filled the Golden Pheasant that Friday evening. Most of them had come because he was the son of the great Wilhelm Liebknecht (close friend of Karl Marx and a leader of the short-lived revolutionary republic of Baden), not because they wanted to hear this arrogant and unattractive man, whose only notable achievement so far was to have served an eighteen-month prison sentence for treason.

Karl Liebknecht had none of the qualities that a successful orator must have. His clothes made him look more like one of the cold-eyed bureaucrats they all feared and detested than like a man who would lead them to the golden land they were looking for. His educated Hochdeutsch and his manner – urban if not urbane – set him apart from this audience of fishermen and agricultural workers. Liebknecht’s message didn’t appeal to men who were looking for immediate improvement in their working conditions rather than an ultimate world revolution.

Only the very young have time enough for the sort of promises that Karl Liebknecht gave his audience that night. And only a few local youngsters like Fritz Esser were moved by this strange man.

Although the Winter boys had only a hazy idea of what it was all about, something of the excitement that Fritz Esser showed was communicated to them. And Fritz liked striding up and down declaiming the principles of Marxism to this enraptured audience of two. Pauli loved the sounds of Esser’s words, though the fiery rhetoric of hatred held no meaning for him. Peter sensed the underlying belligerence, but Fritz Esser’s flashes of easy humour and his simple charm won him over. And when Esser told them that as fellow conspirators they mustn’t repeat a word of what he said to the policeman, to their family, to any of their household, or even to anyone else in the village in case Fritz was sent to prison, the two boys were totally devoted to him. What a wonderful thing it was to share a secret with a boy who was almost a man. And what a secret it was!

During the final week of their summer vacation, ‘Uncle Glenn’ arrived. Veronica’s younger brother, Glenn Rensselaer, had a habit of turning up unexpectedly all over the world. The first Veronica heard about his visit to Europe was a telegram from the post office of a liner due to arrive at Hamburg next day: ‘Arriving Thursday with friend. Love, Glenn.’ There was a flurry of domestic preparations and for Veronica, speculation, too. Who was the friend and was this just Glenn’s jocular way of announcing that he had come to Europe on his honeymoon?

The speculation ended when Glenn arrived Friday noon, together with an Englishman named Alan Piper. They’d met on the ship coming over from New York: ‘The Kaiserin Auguste Victoria: twenty-five thousand tons. The biggest liner in the world and she’s German.’ It was typical of Glenn that he delighted in the achievements of the Old World almost as much as those of his own countrymen. Glenn had insisted that, since Piper had a month or two to spare before reporting back to the Colonial Office in London, he should accompany him on his tour of Germany, beginning at the house in Travemünde.

Alan ‘Boy’ Piper spent much of his time apologizing for all the extra work and trouble he was causing to the household. He apologized to Veronica so many times that Glenn finally said, ‘Don’t be so goddamned British. They have slaves to do all the work in this country. And Veronica loves a chance to speak a civilized language.’

He was right about his sister. Her mother-in-law had not been well for a few days and was allowed only bread and beef broth, having it served in her upstairs room. So Veronica played hostess to the unexpected house guests, and there was no need to speak anything but English.

Veronica adored her young brother but she was also enchanted by the shy Englishman. He was a little older than Veronica, an unconventionally handsome man with short brown – almost gingerish – hair, a lean bony face, and curiously youthful features that had long ago earned him his nickname ‘Boy’. He insisted that his life had been uneventful compared with her brother’s. From Merton College, Oxford, he’d gone to South Africa, and stayed there working as a colonial government official, although, as Glenn pointed out, he’d been there right through some of the bloodiest encounters of the Boer War.

‘He’s a soldier of fortune, like me,’ said Glenn Rensselaer.

‘Nothing as exciting as that, I’m afraid,’ said Piper modestly. ‘My father was a government official in Africa, and so far I have simply followed in his footsteps.’ He smiled. He had the face of a youngster – fresh and optimistic, and unwrinkled despite the African sun.

‘So what are you doing in Germany, Mr Piper?’ said Veronica. She took care to address him as ‘Mr Piper’, and yet there was a mocking note in her voice that some might have said was flirtatious. ‘Is it another excursion among the natives?’

‘Indeed not, Mrs Winter. I’m on leave. This visit to Germany, as delightful as it is already proving to be, was quite unplanned. When I returned to London to start this year’s leave of absence, I was very disappointed to learn that I would not be returning to Africa. The two Boer Republics we fought, and the Cape and Natal, become what is to be called the Union of South Africa. I would like to have been there to see it.’

‘South Africa’s loss is our gain,’ said Glenn.

‘I will drink to that,’ said Veronica.

The Englishman picked up his glass, looked at her and saw those wonderful smoky-grey eyes, and, after a fleeting moment, smiled.

Veronica looked down as she drank her wine, and yet she could feel the Englishman’s eyes upon her and despite herself, she shivered.

‘My life has not been nearly so colourful as your brother’s, Mrs Winter. I believe him to be one of the most extraordinary men I’ve ever met.’

‘Really?’ She was pleased to look at her brother and smile. ‘What have you been up to, Glenn?’

Piper answered for him. ‘He’s been everywhere and done everything. He’s even panned for gold on the Klondike.’

‘And a lot of good it did me: I finally sold out my claims for three hundred dollars and some supplies.’

‘He’s worked for Henry Ford and turned down a job with the U.S. Army team that surveyed the Panama Canal. He’s broken horses, repaired automobiles, and even flown an aeroplane.’

‘An airplane?’ said Veronica; even she could still be surprised by Glenn’s doings.

‘Just the once,’ said Glenn. He bent forward and forked some more cold pork, without waiting for the table maid to offer it, trying to cover his embarrassment at Piper’s laudatory remarks. Having swallowed it, he took a sip of wine and wiped his lips. ‘There was a guy on the ship coming over, a rancher. I’d worked for him a couple of times. He spent half the voyage filling Boy’s head with tales about me. You know how Texans like to spin a yarn to a Limey.’

‘And why exactly are you in Germany, Glenn?’ she asked her brother.

‘Dad told me that your husband knows Count Zeppelin. I was hoping he’d arrange an introduction for me.’

‘Count Zeppelin? Is he so famous that they’ve heard of him back home?’

‘They’ve sure heard of his airships,’ said Glenn. ‘Last September there was some kind of air show in Berlin….’

‘Yes,’ said Veronica. ‘Berliner Flugwoche at Johannisthal. There was a prize of one hundred and fifty thousand marks. Harald took the boys. They were there when an airplane flew from Tempelhof to Johannisthal: ten kilometres!’

‘Orville Wright was in Berlin at that time. And down in Frankfurt they had an airship meet: the Internationale Luftschiffahrt Ausstellung.’ He pronounced the German words with difficulty. ‘And suddenly a lot of people are taking a new interest in airships: especially big rigid airships. I want to see one of them, fly in one and find out what they’re like to handle.’

‘But surely you heard – the latest one, Deutschland, only lasted a couple of weeks. It’s a complete wreck. There were amazing pictures in the newspapers.’

‘Oh, sure LZ7: I know about that. But he still has the LZ6 flying, and a trip in that will suit me fine.’

Veronica turned to the Englishman. ‘And you, Mr Piper, do you share this obsession with flying machines that seems to be sweeping the world?’

‘Up to a point, Mrs Winter.’

‘He’s just being polite,’ said her brother. ‘I talked him into coming with me to see the zeps, because he can speak the lingo. I can’t speak German, and I don’t suppose Count von Zeppelin is going to be able to speak English.’

‘You’d better learn not to call him Count von Zeppelin: von Zeppelin or Count Zeppelin, but not both together.’

‘Is that so?’ said Glenn thoughtfully. ‘I know these Europeans get darn mad if you get their titles wrong. There was an Italian countess I once met in Mexico City. She wanted me to…’ He stopped, having suddenly decided not to go into detail.

Veronica laughed. She realized that the account of Glenn’s colourful experiences with horses, motorcars and canals had been carefully edited in order not to offend her.

‘And so you speak German, Mr Piper?’ she asked as the servants cleared the plates.

‘For my work I had to learn some Cape Dutch, Mrs Winter. It seemed foolish not to persevere with my German.’

‘He reads the kind of intellectual stuff you like, Veronica. I offered him my brand-new copy of Lord Jim when he was sitting alongside me on the promenade deck. And darn me if he didn’t wave it away. He said he doesn’t read Conrad because he doesn’t stretch the mind. I felt like punching him in the ear. That’s how we first got talking.’

Piper – even after his three months’ stay in America – had still not got used to this direct style of speaking. ‘I didn’t exactly say that, Glenn…’

‘He’s reading Das Stunden-Buch in German!’ added Glenn Rensselaer. ‘It took me half an hour to learn how to pronounce the title.’ Veronica noticed the mutual regard of the two men; somehow friendships between women didn’t flourish so easily and quickly.

‘I’m afraid that Rilke is too much for me,’ Piper admitted. ‘All that symbolic imagery requires a better knowledge of Germany and Germans.’

‘Oh, but it’s a wonderful book,’ said Veronica. ‘Don’t give up.’

‘I’ve tried so hard. The chapter I’m reading now: I’ve reread it, dictionary in hand, at least four times.’

‘Perhaps if we read a few pages together…’ Veronica stopped and hurriedly poured cream over the sliced peach. She hadn’t meant to say that…. She made her racing mind stop. She’d never looked at, not even thought of, another man in all the years she’d been married. When she first discovered that Harry had installed that very young girl Martha in an apartment in Vienna, she’d gone to pray in the Votivkirche, and so steal a glimpse at the street where his mistress was living. Yet, even in that hour of anguish, she had never thought of betraying him. But then she’d never met a man who might be able to tempt her to betrayal. Now, suddenly, she realized that.

‘That would be most civil of you, Mrs Winter,’ said the Englishman. ‘Sometimes it’s just a matter of understanding the heart of the author. Just a few pages properly understood might open a new world to me.’

‘I’m not a scholar,’ said Veronica. ‘I’m a thirty-five-year-old Hausfrau.’ It was her clumsy attempt to change direction.

‘I can’t let that go unchallenged,’ said Piper. ‘I cannot think of anyone in the world more likely to change my life.’

On the day that Father arrived, it rained without stopping. Not just the cold, thin drizzle through which the boys would walk, bathe in the ocean, or, in the happier days of the Valhalla, sail. It fell in great vertical sheets of water from slow-moving grey clouds that came from the North Sea to rain upon the bight.

While everyone prepared for Harald Winter’s arrival, the boys wandered through the house, getting in everyone’s way and feeling low. On previous days, Uncle Glenn or his English friend Mr Piper had kept them entertained with stories, tricks and card games. Pauli particularly liked Mr Piper’s magic and even learned to do some of the conjuring tricks himself. But today the two house-guests had gone to look at the wonderful old city of Lübeck and were not expected back until evening. By that time Father would have arrived.

Peter finally found something to do. Cook let him help prepare the vegetables. She needed the extra hand because the scullery maid was sick and the kitchen maid had been ordered away to ready the rooms on the second floor that Harald Winter and his wife used when both were there together.

After a brusque rejection by his grandmother, who wanted to sleep, Paul went in search of his mother. He found her in the turret room at the top of the house. It was a tiny circular room with a wonderful view of the countryside. This was where she liked to sleep when Father wasn’t with them. She was looking through her clothes in the wardrobe, taking her dresses out one by one and examining them before putting them on the bed for her maid to take to the other bedroom.

Paul stared at his mother. She did not look well. Her face was white but her eyes were reddened as if she’d been crying. ‘What is it?’ she said. She sounded angry.

‘Nothing,’ said little Pauli. ‘Can I help you, Mama?’

‘Not really, darling,’ she replied. Then, seeing Pauli’s disappointment, she said, ‘You can take my jewellery case downstairs. It will save Hanna a journey.’

Pauli always coveted his mother’s jewellery case. It was made of beautiful blue leather and lined with soft blue velvet. Inside, it was fitted with little drawers and soft pockets and velvet fingers upon which Mama’s rings were fitted. Pauli couldn’t resist playing with all the fittings of the box. It was such fun to pull out each drawer and see the sparkling diamond brooches or strings of pearls lying within. He looked at Mama, but she was completely occupied with her dresses – choosing one for Papa’s return, Pauli decided. He continued to play with the jewel box. Suppose it was a pirate ship and each drawer concealed a cannon, and as some unsuspecting boat came along … Oh dear: the contents of a drawer fell onto the carpet. How clumsy he was. He felt sure he would be scolded, but today it seemed as if nothing could divert her attention from her dresses.

Pauli picked up the tiny gold earrings, the large gold earrings, the pearl earrings, the diamond earrings that Mama wore only with her long dresses and pendant earrings. Two of each. He counted them again and then saw a silver earring on the carpet. Then there must be another …rolled under the bed, no doubt. He went flat on the floor to find it. Yes, there it was. And … there was something else there too. He pulled it out. A wristwatch. A large gold wristwatch with a seconds hand.

‘What are you doing, Pauli?’

‘I found a watch, Mama.’

‘What do you mean, Pauli?’

‘I found it under the bed, Mama.’ He showed her the wristwatch proudly. It was a fine Swiss model with a leather strap and roman numerals like the church clock.

‘Oh my God!’ said his mother.

‘It belongs to Mr Piper, Mama. I noticed him wearing it.’ He looked at his mother. He’d never seen her so horror-struck.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I borrowed it from him. Mine stopped last night at dinner.’

‘Shall I give it to him?’ said Pauli.

‘No, give it to me, Pauli. I’ll tell the chambermaid to put it in his room.’

‘I know which is his room, Mama.’

‘Give it to me, Pauli. He might be angry if he hears I’ve dropped it on the floor.’

‘I won’t tell him, Mama.’

‘That’s best, Pauli.’ His mother clutched the watch very tight and closed her eyes, the way children do when making a wish.

Three days after Papa arrived, everyone went to Kiel and stayed in a hotel. It was a momentous trip. Mama wore her new ankle-length motoring coat and gauntlet gloves. Papa drove the car. Its technology was no longer new, but he loved the big yellow Itala and clung to it, even though some people thought he should drive a German car. It was the first time he’d taken the wheel for such a long journey, but he knew that Glenn Rensselaer was able to make running repairs and the chauffeur was ordered to stay near the telephone at Omi’s house just in case something went very badly wrong. Glenn sat beside Harald Winter, the Englishman and Mama at the back, the two children in the folding seats. There were no servants with them. The servants had gone by train. As Harald Winter said, ‘It will be an adventure.’

It was not just an excursion. Harald Winter didn’t make excursions: he had an appointment in the Imperial Dockyard. The next day, while a sea mist cloaked the waterfront and muffled the sounds of the dockyards, he met with a young Korvettenkapitän and two civilian officials of the purchasing board of the Imperial German Navy. Harald Winter had not been forthcoming about the subject of his discussion. It concerned the prospect of a naval airship programme, and that was categorized as secret. The department was already named; it was to be the Imperial Naval Airship Division – but so far it consisted of little beyond a name on the door of one small room on the wrong side of the office block. Last year the appearance of the German army’s airship Z II at the ILA show in Frankfurt am Main had made the future seem rosy. But this year everything had gone wrong. The destruction of that same airship – one of the army’s two zeppelins – in a storm near Weilburg an der Lahn in April was followed by the loss of Count Zeppelin’s newly built Deutschland in June. To make matters worse, a competitor of Zeppelin had built a semi-rigid airship that not only beat Zeppelin’s endurance record by over an hour but arrived at the autumn army manoeuvres complete with its own mobile canvas shed. Now all the admirals and bureaucrats who’d delayed the decisions about purchasing zeppelins were congratulating themselves upon their farsightedness.

But while Harald Winter was sitting across the table from the earnest young naval officer and two blank-faced officials, his wife, children and guests were on the waterfront admiring the assembled might of the new Germany navy.

‘Look at them,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, indicating a dozen great grey phantoms just visible through the mist. ‘German shipyards have never been so busy. The one anchored on the right is a dreadnought.’ He used his field glasses but failed to read any name on the warship.

‘Three dreadnoughts last year, and four built the year before that,’ said Piper. Today the Englishman was looking like a typical holidaymaker, in his striped blazer and straw hat. ‘That makes the German navy exactly equal to the strength of the Royal Navy.’ He took the glasses Glenn Rensselaer handed him but didn’t use them to look at the ships.

‘No,’ said Glenn. ‘You British have eight dreadnoughts and at least three more on the slipways.’ He wore a cream pin-striped flannel suit with his straw boater at an angle on his head. The incoming sea-mist had made it too cold for such summer attire on this promenade. He had a long yellow scarf and now he wound it twice round his neck. Veronica noticed and wished she’d chosen something warmer. The cotton dress with its broderic anglaise trimmings was made specially for this holiday, but the dressmaker had not calculated on the spell of cold weather.

The Englishman nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘And what exactly is a dreadnought?’ said Veronica.

‘Oh, Mama!’ said young Peter, looking back from where he was climbing on the railing to get a better view. ‘Everyone knows what a dreadnought is.’ Little Pauli climbed up beside his brother.

‘It’s a new type of battleship,’ said the ever-attentive Piper.

‘They all look the same to me,’ said Veronica.

‘Maybe they do,’ said Rensselaer, ‘but when the British built HMS Dreadnought in 1906 it made every other capital ship obsolete. Steam-turbine engines, bigger guns and all to a common calibre: faster and more deadly than anything previously built. Now the strength of any navy is measured by the number of dreadnoughts they have. It took that Kaiser of yours a couple of years to get started, but now he’ll bust a gut rather than let the Royal Navy outgun him.’

‘Get down, Peter,’ Veronica called to her son. ‘You’ll make your trousers dirty and we haven’t brought any more with us.’ The Englishman smiled at her. ‘It’s so difficult without the servants,’ said Veronica.

Glenn Rensselaer took back his field glasses again and studied the big dreadnought. ‘Do you think they brought her through the canal, or is she too big?’ Now that the Nord-Ostaee-Kanal directly connected Germany’s North Sea Fleet with the Baltic Fleet, it had vastly increased Germany’s naval potential. Still using the field glasses, Glenn Rensselaer eventually answered his own question: ‘Too big, I think. That’s probably why they are working so hard to make it wider and deeper.’ Even without the glasses one could see the sailors moving about the deck in their white summer uniforms. From the size of the sailors it was easy to judge the dimensions of the huge battleship. ‘She’s big,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, ‘very big.’

Veronica, hampered by the fashionable hobble skirt, had walked on and now Piper followed her. The crisp cotton dress with its high tight lace collar and the lovely new hat with silk bow and artificial flowers made her look wonderful, and she knew it. The others were out of earshot by the time he caught up with her. It was the first chance for Veronica to speak privately with the Englishman since her husband had arrived, but she said only, ‘I wish my brother wouldn’t speak so disrespectfully of His Majesty. It has such a bad effect on the children.’

‘I know, Mrs Winter, but your brother means no harm, I’m sure of that.’ He smiled at her and she smiled back.

She felt very happy. It really didn’t matter what was said. She loved the Englishman and he loved her. There was no need to say it. There was no need to say anything at all, really.

They’d hoped that the mist would lift, but it was one of those days when the Kiel Bight remains shrouded in fog until nightfall. When they got back to the hotel, Harry had still not returned from his meeting. Alan Piper ordered tea. Glenn chaffed him about this curious English ritual, but they all sat together in the glass-sided lounge, exchanging small talk, until the Englishman took the restless boys outside to the promenade for another look at the warships.

Left without them in the lounge, Veronica turned to her brother and said, ‘There won’t be a war, will there, Glenn?’

He looked at her and took his time before replying. ‘Dad is convinced that there will be. The folks would like you to come back home; I guess they tell you that in their letters.’

‘Yes, they do.’ She poured more tea for herself. She didn’t want it, but she was nervous.

‘This year you didn’t get to see them in London.’ He sat back in the armchair and crossed his legs. Big bony skull, wide cheekbones, and easy smile – sometimes he looked so like Father, and so like little Paul. She’d not noticed before how much of a Rensselaer her son looked.

‘It would be so easy for them to come here.’ She didn’t want to talk about her parents. It would make her feel guilty, and she didn’t want to feel guilty.

‘Dad’s not too fond of the Germans; you know that. And since the sudden death of the King of England, the Kaiser is determined to prove himself the master of Europe. Dad says he’s dangerous, and I agree.’

‘It’s just not fair,’ said Veronica. ‘Everyone blames the Kaiser, but all he wants to do is make Germany as strong as the other powers. What’s so bad about that?’

‘It’s the way he goes about it: he struts and rants and always wears that damned army outfit with the spiked helmet. That military posturing doesn’t go down well in Paris and London and New York. They like statesmen to wear dark suits and carnations and make speeches about peace and prosperity.’

‘Harry says that European armies are only suited for colonial wars.’

‘Suited, maybe. But they are fast becoming equipped for something far more destructive. What about these airships that can float right over big towns and toss explosives down on the city hall? Look out the window and see the guns on that dreadnought: one of those ships could shell a coastal city and remain out of sight while doing it. And what about these huge conscript armies that Prussia has had for over a hundred years? You don’t need conscript armies for colonial scraps. Right? Back home I’ve been down through the South…I walked through the ruined streets of Richmond, Virginia, and it’s enough to make you weep. The same goes for cities in the Carolinas and Georgia. What is it – fifty years back? And they still haven’t rebuilt everything that the fighting destroyed. And the bitterness remains…. It’s terrible, and that’s the kind of war that these damned Europeans are going to have, unless I miss my guess.’

‘You frighten me with such talk, Glenn.’

‘I promised Dad that I would have a serious word with you. Don’t you ever miss your friends and your folks and your family? How can you be happy with all these foreigners all the time?’

‘I don’t want to say anything hurtful, Glenn, but these “foreigners” are my friends and my family now.’ Glenn would never understand how much Berlin meant to her. She loved the city: the opera, the ballet, the orchestras, the social life, and the intellectual climate. She loved the crazy, uncomplaining, shameless Berliners, with their irrepressible sense of humour. She loved the friends she’d made and her husband, and her incomparable sons. How could Glenn expect her to abandon everything that made life worth living and start all over again in a cultural wasteland like New York City?

‘Do you mind if I smoke my pipe? I can’t think properly without a taste of Virginia.’ From the pocket of his double-breasted flannel jacket he took a tobacco pouch, safety matches, and a curly meerschaum pipe.

‘I don’t mind, but maybe it’s not permitted here. There’s a smoking room at the back of the restaurant.’

‘Baloney! People smoke everywhere nowadays. People smoke on the street in New York, even women.’

‘That sounds horrible.’

He lit the pipe, which was already charged with tobacco. ‘It was the flies that got me started,’ he said between puffs at the pipe. ‘I was working on a ranch in Texas, and the smoke was the only way you could keep them out of your eyes and mouth. I saw guys go crazy.’

‘I’d love to see New York again,’ she admitted with what was almost reluctance. ‘Just for a visit.’

‘You’d never recognize New York City these days, sis. I know your husband is reckoned a big shot in that automobile of his. But I stood in Herald Square and saw it jammed so tight with automobiles that none of them could get going.’ He laughed and puffed his pipe. He’d affected a pipe when he first came to see her in Germany, the year after Peter was born; Glenn was seventeen then. He’d tried to look grown-up but he’d choked on the tobacco smoke, and she’d brought him fruit when he went to bed feeling sick. She felt a sudden pang of regret that she’d left her family so young. They’d grown up without her, and she’d grown up without them.

‘And Dad and Mama like it in New York?’ she asked.

‘They don’t spend much time downtown any more. But, sure, Dad likes it. While your Harry was betting on airships, Dad was betting on the automobile. He invested in steel, oil and rubber and is getting richer by the minute.’ He puffed on his pipe again. ‘You didn’t mind my bringing Boy with me?’

‘Of course not, but if I’d known earlier, I could have had things better prepared. Those little rooms you have…’

‘The rooms are fine, sis, and I’m sorry we just descended on you. I didn’t realize how sick your mother-in-law is. It must make a lot of work for you.’

‘It’s good to see you, Glenn. Really good.’

‘Boy is stuck on you; you know that, don’t you?’ he blurted out. She had the feeling that he’d been trying to find a way of saying it ever since they’d first begun to talk.

‘Yes, I know he is.’

‘You get to know what a man’s like when you drink with him. And I’ve knocked around a bit, sis. I’ve met a lot of people since I last saw you. He’s a regular guy.’

She said nothing for a long time. He was her brother, and she felt she should respond. ‘He wants me to go away with him.’

‘Boy does?’ He was discomposed. He thought she’d just be flattered, and laugh. He wished he’d not mentioned it.

‘I don’t know what to do, Glenn. The children would never understand. Peter would feel I’d betrayed them, and Pauli just dotes on his father.’

‘Buck up, sis. It’s nothing to cry about.’

Glenn could not advise her; she’d known that before confiding in him. Glenn was her younger brother: their relationship precluded any chance that he could talk to her about such things and keep a sense of proportion. ‘Please don’t say anything to anyone, Glenn. I’m still trying to make up my mind. Boy wants me to bring the children, too.’

Glenn Rensselaer shook his head in amazement. ‘You’re a dark horse.’

‘I love him, Glenn. I don’t know how it happened in such a short time. I thought it was something that only happened in books and plays. But I love Harry, too.’ She turned her head away as the tears welled up in her eyes.

‘Divorced women are not received in our sort of society.’ He had to warn her. Glenn was a good man. He’d only wanted to make her happy, and now he found himself involved in her moral dilemma, the sort of thing he couldn’t handle.

‘I couldn’t go without the children, Glenn….’

‘It’s a big step.’ That bastard Harry, despite his philandering, would probably deny her a divorce: he detested the Englishman, Glenn could see that. So his sister would be living in sin in a society where such sinners were punished here on earth. The idea of that happening to his sister pained him. And yet Harry was a swine….

‘I couldn’t take Harry’s sons from him and give them to another man. That would be a sin, wouldn’t it?’ She wiped her tears away.

‘We only have one life. I’m not a priest.’

‘Hush! They’re coming in,’ said Veronica, catching sight of Piper and the two children coming up the path. As the doorman swung open the doors, the sound of a ship’s band playing on the sea front came to their ears. They were playing Sousa; such bold Yankee music sounded strange in these German surroundings.

Harald Winter’s final meeting with the representatives of the Imperial German Navy’s purchasing board had not left him in the best of moods. The meeting had ended with a gesture that Winter regarded as provocative. One of the civilians produced photographs of the army’s latest airship, the Parseval III, flying over Leipzig. Manufactured by Zeppelin’s brilliant rival, August von Parseval, it was a most efficient flying machine. It was big: its envelope contained five thousand cubic metres of gas. It had two hundred-horsepower engines and carried eight passengers. And yet the whole contraption could be deflated and taken away by horse-drawn wagon. This miracle was achieved by having no rigid metal framework. But the prospect of airships without a rigid metal framework had little or no attraction for Harald Winter. He left the meeting in a rage.

He snapped at the hotel staff and at his personal servants. When he was unlocking his decanters for a drink before dressing for dinner, he even found fault with the children.

‘They are getting out of control,’ he said.

‘How can you say that, Harry? Everyone remarks on how well behaved they are.’

‘They’re allowed to roam all through the hotel. And Pauli even pesters me when I’m working.’

‘And you snap at him. I wish you’d be more patient with little Pauli. He adores you so much, and yet you always reject him. Why?’

‘Pauli must grow up. He’s like a little puppy that comes licking your hand all the time. He wants constant attention.’

‘He wants affection.’ Harald Winter had never shown much affection to her or to the boys. He’d always said that earning money should be sufficient evidence of a man’s love for his family.

‘Then let him go to Nanny. What do I pay her for?’

‘Harry, how can you be so blind? Little Pauli loves you more than anyone in the whole world. You are his life. You hurt him deeply when you send him away with angry words.’ She didn’t want to pursue the subject. She tried to decide whether she could endure her corset as tight as this for the entire evening. Some women were abandoning corsets altogether – it was the new fashion – but Veronica still kept to the old styles.

Harald Winter poured brandy for himself and added a generous amount of Apollinaris soda water. He drank some and then turned his attention to the faults of their guests.

‘They act like a couple of spies,’ he complained. ‘Do you think no one notices them out on the promenade using their field glasses and making sketches of the warships?’

‘Spies?’ said Veronica. ‘You’re speaking of our guests; and one of them is my kith and kin.’

Harald Winter realized that he’d gone too far. He retracted a little. ‘I didn’t mean your brother, I meant the Engländer.’

‘No one was making sketches, Harry, and the field glasses belonged to Glenn.’

‘Piper is obviously a spy,’ said Winter. He had never really liked the English, and this fellow Piper, with his absurdly exaggerated good manners and the attention he gave to Veronica, was a prime example of the effete English upper class.

‘You sound like a character in those silly books the children read. If the ships are secret, why are they anchored here for everyone to see? And if you are convinced that Mr Piper is a spy, why bring him here?’

‘It’s better that he be someplace where the authorities can keep an eye on him,’ said Winter.

‘You didn’t repeat these suspicions to the people at Fleet Headquarters?’

‘I felt it was my duty.’ He put his glass down with more force than was necessary.

‘Harry, how could you! Mr Piper is our guest. To report him as a spy is…’

‘Ungentlemanly?’ asked Harry sarcastically. Nervously he smoothed his already well-brushed hair. A German wife would know better than to argue about such things.

‘No gentleman would do it, Harry,’ she told him. ‘No English gentleman would do it, and neither would a member of the Prussian Officer Corps. The officers to whom you reported your suspicions of Mr Piper will not see it as something to your credit, Harry.’ It was the first time she’d confronted him with such direct imputations. Harry’s already pale face became white with anger.

‘Damnit, Veronica. The fellow is sent to South Africa without any army rank. He learns to speak Afrikaans and wanders around anywhere that trouble arises. Then the fighting ends and, when you’d think Piper’s expertise is most needed, the British give him a year’s leave and he decides to go and look at zeppelins. But before that he turns up in Kiel, studying the most modern units of the Kaiser’s battle fleet through powerful field glasses.’

‘Must you Germans always be so suspicious?’ she said bitterly. ‘It was you who suggested bringing him to Kiel. You knew the Fleet would be here for the summer exercises – you told me that yourself. Then you report him for spying. Have you taken leave of your senses, Harry? Or are you just trying to find some perverse way to show these naval people how patriotic you can be?’

Her accusation hit him and took effect. His voice was icy cold, like his eyes. ‘If that’s the way you feel about us Germans, perhaps you’d be happier among your own people.’

‘Perhaps I would, Harry. Perhaps I would.’ She rang the bell for her bath to be run. She would be pleased to get back to her mother-in-law’s house. She didn’t like hotels.

Those final summer days at Travemünde marked a change in the children’s lives. They became both closer together and further apart. They were closer because both children knew that Pauli’s desperate leap overboard had saved his brother’s life. Both carried that certain knowledge with them always, and although it was seldom, if ever, referred to even obliquely, it influenced both of their lives.

They became further apart, too, for that summer marked the time when their carefree childhood really ended and they both, in different ways, faced the prospect of becoming men. Pauli, genial and anxious to please, did not relish the prospect of going to cadet school and becoming a member of the Prussian Officer Corps, and yet he accepted it, as he accepted everything his parents proposed, as the best possible course for someone of his rather limited abilities.

Peter’s ambition to be an explorer was, like so many of Peter’s ambitions, a way of describing his desire for freedom and independence. Peter was strong and respected strength, and his narrow escape from drowning made him see that strength came not only from intellect or muscles: strength could come from being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes strength could come from loving someone enough to jump into the sea. Peter had always considered his little brother weak, but now he wasn’t so sure.

The last two days at the house near Travemünde were filled with promises and farewells: false promises but sincere farewells. Glenn and his English friend were the first to go. When would the boys come and see Glenn in New York? Soon, very soon.

Then Peter and Paul went off to find Fritz Esser. He was in his boat shed, chopping wood and bundling it for kindling. He said he was sorry that the Valhalla had never been found again. Perhaps it would turn up. Wrecks along this coast reappeared as flotsam on the beaches after the autumn storms. ‘See you next year,’ the boys told him.

‘I won’t be here next year. My papers will come for the army, but I won’t go. I’ll be on the run.’

‘Where will you hide?’ asked Pauli. They had both come to admire the surprising Fritz Esser, but little Pauli hero-worshipped him.

‘People will shelter me,’ said Esser confidently. ‘Liebknecht says the Party will help.’

In the corner of the old hut Peter spied splinters of beautifully finished white hull, just like that of the Valhalla, but he didn’t inspect them closely. Sometimes it is better not to know.

Along the beach they saw the pig man. He grinned and waved a knife at them: they waved back to him and fled.

The boys said goodbye to Omi, too. They heard their father whisper to Mama that by next year Omi might no longer be here. They kissed Omi goodbye and promised to see her next year.

Veronica went up to the little turret room and spent a few minutes alone there. She would never see the Englishman again: she knew that now. She could never go away without the children, and yet she could not bring herself to take them away from her husband.

1914

War with Russia

Despite all his previous misgivings, Paul was not unhappy at his military school. In fact he rather enjoyed it. He enjoyed the unvarying routine, and he appreciated the way everyone accepted his scholastic limitations. It was all very strange, of course. Most of the other boys had come from Kadettenvoranstalten – the military preparatory schools – and they were used to the army routines and the shouting and marching and the uniforms that had to be so clean and perfect. Cleanliness had never been one of Paul’s priorities, but luckily a boy named Alex Horner, who’d come from the military prep school at Potsdam, helped the fourteen-year-old through those difficult early days of April when they first arrived.

Nothing at Gross-Lichterfelde was quite as he’d imagined it. He’d expected to be trained as a soldier, but his daily routine was not so different from that of any other German high school except that the teachers wore uniforms and he was expected to march and drill each afternoon. He’d hoped to be taught to shoot, but so far he’d not even seen a gun.

His father had told him that the Emperor had to approve each and every entrant to this, the Prussian army’s only cadet school, and that only the sons of aristocrats, army officers and heroic lower ranks could be admitted. The truth was somewhat different: most of the cadets were, like Paul, the sons of successful businessmen or of doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats and even wealthy farmers. Only a few of the boys had aristocratic families and most of these were the second or third sons of landowners whose estates would go to their elder brothers.

Alex Horner was typical of these disappointed younger sons. His father owned four big farms in East Prussia and had served only a couple of years in the army. Alex owed his place at Lichterfelde to the efforts of an uncle who was a colonel in the War Office.

It was Alex who always pulled Paul out of bed when reveille was sounded at six o’clock and got him off to the washroom before the cadet NCO came round to check the beds. A quick wash and then buttons. It was Alex who showed him how to use a button stick so that no metal polish marked his dark-blue tunic: a sleepy boy at the other end of the room who once tried polishing his buttons last thing at night instead of before breakfast discovered how quickly brass dulled, and served a day under arrest. Thanks to Alex, Paul was usually one of the first outside ready to be marched off to the standard Lichterfelde breakfast of soup and bread and butter. But the most important reason that Pauli had for liking Alex Horner was that Alex had seen Pauli crying his heart out on the night he first arrived, and Alex had never told a living soul.

Marching back from breakfast along the edge of the parade ground that morning in July, Paul remembered April 1, the day he’d arrived. That was over three months ago; it seemed like years. His father had insisted that Mama shouldn’t come, and Paul appreciated his father’s wisdom. He was quite conspicuous enough in the big yellow Italian motorcar with Hauser at the wheel. The Winters had lost two chauffeurs, who went to drive Berlin motor buses, so Hauser, the valet, had now learned to drive the car, and he’d promised to teach the boys, too, as soon as they were tall enough to reach the foot pedals.

Paul could look back now and smile, but that very first day at the Königlich Preussische Corps des Cadets at Lichterfelde – or what he’d now learned to call Zentralanstalt – had come as a shock. Although the band was playing, it didn’t offset the fuss the parents were making with their tearful mothers and odd-looking fathers. The poor boys knew they would be teased mercilessly about every aspect of their parents, and everything they did and said within the hearing of their fellow recruits.

Now it was summer, almost eight o’clock, and the sun was very low and blood red in an orange sky. Soon it would be hot, but the morning was cool, and a march to breakfast and back again was almost a pleasure. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Paul had learned to take pride in the precision of their marching. For the boys with years of cadet training already behind them it was all easy, but Paul had had to learn, and he’d learned well enough to be commended and allowed to shout orders to the cadets on one momentous occasion. Halt! There was much stamping of boots while the cadet NCO saluted the lieutenants, and the lieutenants saluted the Studiendirektor. Then, file by file, all two hundred cadets marched into the chapel for morning service.

‘Something has happened,’ whispered Alex. The chapel was gloomy; the only light came through the small stained-glass windows.

‘War?’ said Paul. The darkness and the low, vibrant chords of the organ provided a chance for furtive conversations. There was a clatter of hobnailed boots when one of the seniors stumbled as the back row was filled. Then the doors were closed with a resonant thump.

The boy next to him was a senior – one of the Obertertia, the boys permitted to go to rifle shooting in the afternoons. ‘The Serbs have replied to the Austrian ultimatum.’

‘Everyone knows that,’ whispered a boy behind them, ‘but will the wretched Austrians fight?’

‘Quiet!’ called a cadet NCO. ‘Horner and Winter, report to me after Latin class.’

Paul stiffened and looked down at his hymnbook. It was always like that: the junior year got punished and the senior boys escaped. Was it because their sins were overlooked, or had they become more skilled at talking without moving their lips? Alex kicked Paul in the ankle; Paul glanced at him and grinned. He hoped it would mean nothing worse than being put on half lunch ration – the other boys always helped out and the last time he’d eaten even better on punishment than he normally did – but if he got a three-hour arrest this afternoon he’d be late home, and then he’d have Father to answer to. Paul hated to be in disfavour with his father. His brother, Peter, had always been able to shrug off those fierce paternal admonitions but Paul wanted his father to admire him. He wanted that more than anything in the whole world. And it was Friday: this weekend he’d arranged for Alex Horner to come home with him, and a detention now would mess everything up.

‘Hymn number 103,’ said the chaplain mournfully, but no more mournfully than usual.

Paul and Alex escaped with no more than a fierce reprimand. Luckily their persecutor wasn’t one of their own NCOs but a senior boy who didn’t want to miss his riding lesson. Normally at 4:30 p.m. – after doing two hours of prep – there was drill on the barracks square, but at noon this day the boys were told that they were free until dinner, and that those with weekend passes could go home. It was another sign that something strange was in the air.

And as Alex and Paul went to their train at the Lichterfelde railway station they noticed that civilians deferred to them in a way that was unusual. ‘After you young officers,’ said a well-dressed businessman at the door of the first-class compartment. There was an element of mockery in this politeness, and yet it was not entirely mockery. The ticket inspector touched his hat in salute to them. He’d never done that before.

The boys did not read. They sat erect, conscious of their uniforms, styled like those of the post-1843 Prussian army, rather than the new field-grey ones. Military cap, white gloves, blue tunic, poppy-red cuffs and collar with the double gold braid that marked Lichterfelde cadets, and on the black leather belt a real bayonet.

In the other corner of the compartment, the man who’d ushered them inside sat reading a copy of the daily paper. The big black headline in Gothic type said ‘Russia mobilizes.’

From the Potsdamer railway station they walked through the centre of Berlin: past the big expensive shops of Leipziger Strasse, and then along Friedrichstrasse. Everywhere they saw groups of people standing around as if waiting for something to happen. There were more women on the streets nowadays – shopping, strolling, exercising dogs; the shorter skirts enabled women to be out and about in a way they never had before. The narrow Friedrichstrasse was always busy, of course; here were offices, shops, cafés and clubs, so that it never stopped, night or day. But today it seemed different, and even the wide Unter den Linden was filled with aimless people. At the intersection of the two streets – one of the most popular spots in all Berlin – was the boys’ destination: the Victoria Café and the best ice cream in town.

They got a table outside on the pavement and watched the traffic and the restless crowds. A No. 4 motor bus went past; on its open top deck were half a dozen soldiers. They were flushed of face and singing boisterously. The bus was heading towards the Friedrichstrasse railway station, where there were always military policemen. Alex predicted that they would be in cells within half an hour, and there was little chance that he would be wrong.

Everything was bright green, the lime trees were in full leaf, and the birds were not frightened of the noise, not even of the big new motor buses. Only when the band marched past did the birds fly away. Alex said the band was that of the 3. Garde-Regiment zu Fuss marching back to its barracks at Skalitzer Strasse. They wore white parade trousers and blue tunics and gleaming helmets, and the music sounded fine. Behind them was a company of infantry in field grey. They looked tired and dusty, as if they’d been on a long route march, but when they got to the corner of Friedrichstrasse there were some cheers from civilians standing there, and the soldiers seemed to stiffen up and smile.

The waiter brought the boys the big platter of ice cream they’d so looked forward to on this hot day and they started eating greedily. At the next table two men were arguing about whether Russia had really mobilized or whether it was just another rumour or another way of selling newspapers. New editions of the daily papers were appearing on the streets every hour, and the vendors came calling the new headlines with a desperate urgency.

‘Will they send us to the front?’ Paul asked his friend between mouthfuls of ice cream. Alex’s time at the military prep school and the skills he’d already shown made him an authority on all things military, and Paul always deferred to him.

‘Not right away,’ said Alex, finishing the last of his chocolate ice cream and starting on the raspberry one. ‘But they’ll need officers once the war starts. Perhaps they’ll graduate us quickly.’

‘No one could be commissioned before they were seventeen at least, could they, Alex?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Alex. ‘But if we fight the Russians they’ll need everyone they can get. The Russians have a very big army. My father will have to go: he has a reserve commission in the cavalry. He wants me to go into the cavalry, but I’m going to fly in the army airships.’

‘My father has a factory that builds airship parts,’ said Paul. He wiped a dribble of ice cream from his chin. ‘My brother likes airships, but I wouldn’t much like to fly. I prefer horses.’ In fact, Pauli found the prospect of flying in an airship quite terrifying, but that wasn’t something he’d confide to anyone: not even Alex.

After finishing their ice cream they walked up Unter den Linden, just to see what was happening. From the Victoria Café they went past the cathedral, over the ‘museum island’, and then returned to the enormous block of the Royal Palace. The sentries had been doubled outside the palace, and a crowd was staring up at the empty stone balcony, hoping the Kaiser would appear, but the Kaiser was at sea with his Fleet. Some of the crowd began to sing ‘Deutschland über alles’, until a dozen policemen appeared and after a lot of shouted orders and pushing, moved them along.

When the boys eventually got back to the Winter house it was four o’clock. Hauser opened the door. Hauser was growing a beard; progress was slow and each weekend Paul noted its development. ‘The master is in the study with Herr Fischer,’ said Hauser, ‘and your mama has a headache and is sleeping. Your father said you are to see Nanny right away.’

Paul took his friend up to the top floor. It was a big house, as Alex, on his first visit here, noticed. It had the smell of newness. There had been many such fine new homes built in Ku-damm over the last twenty years or so. There was wood panelling, rich carpets and wonderful furniture. And although Alex’s own home in far off Königsberg had fine furniture and just as many servants, if not more, the Winter house was in such faultless condition that he was frightened of leaving a footprint on the perfectly brushed carpet or a fingermark on the polished handrails. But Alex was enough of a snob to know that these big houses near the Ku-damm were the mansions of the nouveaux riches. The established tycoons had villas in Grunewald, and the aristocracy their palaces on the Tiergarten.

Paul found his nanny in her room, packing her case. ‘I’m off, back to Scotland, young Paul,’ she said. She looked at him as if expecting a reaction but, not knowing what he was supposed to say, Pauli stared back at her without expression. ‘Be good to your mother, Pauli,’ she said. Her eyes were red. She leaned over and gave him a peck on his forehead. Then she reached for the cup of tea she always liked to drink at four o’clock in the afternoon. She put condensed milk in it. Afterwards, for all his life, Paul never smelled condensed milk without remembering her. ‘It will seem strange after nearly sixteen years with you all.’ She gulped some tea and said, ‘Your father thinks it’s best, and he knows.’ Her voice was rough. She was on the verge of tears, but Paul didn’t realize that. He watched her folding her aprons and packing them carefully into the big scarred suitcase. He’d never seen inside the case before: outside it was stained and scuffed and covered with torn hotel labels, but inside its leather was like new. Dutifully the boys stayed with her watching her pack, until Paul glanced at Alex and made a face. Then, unable, to think of anything more appropriate, he said, ‘Goodbye, Nanny,’ and with no more than a perfunctory kiss on her cheek he took Alex off to his ‘playroom’, which had been called the nursery when Nanny first arrived so long ago, before Paul was born.

While the two boys were setting out the train set, downstairs in his study Winter was drinking brandy with his guest, Erwin ‘Fuchs’ Fischer. The lunch had been a protracted one, as lunches tended to be when Winter wanted to discuss business, for Winter was not a man who rushed his hurdles.

‘The loss of both naval airships last year – how did the Count take that?’ asked Fischer. Asking how von Zeppelin had reacted to the crashes was just a roundabout way of asking how Winter had reacted.

Winter smiled. He was a dapper man and his hair, now parted on the left side of his head and allowed to grow longer, had greyed at his temples. But he was handsome – undeniably so – even if he was somewhat demonlike with his pointed chin and dark, quick eyes. And always he was optimistic. It seemed as if nothing could get him down. ‘Zeppelins have flown thousands and thousands of kilometres since 1900. Those sailors in L1 were the very first deaths in any Zeppelin airship. And that was due to a squall; there was no structural failure.’

‘You always were a good salesman, Harry.’ Fischer grinned. He had now inherited the big complex of metal companies that his father had built up in over thirty years of trading. Harry Winter was trying to persuade him that a big cash investment in his aluminium business would be to their mutual benefit, but Fischer wasn’t so sure. He didn’t know much about the light-alloys business and he was frightened of bringing ruin to his father’s work. The added responsibilities had aged him suddenly. The great helmet of hair had now thinned so that his pink scalp was visible, and his eyes were dark and deep-set.

Winter said, ‘A light cruiser – the Köln – radioed a storm warning, but…Well, we don’t know what happened after that.’

‘Except that L1 crashed into the sea and fourteen sailors died.’ Fischer scratched his nose. He didn’t want to do business with Harald Winter. He enjoyed his friendship, but he didn’t trust his judgement. Winter was too impulsive.

‘Airships are safe, Foxy. But freak weather conditions are something no one can provide against.’

Fischer sipped his brandy. The food and drink were always first class at Winter’s place, he had to admit that. And he lived in grand style. Fischer looked round at the magnificent inlaid desk, the leather-bound editions of Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare that he actually read, and the exquisite Oriental carpets that he wasn’t afraid to walk upon. Winter was not known for giving big parties or having a box at the opera, but in his own quiet way he lived very, very well. ‘Then, just five weeks later, the navy lost the L2. It burned and fell from the sky. How does the Count explain that one, Harry?’

‘They took her up to “pressure height” too fast, and hydrogen was valved from the gas cells.’

‘I read all that, Harry. But damnit, why did the hydrogen ignite?’

‘The navy fitted big windscreens to the gondolas to provide a bit of protection from the air stream. The leaking gas went along the underside of the envelope – combining with enough air to make a very explosive mixture. From the keel those damned windscreens took it down to the gondola and the red-hot parts of the engines.’

Fischer stroked his lips nervously. ‘The navy say that von Zeppelin approved their modifications,’ persisted Fischer. If Harald Winter wanted him to invest in his aluminium company, Fischer might let him have some small token payment for the sake of their friendship, but it would be no more than the company could afford to write off. And even for that Fischer was determined to drive a hard bargain.

‘No,’ said Winter. ‘He simply sent his congratulations on the way the finished airship looked.’

‘Having a stand-up row with Grossadmiral von Tirpitz at the funeral didn’t improve matters for him.’

‘Count Zeppelin’s an old man,’ said Winter.

‘We’re all getting older, Harry, even you. What were you last birthday, forty-four?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry.

‘And I’m sixty-two. We’ve known each other a long time, Harry. I should be getting ready for retirement, not learning how to run this damned company of mine.’

Pleased with the opening thus provided, Winter said, ‘It makes sense: an investment with me would make good sense, Foxy.’

‘Aluminium? My instinct is to diversify out of metals.’

‘Exactly what I’m offering. The five million Reichsmarks you invest will be for an aero-engine company and an air-frame assembly plant.’

‘You said it was for aluminium.’

‘No, no, no. That’s just the collateral I’m offering to you. The extra money is for airplane manufacture.’

‘Haven’t you got enough troubles in aviation, Harry? Two naval rigids crashed. Who’s going to buy your aluminium now?’

‘The navy are committed to the airship programme. They have built airship bases along the northern coast and are building more. The money is allotted and the personnel are being trained. They can’t stop now. They’ll buy more and more. And so will the army.’

‘I suppose you are right. And now it’s to be airplanes too?’

‘Airplanes will be needed to protect the airships and to attack enemy airships too.’

‘So the war is certain, is it Harry? Not just newspaper talk?’ To some extent this was provocation, but it was also a question. Harry Winter mixed with the military people; he’d know what the current thinking was. ‘Is war a part of the company’s prospectus?’

‘You sell the navy a battle cruiser and they use it for twenty-five years. Sell the army artillery pieces and they last ten or fifteen years.’ He sipped his drink. ‘But aircraft are fragile.’

‘And are expendable in war in a way that battleships are not expendable?’

‘War or no war, airships and airplanes get damaged easily. Men have to be trained to fly, so there are many crashes. Everyone knows that, including the men who fly them. A constant supply of new machines is going to be required by the military.’

‘You’re a cold-blooded devil, Harry.’

‘I don’t make the decisions, Foxy, I simply react to events.’

‘I can’t give you an exact answer, Harry. My son Richard will have to agree. But we’ll participate.’

Harald Winter relaxed. He’d got what he wanted. He knew Foxy would try to whittle the five million down to one million or less. But what Foxy didn’t realize was that Harry only wanted his name. He had several investors who’d readily put their money in when they heard that Fischer was convinced. ‘Is Richard a director now?’

‘I’m not going to keep my son out of the business the way my father excluded me right up to the day he died. He’s thirty-three years old. Richard is a junior partner and gets a chance to decide on everything important. What about your two boys?’

‘Little Paul seems happy enough at Lichterfelde. He’s a genial chap, always laughing. The army will be good for him; he has no head for business.’

‘And Peter?’

‘He’ll go to university next year and then he’ll get a position with me. I’m arranging for him to be excused his military service and simply be replacement reserve. There are plenty of men for the army: the population has grown by leaps and bounds. And my factories are now vital to the army and navy. If he works hard I’ll make Peter a junior partner.’

‘Lucky boy. Is that what he wants to do?’

‘You know what young people are like, Foxy. He has this mad idea of becoming a musician. He doesn’t understand what a musician’s life is like.’

‘Is he talented?’

‘They tell me so, but talent is no guarantee that a man will earn a living. On the contrary, the more talent a man has the less likely he is to do well.’

‘Surely not?’

‘The scientists in my factory, the engineers who design the engines and the structures: what talents they have, and yet they will never get more than a simple living wage. Most of them could make far more money in the sales department, but they are too interested in their work to change. Talent is an impediment to them. Look at all the penniless artists desperate to sell their work, and the musicians who beg in the street.’

‘And so you’ve forbidden Peter to study music?’ asked Fischer provocatively.

Winter knew that Fischer was baiting him in his usual amiable way but he responded vibrantly. ‘If he wants to study music, that’s entirely up to him. But he can’t expect to enjoy himself playing music while others work to supply him with money.’

‘You’d cut him off without a penny?’ said Fischer with a smile. ‘That’s hard on the boy, Harry.’

‘If he wants to inherit the business, he must work. I have no patience with people like Frau Wisliceny, who gives the boy these crazy notions.’

‘Frau Wisliceny – Professor Wisliceny’s wife? But her “salon” is the most famous in Berlin. The world’s finest musicians take tea there.’

‘Yes, Frau Professor Doktor Wisliceny, I should have said…. And so do all sorts of other riffraff: psychologists, painters, novelists, poets and even socialists.’

Fischer decided not to reveal the fact that he had tea there regularly, too, and spent happy hours talking to the ‘riffraff’. ‘But if Frau Wisliceny thinks your son Peter has talent …What does he play?’

‘Piano. I won’t have one in the house, so he goes there to practise. My wife encourages him, I’m afraid. At first they thought that they’d force me to buy one for him but I wouldn’t yield. Professor Wisliceny must be a strange fellow to put up with it. How did he make his money?’

Fischer smiled. ‘Ah, that rather goes against your theory. The professor is a very clever chemist…synthetic dyestuffs.’

‘He made money from that?’

‘These aniline dyes save all the time, trouble and expense of getting dyes from plants, minerals, or animals. He makes a lot of money selling his expertise. You should bear him in mind, Harry, when you are making Peter toe the line.’

Winter was not amused. ‘I’m not talking about scientists. I don’t want a musician in the family.’

‘Too bohemian?’

‘I’m not fond of the Wislicenys. People like that should not encourage the troublemakers.’

‘They are good people, Harry.’ He wanted to calm Winter’s anger. ‘And the three Wisliceny girls are the prettiest in all Berlin. The youngest one, Lisl, would be a match for your youngest boy.’ Fischer couldn’t resist teasing Harry Winter. ‘She’s a gifted little girl: plays the piano at the conservatoire.’

‘A little more brandy?’ said Harry Winter.

The question was never answered, for at that moment they heard one of the maids screaming. She screamed twice and then came racing – falling almost – down the front stairs, the ones the servants were not permitted to use. ‘She’s dead. The mistress is dead!’

Harry Winter rushed to the door and stepped out of his study fast enough to catch the hysterical girl in his arms. ‘Stop it!’ he shouted so fiercely that for a moment she was silent. ‘Sit down and stop that stupid noise.’

‘She’s dead,’ said the girl, more quietly this time but with great insistence. She was shaking uncontrollably.

Winter ran up the stairs two at a time. He was no longer as fit as he’d once been and the exertion left him breathless as he raced into his wife’s room.

Veronica, fully dressed in a long green tea gown but with her golden hair disarranged, was sprawled across the bed. Winter rolled her over and then gently lifted an eyelid to see her eye.

‘My God!’ said Fischer, who’d followed him into the room. ‘It smells like a hospital in here. What’s wrong?’

‘She’s all right.’ Winter looked at his friend and hesitated before saying more. ‘It’s chloroform. My wife takes it in order to sleep.’

‘Shall I send for a doctor?’

‘No, I know what to do.’ Winter went to the door and said to the chambermaid, ‘Send Frau Winter’s personal maid to help her to bed. And tell Hauser that Frau Winter is unwell. He’s to keep the children and the servants from disturbing her.’

Fischer looked round the room. This was Veronica’s sanctum: floral wallpaper and bows and canopied bed. Harry’s bedroom – more severely ordered, with mahogany and brass – was next door.

‘It’s happened before?’ said Fischer as Winter closed the door on the maid and turned back to him.

‘Yes,’ said Winter. He went to the bed and looked at his wife. Why had she done this to him? Winter was too self-centred to see Veronica’s actions as anything but inconveniences.

Fischer looked at him with sympathy. So this was why Veronica was not much seen lately in Berlin society. Chloroform wasn’t taken to combat insomnia; it was a drug taken for excitement by foolish young people or by people who could no longer face the bleak reality of their world. Veronica was American, of course; all this talk of war must have put a strain on her. ‘How long has this been going on, Harry?’

There was no point in telling lies. ‘We went to Travemünde in the summer of 1910. Her brother, Glenn, was with us. It started about that time.’ He picked up the empty bottle and the gauze pad, sniffed at it, and grimaced. ‘I’m damned if I know where she gets the stuff.’

‘It’s easy enough to get, if you want it badly enough,’ said Fischer who knew about such things. ‘Any pharmacist stocks it and hospitals use it by the bucketful.’ He looked at Harry, who was now sitting on the bed embracing his unconscious wife. ‘Is everything all right between you?’ Fischer was one of the few men who could be so candid with him.

‘I love her. I love her very much.’ Winter fingered the things on his wife’s bedside table: a Bible, a German-English dictionary and some opened letters. Winter put the letters into his pocket. He wanted to see who was writing to his wife. Like most womanizers, he was eternally suspicious.

‘With respect, Harry, that’s not what I asked.’

‘There are no other men. Of that I’m sure.’

‘So what now?’ Fischer was embarrassed to find himself suddenly at the centre of this domestic tragedy. But Harald Winter and his wife were old friends.

‘I’ll have to send for the Wisliceny woman. She’s become Veronica’s closest friend. She looked after her when this happened before.’ He looked up at Fischer. ‘It’s not life and death, Foxy. She’ll come out of it.’

‘Perhaps she will, but it’s damned serious. You must talk to your wife, Harry. You must find out what’s troubling her. Maybe she should see one of these psychologist fellows.’

‘Certainly not!’ said Winter. ‘I won’t have some damned witch doctor asking her questions that don’t concern him. She must pull herself together.’ Winter hated to think of some such fellow – Austrian Jews, most of them were – prising from his wife things that were family matters. Or business secrets.

‘It’s not so easy, Harry. Veronica is sick.’

Winter still felt affronted by his wife’s behaviour. How could she make this scene while Fischer was their guest? ‘She has servants, money, children, a husband. What more can she want?’

Love, thought Fischer, but he didn’t say it. Was Harry still making those frequent trips to Vienna to see his Hungarian mistress? And how much did this distress Veronica? From what he knew of American women, they did not readily adapt to such situations. But Fischer did not say any of this either; he just nodded sympathetically.

Winter looked at his pocket watch. ‘It’s so late! What times she chooses for these antics. Little Paul has brought a friend home from his military school, and my elder son, Peter, will be arriving soon.’

But, however much Winter tried to put on a bold face, it was obvious to Fischer that Veronica’s overdosing had shaken him. Winter had even forgotten about his investment programme and Fischer’s contribution to it. You’re a damned hard man, thought Fischer, but he didn’t say it.

At that time, Peter was at Frau Wisliceny’s house off Kant Strasse. He’d spent two happy hours practising the piano under the critical but encouraging supervision of Frau Wisliceny. But now he was drinking coffee in the drawing room accompanied by the eldest of the three Wisliceny daughters. Her name was Inge. She was tall, with a full mouth that smiled easily, and dark hair that fell in ringlets around her pale oval face.

‘You will have to tell them, Peter,’ she said. ‘Your parents will be even more angry if you delay telling them.’

‘My father has made up his mind that I go to university this year.’

‘To study what?’

‘Law and mathematics.’

‘Surely he’ll be proud that you’ve joined the navy?’

‘It will spoil his plans: that’s what he will be concerned with. I think he’s already decided the exact date on which I will become a junior partner. He has my life all planned. You don’t understand how trapped I feel. Your mother is so understanding.’

‘But joining the navy is such a drastic way to escape him.’

‘There will be a war,’ said Peter.

‘There may not be a war. My father says the General Staff encourage these stories when they want more money.’

‘It’s too late now,’ said Peter. He grinned. He captivated her with his wavy hair and his smiles; he was so handsome and in a naval officer’s uniform he would look wonderful. She was very young – only three and a half months younger than Peter – but already she had set her heart upon capturing him. He didn’t know that, of course: she let him think that it was no more than a pleasant and casual friendship. And yet, when he was not with her, she ached for him, and when he was expected, she spent hours in front of the mirror getting ready for him. Her youngest sister, Lisl, was the only one who suspected her secret. Sometimes she teased her about this serious-minded pianist and made Inge blush.

‘Are you accepted?’

‘Yes. I am accepted for officer training and then for the Imperial Naval Airship Division.’

‘That’s dangerous,’ said Inge, not without a note of pride. She was a catlike creature. She shook her head enough to make her lovely hair shine, and when she looked at him, those wonderful deep-green eyes were for him alone.

‘It’s what I want to do. I wouldn’t like it on ships. I nearly drowned once and I’ve never really liked the water since.’

Inge smiled. She never got used to the way in which he confided such secrets to her. What other eighteen-year-old boy would have admitted to being frightened of the sea? ‘I wouldn’t tell the navy that, Peter,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they would relish appointing a naval lieutenant who didn’t like the water.’

Peter laughed.

Frau Professor Wisliceny, a large, imposing woman, sailed majestically into the room. ‘Your mama is not well,’ she announced without preamble. She went to the mirror and glanced at her reflection before turning back to Peter. ‘You’d better come with me, Peter.’

1916

‘What kind of dopes are they to keep coming that way?’

The elderly American and his son were sitting in the library of the Travellers Club in London, drinking whiskey. They had the whole room to themselves. The club was quiet, as it always was at this time of the evening. Those members who had dined in were taking coffee downstairs, and the few theatregoers who dropped in for a nightcap had not arrived. Nowadays the risk of zeppelin raids persuaded most people to go home early. London – despite the presence of hordes of noisy, free-spending young officers – was not the town it had been before the war.

‘It sounds damned dangerous,’ said Cyrus G. Rensselaer. He was sixty-five years old but he looked younger. His hair was a little thinner and grey at the side, but the pale-blue eyes were clear and his waistline was trim. He felt as fit as ever. It was only looking at his thirty-six-year-old son that made him feel his age.

Glenn Rensselaer looked tired. ‘Sometimes it is dangerous,’ he agreed. ‘Most of them are only kids straight from school.’ For a year he’d been working as a civilian flying instructor for the Royal Flying Corps and lately he had been training pilots for night flying. It was a new skill and the casualty rate was alarming. ‘But the zeps come at night, so that’s when the British have to fly.’

‘Haven’t they got anti-aircraft guns?’

‘Not enough of them, and the Huns seem to know where the guns are. But the zeps are slow and planes can chase them. They are damned big and sometimes you can spot them better from up there.’ He looked at his father and saw that behind the sprightliness the old man was tired. ‘When did you get back from Switzerland, Dad?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. The train from Paris was packed with British officers, wounded mostly. Poor devils. Not many of them will fight again. I went to bed right away and slept the clock around.’

‘You’re in a hotel?’

‘The Savoy. It wasn’t worth opening the house for just a few nights. To tell you the truth, I’m thinking of selling it. If the war hadn’t brought property prices so low, I would have let it go last year, when you said you didn’t want to use it.’

‘The war must end soon, Dad. You’ll need a place in London.’ He wasn’t sure whether his father would still be young enough for the rigours of transatlantic crossing by the time these remorseless Europeans had fought themselves to a standstill, but he felt it was his duty always to encourage his hopes and plans. Cy Rensselaer’s wife, Mary, had died unexpectedly the previous year, and he didn’t want his father to go into what people called a decline.

But Glenn needn’t have worried about that. ‘Well, as a matter of fact I was going to have a word with you about family matters, son.’

‘Sure, Dad. What is it?’

‘Would you think I’m crazy if I told you I’m going to get hitched again?’

‘Hitched?’ For a moment he didn’t understand. ‘Hitched’ was not the sort of word that his father used. That he used it now was a measure of Cy Rensselaer’s embarrassment. ‘Married, you mean?’

‘Yes. Remarried. Is it too soon? I know you loved Mom.’

‘Whatever is best for you, Dad. You know that.’

‘Do you remember Dot Turner? Bob Turner’s widow.’

‘Turner Loans, Savings and Realty?’

‘She’s got three boys. A nice woman. I met her at a dinner party last Christmas and we get along just fine. Do I sound like an old fool, Glenn?’

‘No, Dad, of course not.’

‘I get lonely sometimes. I miss your mother. She did everything for me …It’s just the companionship.’

‘I know, Dad. I know.’

‘She wouldn’t take the place of your mother. No one could do that….’

‘It’s a great idea, Dad,’ said Glenn, still trying to get used to the prospect of having a new mother.

‘She’s too old to have a family or anything. It’s just companionship. She’s got all the money she needs, and her boys wouldn’t take the Rensselaer name. It wouldn’t make a jot of difference to you or Veronica.’

‘Sure, Dad, sure.’ He looked at his father and smiled. The old man leaned out and touched his son’s arm. He was happier now he’d got it off his chest.

‘And if you want the house here in London, I’ll turn it over to you.’

‘I live on the airfield. It’s comfortable enough out there. The Royal Flying Corps have even given me a servant – “batmen”, they call them. And I enjoy being with the youngsters. They are full of life and they talk nothing but flying. But tell me about Switzerland.’

‘I wanted to take the train and go right through to Berlin, and see dear Veronica,’ said the old man, ‘but the ambassador was so strongly against it.’

‘You must be careful, Dad. A lot of people would misunderstand a trip to meet a German partner.’

‘What do you mean, Glenn?’

‘Harald Winter is your partner, and he’s making aeroplanes and airships for the Germans. The British are in the middle of a desperate war. Your trip to meet Winter could be construed as a betrayal by your British friends.’

‘I wish to God I’d never loaned the money to him.’

‘But it’s been a good investment for you?’

His father’s voice was hoarse and hesitant. ‘He’s doing okay. He got into aviation at the very beginning, and he’s been very shrewd. He builds only under licence from other manufacturers so he doesn’t have all the worries about designing new ships and selling new ideas to the military.’

‘And Winter had no difficulties about meeting you in Switzerland? The British say that Germany is virtually under martial law.’

‘The Zeppelin company is in Friedrichshafen on the Bodensee. From there he had only a short trip on the ferryboat to Romanshorn. And Winter has become an important factor to the wartime economy; he’s a big shot now.’

‘I can imagine how he struts around.’

‘You never liked him, did you?’ said the old man. ‘I was always against him, too, but this time…’ He shrugged. ‘He looks really. worn out. I might have passed him on the street without recognizing him. And he’s really concerned about Veronica. I never realized how much she meant to him.’

‘Is he still running around with other women?’

‘How can I know that?’ said his father.

‘I wish she’d come home.’

‘We all wish she’d come home, Glenn. But it’s her life. We can’t live her life for her. And now that she’s ill, I have to say that Harald has done everything for her. She’s seen specialists in Berlin and Vienna, and she has a nurse night and day.’

‘I’ve never understood exactly what’s wrong with her.’

‘No one seems to know. The war came as a shock to her and now that Peter is serving with the Airship Division, she’s obviously worried about him. But it’s more complicated than that. Harald says she seems to have lost the will to live. It happens to some women, of course. Their children grow up and they find themselves beyond the age of childbearing. Somehow they feel useless.’

‘Especially if their husband spends all his spare time with his mistresses.’

‘We can’t be sure about that, Glenn.’

‘Men like him don’t change.’

‘We all change, Glenn. Some more than others, but we all change. Women have to feel needed, but maybe men have to feel needed, too. Maybe that’s why we all have this compulsion to go on working even when we have enough money to live in style.’

‘Poor Veronica.’

‘It’s pointless for her to worry about Peter. But that boy has a mind of his own. I remember how he went for me because I let slip a few home truths about Kaiser Bill. Even though he was just a child, he let fly at me. I was mad at him at the time, but when I thought about it I had to admire the little demon. It takes guts to challenge your grandfather in such circumstances. He’s a plucky kid. No surprise to me that he upped and joined the navy airships.’

‘The boy has a better chance than he’d have with an infantry regiment on the Western Front. Did you see the casualties the British have suffered on the Somme in July? Column after column after column of names in the newspapers. Neither side can keep on like this. Two years ago, right here on the streets of London, I saw crowds cheering the prospect of fighting the Germans, but there are not many cheers left anywhere now. Even the fliers I teach make grim jokes about how long they expect to last.’

‘Winter gave me photos of his two boys. I should have brought them. Peter is big. In his naval officer’s uniform he is a handsome young man. He’s tall and dark, with eyes just like Veronica. Peter is the solemn one – dedicated and scholarly. He’s a German through and through, but he’s like the best sort of Germans I knew before the war: solid, honest and reliable. Harry is so proud of them.’

‘I saw Peter in Berlin the summer the war started. Veronica took me to see a friend of hers, Frau Wisliceny. Did you ever meet the Wislicenys?’

‘I met the professor here in London one time.’

‘Frau Wisliceny got Peter to study music. He played the piano for us. It sounded kind of good to me, but I don’t understand any of that classical music. It seemed to me that Peter was more interested in the three daughters. The youngest one – Lisl, I think her name was – was obviously crazy about him. Yeah, he’s a nice kid.’

‘Mathematics and music. Harry said that Peter was interested in nothing else.’

‘Fathers don’t always know what sons are interested in,’ said Glenn.

‘I wish like hell you’d get interested in some lovely daughters,’ said his father.

‘I’m interested in all kinds of daughters, Dad. But I don’t want to marry any of them right now.’

‘Those two boys of Harry Winter’s are the only grandchildren I’ve got, Glenn. You tell me that maybe I shouldn’t cosy up to him on account of the war, and maybe you’re right. But I’m getting old, Glenn, and there’s no sign of you providing me with heirs. Those two boys are all I’ve got.’

‘I didn’t realize how much that kind of thing meant to you, Dad.’

‘At one time it didn’t mean a thing. But you get to being sixty-five and you look at the work you’ve done and you look at the money you’ve stacked away and you start wondering what it’s all for.’

‘I just don’t know enough about business….’

‘It wasn’t intended as any kind of reproach, my boy. You’ve lived your own kind of life and I respect it. You seldom ask me for anything…. To tell you the truth, I wish you asked for more, and asked more often. A man wants to feel his son needs him now and again….’

‘I always…’

‘Let me finish. I’m just trying to explain to you why I didn’t go over there and sell out my holding in Winter’s factories and tell him to go to hell.’

‘I didn’t criticize you.’

‘I know you didn’t, but over the recent months you’ve made it clear that you would have handled Harry differently. I wanted you to understand why I go along with the bastard.’

‘I understand, Dad.’ Glenn wondered whether marrying Dot Turner was his father’s excuse for taking over the Turner kids. This sudden interest in young people was something to do with growing old.

For a few moments Cyrus was silent. When he spoke again it was in a quieter voice. ‘The younger boy, Pauli, is an unmistakable Rensselaer with that big Rensselaer jawline and wide flat head. He’s never done well at school – he just scrapes by each term, Harald tells me – but he’s such a character. A regular Yankee Doodle; I’ve always said he was a real little Yankee. And what a charmer. Always laughing, takes nothing seriously, not the Kaiser, not military school, not the war, not Harry. He adores Veronica, of course, and she dotes on little Pauli. He’s coming up to his final year at military school. Soon he’ll be at the front. Harry worries about both boys. He hated it when Peter went into the Airship Division, but Pauli has always been the baby of the family. You should hear Harry’s stories about little Pauli. He adores him. The thought of him leading a platoon of infantry in a bayonet charge is not easy to face. And, like you say, everyone knows what kind of casualties there are among young infantry lieutenants. The thought of it – plus his worries about Veronica – is wearing Harry down.’

At that moment a servant entered the library. After unhurriedly adjusting the edges of the curtains, he said to the older man, ‘The secretary’s compliments, Mr Rensselaer, and I am to inform you that there is an air-raid warning.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rensselaer calmly. He drank a little whiskey before asking his son, ‘What exactly does that mean, Glenn? Aren’t you supposed to be the expert on zeppelin raids?’

‘The German zeppelins take off from their bases after lunch. One, two, anything up to a dozen airships fly out over the North Sea and then they hover there, just over the horizon, where the British can’t see them, and well out of range of any aeroplane. They sit out there for hour after hour waiting for the light to fade. When it gets dark, they sail in and bomb their chosen targets.’

‘Sounds kind of spooky.’

‘Maybe. Hurry and wait: that’s the way the military always do things. But the Royal Navy has learned to take advantage of that ritual. They have listening posts along the eastern coast, and they pick up the radio messages that the zeppelins send to each other while they are waiting out there. Sometimes they are even able to discover what the target is going to be.’

‘And tonight London is the target.’

‘Nowadays London is always a target, and usually the main one.’

‘And what are we supposed to do now?’

‘There are probably shelters down in the cellar. Some clubs even have sleeping arrangements. But I usually go up to the roof and watch the fireworks.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’

‘The nights are beginning to get chilly now, Dad. I think we’ll need our overcoats, and maybe a bottle of Scotch.’

Sitting on the chimney parapet that night in 1916, with his son beside him and a bottle of whiskey to hand, was something Cyrus Rensselaer remembered vividly for the rest of his days. The strange life the old man had led, the travelling and the hard work, had prevented him from seeing his son grow up in the way that other, luckier men did, watching their sons and helping them as they faltered into adulthood. But to some extent this night compensated for that lost relationship. Tonight the two men drew together, not as proud father and dutiful son, but as two friends with common interests and values who enjoyed each other’s company.

Glenn, too, remembered this night for as long as he lived not just for the events they witnessed but because it was the high point of his relationship with his father.

‘My boys will be excited,’ said Glenn.

‘Will they be in the air?’

‘Not yet. They’ll probably be sitting on their butts waiting for a sighting.’

‘Then?’

‘Then they have to take off in the dark and climb like hell. The zeps can get damned high nowadays. An aeroplane pilot has to be darned nifty to get in among them before they bomb and climb away. But they’ll try. They’ll chase after those zeps until their gas tanks run dry. Then comes the bit they all dread, landing in the dark – it’s a bitch. We’ve lost too many good boys in accidents; sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the elder man, although he could not repress a shudder. If landing in the dark was the most dangerous part of the mission, what were the chances that Glenn would survive the job of teaching these boys how to do it?

‘Maybe we should let them come in and bomb. Now that Londoners have learned how to darken the town, central London has become more difficult to find on a dark night, and that’s the only kind of night the zeps come. And even when they bomb, they seldom hit anything of military value or kill more than half a dozen people.’

‘Sounds mighty callous, Glenn.’

‘The British lost fifty thousand infantry before lunch on the Somme a few weeks back.’

The old man sighed. ‘Well, maybe you are right. But it would rile me to think of those Germans cruising overhead unchallenged.’

‘It’s politics, Dad. The politicians wouldn’t dare leave London undefended, even if it was the right thing to do. The voters would never stand for it. My boys wouldn’t stand for it, either….’ He drank. ‘Especially now that we have rich civilians offering rewards for anyone who downs a zep.’

‘I was reading about that.’

‘Three thousand five hundred pounds sterling for any pilot who gets himself an airship, and any time at all someone is likely to chip in another bagful of gold. That’s enough to set one of my boys up for life.’

‘Are you still flying with your buddy Piper, the Englishman you met on the boat?’

‘The one that went for Veronica.’

‘Veronica?’

It was the whiskey of course. Glenn could have bitten his tongue off. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

‘Veronica. My Veronica?’

‘You remember how I went to stay at old Frau Winter’s house that summer when they were all on vacation there. It was long before the war … 1910, I think. I was starting that tour around Germany that I did with “Boy” Piper. I’d just met him, and we spent a week with the Winters.’

‘Never mind the goddamned filibuster,’ said his father. ‘What happened?’

‘Hell, nothing happened, Dad. But Boy wanted Veronica to marry him. He was crazy about her. He still is. He never got married, and once, when he left his wallet and stuff in my locker – Royal Flying Corps pilots are not allowed to carry personal effects when they’re in the air – a photo of Veronica fell out. He made some silly joke about it being a photo of his sister, but I recognized Veronica all right. Then, after that, he always carried it with him, like a lucky piece.’

‘Jesus! How did Harry react to all this?’

‘I told you, Dad, there was nothing to react to. Boy just fell head over heels in love with Veronica. I think she went for him too, but she figured she had to stay with Harald because of the boys.’

‘You mean you even discussed this with Veronica?’ His father was incredulous. ‘She knew Piper was in love with her? It sounds like a damned funny business.’

‘We were in a hotel in Kiel. Veronica told me that Boy had asked her to go away with him. She had to tell someone, and she couldn’t tell Harald. She was in love with Boy, there was no doubt about that. I could see it in her face.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I wish I’d told her to go with Boy. He’s a great guy; she would have been happy with him. And Harald is a louse.’

‘Well, I’m glad you told me about this,’ said Cyrus bitterly. ‘I’m relieved that your mother never found out.’

‘No one will find out. I never even discussed it with Boy.’

‘And is your friend Piper still working with you?’

‘The lucky dog got command of a squadron on the Western Front. Can you imagine that? He’s over forty years old. And he didn’t even learn to fly until the war began. How the devil he fixed it I’ll never know. Not fighters of course, but even so…’

‘What’s that across there?’

‘Searchlights. That will be a zeppelin; they always come in that way from the northeast. Some of them mistake the river Lea for the Thames and drop their bombs there, which can be bad luck if you live out that way.’

‘More searchlights.’

‘I think they’ve got him. See the little sparks – bluish-white flickers. That’s the anti-aircraft shells exploding. Maybe you can hear them.’

‘Well below him.’

‘We haven’t got enough long-range high-velocity guns.’

Glenn’s father noticed that ‘we’ hadn’t got the guns. Although Rensselaer senior was an unreserved Anglophile, he was, above all, an American, and determined to stay out of this European quarrel. He was tempted to lecture his son on the subject, but he wisely decided that this was not the time or place. ‘There must be a dozen searchlights there.’

‘The defences concentrate there because that’s the way the Germans come.’

‘What kind of dopes are they to keep coming that way?’

‘No, they are smart to come that way. The Thames estuary is wide. The zeps come over the water and they can get very close to London before making a landfall.’

‘More searchlights.’ There were much louder explosions from the other direction, somewhere south of the river – Southwark, probably – but the bombs were small ones and the sound was muffled. In the street below a policeman cycled past, blowing blasts on a whistle.

‘There’s another zep there … maybe three or four. The searchlights are trying to find them all. They come in like that sometimes – three or four together – one zep is detected but the others slip past.’

‘They’re coming this way.’

‘It’s central London they are looking for. Look at the gunfire now.’

‘The searchlights have got him!’ Despite the elder man’s determination to stay neutral, the atavistic excitement of the hunt now brought him to his feet. Glenn steadied his father on the slippery moss that grew in the guttering. Now the silver fabric of the airship was gleaming as the stiletto-thin beams stabbed into it. There were half a dozen lights and, at the point of the pyramid, the fishlike airship. ‘He’s hit!’ For a moment the airship disappeared behind a cloud of white smoke. As it cleared, the fish was tilted at a crazy upward angle. ‘He’s hit!’

‘No. That’s not smoke. He’s dropping water ballast…’

Boom, boom, boom. Like distant thunder came the sound of high explosive, much lower and more vibratory than the crack of the guns. The building shook.

‘…and his bomb load, too. Now he’s lightened, he’ll climb for dear life.’

‘What’s that?’ Coloured flares lit the sky bright red.

‘They’re Very pistol lights. One of my boys telling the guns to stop firing while the airplanes try. Look at that zep go!’ Without bombs and water ballast, the zeppelin rose at an astonishing speed, so that the searchlights slid away and the airship disappeared into the dark night.

‘Has he escaped?’

‘Maybe. Somewhere up there two of them are playing a game of hide and seek. There’s a little scattered cloud to the north. If I was the zep captain I’d be making for it.’

‘And if you were the airplane pilot you’d be heading that way, too.’

They continued to stare towards the northeast. ‘It’s damned cold tonight,’ said Rensselaer senior. He shuddered.

Suddenly there was a red glow in the sky. Small at first; then, like a Chinese paper lantern, the great airship became a short red tube that lengthened as the flaming hydrogen burst from one gas cell to the next until the whole shape of the airship was depicted in dull red. Then at one place the flames ate through the fabric and were revealed as bright orange. Only then, as the aluminium melted, did the zeppelin cease its graceful forward motion. Halted, it became a cloud of burning gas around a tangle of almost white-hot metal, and then, slowly but with gathering speed, the great airship fell from the sky.

‘Oh my God!’ cried Rensselaer senior. No hatred now for friend or foe. He turned away and covered his face with his hands. ‘It’s horrible, horrible!’ Glen Rensselaer put his arms round his father’s shoulders and embraced him in the way that his father had so often comforted him as a child.

‘You’re a good, reliable officer’

On the wall of the office there was a calendar advertising ‘the margarine Germans enjoy’. It was there because some thoughtful printer had provided for each day a small diagram of the phases of the moon. The week before and the week after the new moon were marked in red ink. For the zeppelin service, knowing which nights were to be dark and moonless was a matter of life and death.

Lieutenant Peter Winter sat at the desk under the calendar. He wore the dark-blue uniform of the Imperial Navy complete with stiff wing collar that dug into his neck as he bent over his work. From this window, on those very rare moments when he looked up from his task, he could see the hard morning sunlight shining on the zeppelin sheds, the hydrogen plant and the flat landscape of the sort that he’d known as a child at Travemünde, not so far away.

‘Can I get the twelve-noon train, Peter?’ Hans-Jürgen, a fellow Berliner was today taking the despatch case to the ministry. If he caught the early train, he’d have a chance to see his girl.

‘Fifteen minutes, no more,’ promised Peter without looking up from his labour. When he’d volunteered for the Navy Airship Division, he’d never guessed how much of his time he’d spend at a desk, filling out forms and signing long reports about things he only half understood. Compared with this drudgery, working for his father would have been stimulating. On the other hand, working for his father would not have provided him with the naval officer’s uniform, of which he was secretly so proud, or the bombing trips over England, which he found both daunting and stimulating. Stimulating because he was at the period of physical and mental development when humans suddenly discover who and what they are. And Peter had discovered that he was courageous. The flights did not frighten him in the way that some of his comrades were frightened.

He signed the form and slapped it into the box while grabbing the next pile of paperwork. It seemed absurd that each zeppelin commander had to file seven copies of each flight log. Then came the route charts and endless lists showing the precise time that ballast was jettisoned and the exact amount of it. The weather forecast was compared with the actual weather conditions; the name, rank, number and age of each crew member had to be entered each time, and their behaviour throughout the mission noted. The times of take off, changes of course, bombing and landing were all here. Attached, on separate sheets submitted by the navigating officers, there were observations of enemy targets, and descriptions of any shipping seen en route. These had all been signed and then verified and countersigned by the commanders. All of it would soon be filed away and forgotten in some dusty Berlin office. Sometimes he felt like screaming and shovelling the whole pile of it into the wastepaper basket. But he plodded steadily on – with glances at the clock so as to have it all ready in time for his friend to catch the Berlin train.

There was no opportunity for Peter Winter to get to Berlin and see his girl, Lisl, the youngest of the Wisliceny girls – for tonight, according to the margarine calendar, was to be dark. And Peter was due to take off at 1:30 p.m. There would be no time for lunch.

And yet he must get to Berlin soon. Inge Wisliceny seemed to have some idea that she was his girl. He liked Inge, but only as a friend. It was her sister Lisl that he was seriously attracted to and this would have to be explained to Inge. Inge would be hurt; he knew that. Losing Peter to her young sister would be especially wounding, for Inge was rather haughty about her sisters. He didn’t look forward to it, but it would have to be done.

Inge was too serious, too conventional, and too intense. In some ways she was too much like Peter, though he’d never admit that. Lisl was young – childlike sometimes – irreverent, impudent and quite outrageous. But Lisl made him laugh. Lisl was someone he wanted to be with on his precious brief trips to Berlin.

The paperwork was only just completed in time for Peter to change into his heavy leather flying clothes, which came complete with long underwear. When he arrived at the airship, hot and sweaty, the engines were already being run up. Within the confines of the iron shed the noise was deafening. Their shed companion, an old zeppelin that dated from the first weeks of the war – her crew called her ‘the Dragon’ – was already out on the field.

‘Achtung! Stand clear of propellers!’ the duty officer in charge of the ground crew shouted. The engineers let in the clutches and engaged the gears. One by one the big Maybach engines took the weight of the four-bladed wooden props and the engines modulated to a lower note. A cloud of dust was kicked up from the floor of the shed.

Peter swung aboard and almost collided with men loading the bombs: four thousand pounds of high explosive and incendiaries. As he stepped aboard, the airship swayed and one of the handling party unhooked a sack of ballast from the side of the airship. Its weight approximated that of Peter so that the airship continued in its state of equilibrium within the shed.

He climbed into the control gondola, a tiny glass-sided room two yards wide and three yards long. The others were already in position, and there was little space to spare. Above the roar of the engines came the constant jingle of the engine room telegraph and the buzz of the telephones. The noise lessened as the engineers throttled back until the engines were just ticking over. Then they were switched off and it became unnaturally quiet.

The captain – a thirty-three-year-old Kapitänleutnant – nodded in response to Peter’s salute, but the rudder man and the man at the elevator did not look up. Hildmann, the observation officer – a veteran with goatee beard – immediately said, ‘Winter, go and take another look at the windsock. This damned wind is changing all the time…. No, it’s all right. Carl is doing it.’ And then, to the captain, he said, ‘All clear for leaving the shed.’ The observation officer then climbed down from the gondola in order to supervise the tricky task of walking the airship out of the shed.

There was the sound of whistles, and the command ‘Airship march!’ as the ground handling party tugged at the ropes and heaved at the handles on the fore and aft gondolas to run the airship out through the narrow shed door. Peter leaned out of the gondola and watched anxiously. The previous month, in just such a situation, the airship had brushed the doorway and suffered enough damage to be kept grounded. For that mistake their leave had been cancelled, and leave these days was precious to everyone. When the stern came out of the shed there was a murmur of relief.

‘Slip astern!’ The rearmost ropes were cast off, and she began to swing round so rapidly that the men of the handling party had to run to keep up with her. Then, with all the ground crew tugging at her, the airship stopped. Hildmann climbed back aboard and, with a quick look round, the captain gave the order to restart engines. In response to the ringing of the telegraphs, one after another the warmed engines roared into life. ‘Up!’ The handling party let go of the leading gondola and she reared up at an angle.

‘Stern engines full speed ahead!’

Now the handling party holding the handles along the rear gondola could not have held on to it without being pulled aloft. Suddenly the ship was airborne and every man aboard felt the deck swing free underfoot, and the airship wallowed in the warm afternoon air. It would be many hours before they’d feel solid ground underfoot.

The engineer officer saluted the captain before climbing the ladder from the control room up to the keel. His fur-lined boots disappeared through the dark rectangle in the ceiling. He was off to his position at the rear-engine gondola. He would spend the rest of the flight with his engines. The other men moved to take advantage of the extra space.

Now that the airship was well clear of the roofs of the sheds, the motors were revved up to full speed. There was no real hurry to reach the rendezvous spot in the cold air of the North Sea, but when so many zeppelins were flying together, it always became something of a race.

There were twenty-three in the crew. They knew one another very well by now. Apart from two of the engine mechanics and the sailmaker – whose job it was to repair leaks in the gas bags or outer envelope – they’d all trained and served together for some ten months. They’d flown out of Leipzig learning their airmanship on the old passenger zeppelins, including the famous Viktoria-Luise. They were happy days. But that was a long time ago. Now the war seemed to be a grim contest of endurance.

Oberleutnant Hildmann, the observation officer – who was also second in command – was a martinet who’d served many years with the Baltic Fleet. It was he who had assigned Peter to navigation. Actually this was the steersman’s job, but Peter’s effortless mental arithmetic gave him a great advantage when it came to working out endless triangles of velocity. It was a skill worth having when Headquarters radioed so many different wind speeds, and in the black night they tried to estimate their position over the darkened enemy landscape.

Peter had been given a sheltered corner of the chilly, windswept control gondola in which to spread his navigation charts. Now he scribbled the airship’s course and her estimated speed on a piece of paper, and tried to catch glimpses of the North German coast. Upon the map he would then draw a triangle, and from this get an idea of what winds the night would bring.

There was cumulus cloud to the north and a scattering of cirrus. The forecast said that there would be scattered clouds over eastern England by evening. That was good news: cloud provided a place to hide.

When they reached Norderney – a small island in the North Sea used as a navigation pinpoint – Peter spotted several other zeppelins. The sun shone brightly on their silver fabric. One of them, well to the rear, was easily recognized as the Dragon: her engines were worn out with so many war flights over these waters, so that her mechanics had to nurse the noisy machinery all the way. Nearer was the L23, with another naval airship moving through the mist beyond. It was a big raid today. Rumours said that there were a dozen naval airships engaged, and three or four army airships, too. Perhaps this would be the raid that would convince the British to seek peace terms. The newspapers all said that the British were reeling under the air raids on London, and the foolhardy British offensive along the river Somme in July had been a bloodletting for them.

For Peter, London was just a dim memory. It seemed a long time ago since he had last visited his grandparents in the big house there. He remembered his grandfather and the big English fruitcakes that were served at four o’clock each day. He remembered the busy streets in the City, where Grandfather had an office, and the quiet gardens and the street musicians to whom Grandfather always gave money. Especially vividly he recalled the piper, a Highlander in kilt and full Scots costume. He seemed too haughty to ask for money, but he stooped to pick up the coins thrown from the nursery window. The piper always came by about teatime, and the little German band came soon after. The bandleader was a big fellow with a red face and furious arm movements. He was astonished when Pauli responded to their music with rough and rude Berlin slang.

Peter’s memories of London had no meaning for him now. His boyhood desire to become an explorer was almost forgotten. The war had changed him. He’d lost too many comrades to relish these bombing missions. He was proud of his active, dangerous role, but when victory came he’d be content to spend the rest of his life in Berlin.

The whistle on the speaking tube sounded. Peter took the whistle from the tube, which he then put to his ear: ‘Hello?’ It was the lookout reporting the sighting of a ship: a German destroyer heading for Bremen. Peter noted it in the log and went back to his charts. They were at the rendezvous. Now commenced the worst part of the mission. Here at the rendezvous there would be hours of waiting, the engines ticking over just enough to hold position in the air. A skeleton crew on duty and anything up to a dozen men in hammocks slung along the gangways. No one would sleep; no one ever slept. You just stretched out and wondered what the night would bring. You remembered the stories about the airships that had broken up in mid-air or burst into flames. You wondered if the British had improved upon their anti-aircraft gunfire or perfected the incendiary bullets that the fighter planes fired.

The whitecapped sea would soon darken. But the days were long up here in the sky. Although the sun sank lower and lower, the waiting airships remained bathed in its light, glowing with that golden luminosity that is so like flame.

‘Winter. Leave whatever you’re doing and go to the number-two gun position: the telephone is not working.’

The observation officer was not a bad fellow, but he, too, succumbed to the nervousness of these waiting periods. Peter knew that there was nothing wrong with the telephone. The gunners were down inside the hull, out of the cold airstream, trying to keep warm. Once you got cold there was no way to get warm again: there was no such thing as a warm place on a naval airship. And who could blame the gun crew? There was no chance of enemy aircraft out here, so far from the English coast.

‘Ja, Herr Oberleutnant. Right away,’ Peter saluted him. Saluting was not insisted on in such circumstances, but Hildmann, like most regular officers of the old navy, didn’t like the ‘sloppy informality’ of the Airship Division.

Peter climbed the short ladder that connected the control gondola to the keel. To get to the upper gun position took Peter right through the airship’s hull. As he walked along the narrow gangway, he looked down through the gaps in the flapping outer cover and could see the ocean, almost three thousand feet below. The water was grey and spumy, speckled with the last low rays of sunlight coming through the broken cloud. Peter didn’t look down except when he had to. The ocean was a threatening sight. He had never enjoyed sailing since that day when he’d nearly drowned, and the prospect of serving on a surface vessel filled him with horror.

Some light was reflected from below, but the inside of the airship was dark. Above him the huge gas cells moved constantly. All around him there were noises: it was like being in the bowels of some huge monster. Besides the rustling of the gas cells there was the creaking of the aluminium framework along which he walked and the musical cries of thousands of steel bracing wires.

It was a fearsomely long vertical ladder that took him up between the gas cells to the very top of the envelope. Finally he emerged into the daylight on the top of the zeppelin. Suddenly it was very sunny, but the air was bitterly cold and he had to hold tight to the safety rail. What a curious place it was up here on the upper side of the hull. The silver fabric sloped away to each side, and the great length of the airship was emphasized. What an amazing achievement it was for man to build a flying machine as big as a cathedral.

Peter stood there staring for a moment or two. To the port-side he could see two other zeppelins. They were higher, by several hundred feet. Ahead was a flicker of light reflected off another airship’s fabric. That would be the old Dragon fighting to gain height. She’d caught up with the armada. It was good to see her so close; Peter had friends aboard her. They were not alone here in the upper air.

It was late afternoon. Still the airships glowed with sunlight. Soon, as the sun sank lower, the airships would darken one by one, darken like lights being extinguished. Then, when even the highest one went dark, they would move off towards England. Peter shivered; it was cold up here, very cold.

‘Hennig!’ called Peter loudly. He knew where the fellow would be hiding: all the gunners took shelter, but Hennig was the laziest.

‘What’s wrong, Herr Leutnant?’ He emerged blinking into the light and behind him came the loader, a diminutive youth named Stein, who followed the gunner everywhere. Stein was a Bolshevik agitator, though so far he’d been too sly to be caught spreading sedition amongst the seamen. Still, his cunning hadn’t saved him from several nasty beatings from fellow sailors who opposed his political views. Hennig was not thought to be a Bolshevik, but the two men were individualistic to the point of eccentricity, and neither would be welcomed into other gun teams. So they had formed an alliance, a pact of mutual assistance. Erich Hennig pushed his assistant gently aside. It was a gesture that said that if there was any blame to be taken he would take it. ‘What’s wrong, Leutnant?’ he said again. Hennig was a slim, pale youth of about Peter’s age. His dark eyes were heavy-lidded, his lips thin and bloodless.

‘You should be at the gun, Hennig.’

‘Ja, Herr Leutnant.’ Hennig smiled. It was a provocative and superior smile, the smile a man gave to show himself and others that he was not subject to authority. It was a smile for Peter Winter alone: the two men knew each other well. Winter had known Hennig since long before both men volunteered for the navy. Erich Hennig lived in Wedding; his father was a skilled cooper who worked in the docks mending damaged barrels. The apartment in which he grew up, with half a dozen brothers and sisters, was cramped and gloomy. At school Hennig proved below average at lessons, but he earned money by playing the piano in Bierwirtschaften – stand-up bars – and seedy clubs. It was a club owner who brought Erich Hennig’s talent to the attention of the amazing Frau Wisliceny. And through her efforts Hennig spent three years studying composition and theory at the conservatoire. By the time war broke out, Erich Hennig was being spoken of as a talent to watch. In April 1914 he’d given a series of recitals – mostly Chopin and Brahms – at a small concert hall near the Eden Hotel. There was even a paragraph about it in the newspaper: ‘promising,’ said the music critic.

Peter had met Hennig frequently at Frau Wisliceny’s house. Once they’d even played duets, but no friendship ever developed between them. Hennig was fiercely competitive. He saw the privileged Peter Winter as a spoiled dilettante who lacked the passionate love for music that Hennig knew. He’d actually heard Peter Winter discussing with the Wisliceny daughters whether he should pursue a career in music, study higher mathematics, or just prepare himself for a job alongside his father. This enraged Hennig. For Hennig it was a betrayal of talent. How could any talented musician – and even Erich Hennig admitted to himself, if not to others, that Peter Winter was no less talented than himself – speak of any other career?

‘When the telephone rings, you make sure you answer it,’ said Peter.

‘I do, Herr Leutnant.’ He continued leaning against the gun.

‘You should be standing to attention, Hennig.’

‘I’m manning the gun, Herr Leutnant.’

The wretch always had an answer ready. And Peter well knew that any complaint about Hennig would not be welcome. Hennig played piano in the officers’ mess. He could be an engaging young man when he tried, and he had a lot of supporters amongst the senior ranks. When the beer and wine were flowing and the old songs were sung until the small hours of the morning, Hennig became a sort of unofficial member of the officers’ club. It would be a foolish young officer who punished him for what might sound like no reason but jealousy. For Peter would never be able to play the sort of music that got a party going. In this respect he admired Hennig’s talent and envied those years that Hennig had spent strumming untuned pianos for drunken clubgoers. Hennig always found under his fingertips the right melodies for the right moments. And he remembered them. He knew the tune the Kapitänleutnant had danced to the night he met his wife. He knew those bits of Strauss that the observation officer could hum. He knew when the captain might be induced to sing his inimitable tuneless version of ‘I’m Going to Maxim’s’ and changed key to help him; and he knew the hymn tunes for which there were words that could be sung only after the captain departed.

Peter Winter’s musical talent was the talent of the mathematician, and, as was the case with most mathematicians, Bach was his first musical choice. Peter’s love for Bach was a reflection of his upbringing, his social class, and the time and place in which he lived. There was a measured orderliness and formality to Bach’s music: a promise of permanence that most Europeans took for granted. Playing Bach, Peter displayed a skill and devotion that Hennig could never equal. But Hennig never played Bach. And Peter never played the piano in the officers’ mess, where Bach was not revered.

Peter went to the telephone, swung the handle round until the control gondola answered. ‘Upper gun position. Testing,’ said Peter.

‘Your voice is loud and clear, Herr Leutnant,’ said the petty-officer signalman.

Peter replaced the earpiece. ‘Carry on, Hennig,’ he said.

‘I will, Herr Leutnant,’ said Hennig. And as Peter started on the long and treacherous vertical ladder, he heard the loader titter. He decided it was better not to hear it.

As he picked his way back down the ladder to the keel, he thought about his exchange with Hennig. He knew he’d come out of it badly. He always came out of such exchanges badly. He didn’t have the right temperament to deal with the Hennigs of this world. He had tried, God knows he’d tried. Early in their first training flights, on one of the old Hansa passenger zeppelins, he’d talked to Hennig and suggested he apply for officer training. Hennig had taken it as some subtle sort of insult and had rejected the idea with contempt.

But in the forefront of Peter’s mind was the fact that Hennig had lately become more than friendly with Lisl Wisliceny, whom Peter considered his girl. Particularly hurtful was the latest letter from Lisl. Until now she’d been pressing Peter to become engaged to her. Peter, reluctant to face the sort of scene that his father would make in such circumstances, had found excuses. But in her latest letter Lisl had written that she now agreed with Peter, that they were both too young to think of marriage, and that she should see more people while Peter was away. And by ‘people’ she meant Erich Hennig. That much Peter was certain about. Only after Peter had taken Lisl to the opera did young Hennig suddenly begin to show his interest in this, the youngest of the Wisliceny daughters. And Hennig got far more opportunities to go to Berlin than Peter got. For the other ranks there were two weekend passes a month if they were not listed on the combat-ready sheet or assigned to guard duties. But officers were in short supply at the airship base. And, as any young officer knows, that meant that the junior commissioned ranks worked hard enough to prevent the shortage of officers, bringing extra work to those with three or more gold rings on their sleeve.

Damn Hennig! Well, Peter would show him. Little did Hennig realize it, but his insolence, and his pursuit of Peter’s girl, would be just what was needed to make Peter into the international-class pianist that Frau Wisliceny said he could become. From now on he would practise three hours a day. It would mean getting up at four in the morning, but that would not be difficult for him. There was a piano in the storage shed. Though it was old and out of tune, that would be no great difficulty. Peter could tune a piano, and there was a carpenter on the Dragon who would help him get it into proper working order, a decent old petty officer named Becker. He’d worked as an apprentice in a piano factory and knew everything about them.

For the next half-hour Peter was kept busy with his charts. Having missed his lunch, he became hungry enough to dip into his ration bag. The food supplied for these trips was not very appetizing. There were hardboiled eggs and cold potatoes, some very hard pieces of sausage and a thick slice of black rye bread. There was also a bar of chocolate, but for the time being he saved the chocolate. If they went high, where even the black bread turned to slabs of ice that had to be shattered with a hammer, the chocolate was the only substance that didn’t freeze solid. He took a hardboiled egg and nibbled at it. If he could get down to the rear-engine car, there might be a chance of some hot pea soup or coffee. The engineering officer let the mechanics warm it on the engine exhaust pipes. In some of the zeppelins there was constant hot coffee from an electric hot plate in the control gondola, but on this airship the captain wouldn’t allow such devices to be used because of the fire risk.

When his calculations were complete, Peter turned to watch the men in the control gondola. At the front was a seaman at the helm. He steered while another crewman beside him, at the same sort of wheel, adjusted the elevators to keep the airship level. This was said to be the most difficult job in the control room, although Peter had never tried his hand at it. A good elevator man was able to anticipate each lurch and wallow and turn the wheel to meet each gust of wind. The control gondola was like a little greenhouse into which machinery had been packed. The largest box, a sort of cupboard, was the radio, for keeping in touch with base and with the other airships. There was the master compass with an arc to measure the angle to the horizon, a variometer for measuring descent or climb, an electric thermometer to measure the temperature of the gas in the envelope, and there were the vitally important ballast controls. At the front, where the captain stood alongside the helmsman, was the bomb-release switchboard and a battery of lamps for signalling and for landing.

Tonight’s plan was simple: the main body of airships would attack London, approaching from over the Norfolk coast while two army airships were sent north to fool the defences by making a feint attack along the river Humber. The plan itself was good enough, although its lack of originality meant that the British would not be fooled.

And the attack started too early. Even the captain, a man whose formal naval training prevented him from criticizing the High Command or his senior colleagues, said it was a bit early when the first of the airships moved forward from the place at which they’d hovered for three hours. The whole idea of waiting was so that the sky would be totally dark when the airships crossed the English coastline. But it wasn’t dark. Even the English countryside, some six thousand feet below them, was not quite darkened. Peter had no trouble following the map. He could see the rivers, and many of the villages were brightly lit. And that meant that the British could see them. The alarms would go off, London would be made dim, and civilians would go to the bomb shelters. Worse, the pilots would stand by their planes and the gunners would load the guns; their reception would be a hot one.

All the time he watched the horizon; there was always some sort of glow from London, no matter how stringently the inhabitants doused their lights. Then he spotted it, and as they came nearer to London Peter could see the looping shape of the river Thames. There was no way that could be hidden. Suddenly the guns started. Flickers of light at first as the gunners tried to get the range, but then the flashes came closer. Staring down, Peter spotted the Houses of Parliament on the riverbank. And then the shape of London – well known to him more because of his study of target maps than because of any memories that the sight evoked – was recognizable.

‘Prepare for action! Open bomb doors!’ He noted the exact time: 2304 hours. At first he was going to advise dropping bombs on the Houses of Parliament, but the briefing clearly said railway stations. There were two right below: Waterloo and Charing Cross. Peter signalled and the captain ordered the first lot of bombs released. There was a series of flashes as they hit, and though Peter could imagine the terror and destruction they had brought, he had no deep feeling of remorse or regret. The British had had every chance to stay out of the war, but they had decided to interfere, and now they must face the consequences.

Crash! The second lot of bombs were striking somewhere south of the river. It was mostly just workers’ housing on that side of the water. The captain should have awaited Peter’s signal, but everyone got excited. There were more explosions, though without any corresponding lights on the ground. He suddenly realized that it was the sound of the British anti-aircraft guns. They were very close, and for the first time on such a war flight Peter felt a little afraid.

At least there were no searchlights here in the very heart of town. The British had concentrated their searchlights to the northeast and along the approaches. They could be seen there now, steadily moving in search of the zeppelins that were behind them. Wait: they were clustering together. They’d caught someone. Two more anti-aircraft shells exploded very close. In the gondola Peter heard the captain order the firing of a red Very pistol light. It was a trick – pretending to be a British fighter plane ordering the guns silent – but the ‘colour of the night’ was changed sometimes hour by hour, and the gunners were not often tricked. The light went arcing out into the darkness, a red firework sinking slowly.

‘Drop water ballast forward!’ murmured the captain, and immediately the orders were given. Peter hung on tight, knowing that the airship would tilt upwards to an alarming angle as she began to rise. There was the whoosh of water rushing through the traps. There she went! The gunfire explosions dropped away below them like the repeated sparking of a cigarette lighter that would not ignite. They continued to rise. Here in the upper air it was dark and cold.

By now a dozen searchlights had fastened on the airship behind them to the north. ‘The Dragon!’ said a whispered voice in the gondola. How could it be the Dragon? She’d been ahead of them. Of course, she was always very slow. Those old engines of hers were the subject of endless grim jokes. They’d been promised new engines again and again, but all the new engines were needed for new airships.

The telephone rang and was answered by Hildmann. ‘Number-two gun position report enemy aircraft,’ he said.

‘Switch off engines!’

The silence came as a sudden shock after so many hours with the throbbing sound of the engines. Everyone throughout the airship remained as quiet as possible and listened.

It was Peter, staring down to the townscape below who spotted him, a large biplane climbing in a wide circle trying to get into position for an attack. The fighters liked to rake the airships from stern to nose, using the new explosive and incendiary bullets. ‘Fighter!’ He pointed.

The captain bit his lip and turned his head to see the instruments. The airship was still at the slightly nose-up angle that provided extra dynamic lift.

Suddenly all was grey: the sky, the ground and all the windows. The zeppelin had passed up into a patch of cloud. Now, with all speed, the airship was ‘weighed off’. The upward movement ended and the airship stopped, engines off and completely silent, shrouded in the grey wet cloud. The mist around them brightened as the searchlight beams raked the cloud’s underside and made the water vapour glow.

They could hear the aeroplane now. It had followed them into the cloud and passed near on the starboard side, its engine faltering as the dampness of the cloud affected the carburettor. It circled once, as if the fighter pilot knew where they were hiding, and then, after another, wider circle, the sound of the plane’s engine grew fainter.

‘Restart engines!’ The clutches were engaged till the props were just turning, treading the air so that the airship scarcely moved. They waited five minutes or more before dropping more water ballast and recommencing their upward movement. Suddenly they were out of the cloud and the stars were overhead. They were very high now and could see a long way. Over northern London clusters of searchlights were still moving slowly across the sky, searching for the airships heading back that way.

Peter provided a course to steer, and slowly – the engines weakened on this thinner air – they headed for home. Everyone was watching the horizon, where the English defences were concentrated. Every few minutes there was a flicker of gunfire, like fireflies on a summer’s evening. That was the gauntlet that they must also run.

‘Look there!’

One by one the searchlights swung over to one point in the sky, forming a pyramid with a silvery shape at its tip. Then the silvery shape went red. At first the red glow was scarcely brighter than the searchlight beams below it. Then it went to a much lighter red, as a cigar tip brightens at a sudden intake of breath.

‘My God!’ Even the captain was moved to cry out aloud. Everyone stared. Flight discipline, rank, was for a moment forgotten. All stared at the terrible sight. None of them had seen such a thing before, except in their nightmares. The stricken airship flared white like a torch, so bright that it blinded them, and they were unable properly to see the dull-red sun into which it changed before dropping earthwards. Then the fiery tangle vanished into a cloud, and the cloud turned pink and boiled like a great furnace.

It was in the silence that followed that the telephone rang. The observation officer – Hildmann – answered tersely. He looked round the control gondola and stared at Peter. If there was a job, then Peter was the one likely to be spared from duties here in the car. The course home was set, and the charts were already folded away, the pencils in their leather case in the rack over the plotting table.

So it was Peter who was sent to speak with the sailmaker. The gas bags were holed; the captain must know how badly. Was it the small punctures that the scout’s machine guns made, or the far more serious jagged tears from shell fragments? Were the leaks low down, or were they in the upper sections of the bags, where a leak meant the loss of all the gas it held? Peter looked around to find an extra scarf and the sheepskin gloves that he’d removed to use the pencils. It would be cold back there inside the envelope, even colder than it was here in the drafty control gondola. He’d found only one glove by the time Hildmann shouted to him again. No matter: he’d keep his hand in his pocket.

He went up the ladder again. It was dark and dangerous picking his way along the keel between the lines of gas bags. It was like walking down the aisle of some echoing cathedral, except that hug silky balloons floated inside and filled the whole nave, from floor to vaulting.

Some of the giant bags were hanging soft and empty. It was here that the sailmaker was already at work, patching the leaks. He called down from the darkness: ‘Herr Leutnant.’ The sailmaker was clinging to the girders high above him. Peter climbed with difficulty. The lack of oxygen made him feel dizzy.

It was while Peter was inspecting the damaged gas bags that the anti-aircraft battery scored its hit. There was a loud bang that echoed in the framework. The airship careened, remained for a moment on its side, so that everything tilted and the half-emptied bags enveloped the two men. Peter fought the silky fabric aside as the airship rolled slowly back and then steadied again. ‘What the devil was that?’ said the sailmaker. Peter didn’t reply, but he knew they were hit and hit badly. It was a miracle that there was no fire. ‘Stay here,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll find out what’s happened.’

When he got back to the control gondola, it was in ruins. The rear portion of the car was gone completely, and a large section of the thin metal floor was missing, so that, still standing on the short communication ladder to the keel, Peter could see the landscape thousands of feet below them. The helmsman and rudder man were nowhere to be seen: the explosion had blown them out into the thin air.

There was broken window celluloid everywhere, and the aluminium girders were bent into curious shapes, like the tendrils of some exotic vine. The body of the captain – hatless to reveal an almost bald head – was sprawled on the floor in the corner, his head slumped on his chest. The observation officer had survived, of course: Hildmann was a tough old bird, the sort of man who always survived. He had somehow scrambled across the two remaining girders and got to the front of the car. He was manning the elevator wheel. When he saw Peter coming down through the hatch, he pointed to the wheel that controlled the rudders and then went back to his task.

‘How bad?’ Hildmann asked him after Peter had swung himself across the gaping hole to take his place at the wheel and steer for home.

‘The gas bags? Two of them are bad, and some of the holes are high. But the sailmaker is a good man, and his assistant is at work, too.’

The observation officer grunted. ‘We can let it go lower, much lower.’ His voice was strained as he gasped for breath. Hildmann was no longer young. At this height the lack of oxygen caused dizziness and headaches and every little exertion seemed exhausting. Peter’s clamber down into the car had made his ears ring, and his pulse was beating at almost twice its normal rate. In the engine cars, and up on the gun positions, men would be suffering nausea and vomiting. It was worth going high to avoid the defences, but today they hadn’t avoided them. ‘A lucky shot,’ said Hildmann, as if reading Peter’s mind.

‘There will be more guns along the coast,’ warned Peter.

‘We must risk that. The gas will be escaping fast at this height; soon we’ll lose altitude whether we want to or not. And the engines will give us more power lower down.’

Peter didn’t answer. Hildmann was deluding himself. The pressure inside the bags would make little difference. Whatever they decided, the airship was continuing to sink, due to the lost hydrogen from the punctured gas cells. Peter was having great difficulty at the helm of the great ship. He had never touched the wheel before; the seamen given this job were carefully chosen and specially trained. Holding the brute, as it wilfully tried to fly its own course through the open sky, was a far harder task than he ever would have believed. He had new respect for the men he’d watched doing it so calmly and effortlessly. And as the thought came to him, he realized that now he would never be able to tell them so: both men had long since hit the ground at terminal velocity, which meant enough force to indent themselves deep into the earth.

‘Is he patching the holes?’ said Hildmann.

‘The sailmaker and his assistant,’ affirmed Peter. ‘They can’t work miracles, though.’

In other circumstances Hildmann might have considered Peter’s reply insubordinate, but now he seemed not to notice the apparent disrespect.

‘We’re sinking still,’ said Hildmann, at last facing the reality of their danger. ‘They’d better work fast.’ The airship dropped lower and lower until the altimeter – an unreliable device worked by barometric pressure – warned them they were as low as they dared go in darkness. Then it became a battle to stay in the air. In other parts of the airship, crewmen, on their own initiative, began to throw overboard everything that could be spared. Desperately men dumped the reserve fuel, ammunition boxes, then ammunition; finally, as they crossed the coast near Yarmouth, the guns went, too.

‘Can you work the radio?’ asked Hildmann.

‘I can try, Herr Oberleutnant.’ The radio looked to be in bad shape, the glass dials shattered and a fresh bright-silver gash across its metal case. There was little or no chance that it would still be working. The clock over it had stopped, a mute record of the exact moment the shell burst struck.

‘We’ll probably come down in the sea. We need to know the position of the nearest ship.’

And find it, thought Peter. He had only the haziest idea of their present position, and finding such a dot in the North Sea would need a navigational skill far beyond his own crude vectors and sums. But for a moment he was spared such tests; there was no question of his leaving the helm until a relief could be summoned, and the telephone link was severed.

‘Better not look down,’ said Hildmann in a voice that was almost avuncular.

Had the old man just discovered that, thought Peter. The void beyond the gap in the car’s floor was the most terrifying sight he’d ever seen. After that first shock he’d kept his eyes away from the jagged hole.

‘Jawohl, Herr Oberleutnant!’

‘You’re a good, reliable officer, Winter.’

‘Thank you, Herr Oberleutnant,’ said Peter but he wished the observation officer hadn’t said it. It was too much like an epitaph. He had the feeling that Hildmann had said it only because their chances of survival were so slim. It would be just like him to be writing their final report in his head before going to meet his Maker.

‘Request the Oberleutnant’s permission to change course five degrees southwards.’

‘Why?’ asked Hildmann.

‘The compass must be wrong. Dawn is coming up.’

The observation officer stared at where the horizon would be if the night had not been so very dark. Then he saw what Peter had been looking at for five minutes: a dull-red cotton thread on the silky blackness of the night. Hildmann looked at his watch to see whether the sun was on schedule. ‘Yes, change course,’ he said, having decided that it was.

The dawn came quickly, changing the sky to orange and then a sulphurous yellow before lighting the grey sea beneath them. Crosslit, the choppy water was not a reassuring sight.

‘Is that the coast ahead?’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Won’t need the radio now.’

‘No, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Just as well. I don’t think it’s working.’

‘I don’t think it is, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Do you think we’ll be able to get it down in the right place?’

‘I think we can, Herr Oberleutnant.’ Hildmann would have been outraged by any other response, but he smiled grimly and nodded. Peter wondered how old he was; rumours said he was a grandfather.

‘We lost the Dragon.’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’ Trees appeared behind the desolate sandy coastline. They were very low. He stared down into the darkness.

‘Good men on the Dragon.’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Oh my God!’

Everything happened so suddenly that there was no time to avert the crash. The elevator cables had been in shreds for hours. Hildmann didn’t realize that the movements of his wheel depended upon a single steel thread until the final thread snapped and the elevators slammed over to put the airship into a violent nose-down attitude. It all happened in only a few seconds.

First there was the sudden snapping of the control cables: bangs like explosions came as the released steel cables thrashed about, ripping through the gas bags and tearing into the soft aluminium. The lurch started Hildmann’s wheel spinning and sent Hildmann staggering across the car so that he stumbled and was thrown half out of the hole in the floor. Then came the big crash of the airship striking the tree tops.

Branches came into the car from every side, and a snowstorm of leaves and wood and sawdust filled the control room, until the weakened gondola was torn into pieces by the black trees. There was a scream as Hildmann disappeared into the darkness below, and then the airship met a tree that would not yield, and, with a crash and the shriek of tortured metal, the vast framework collapsed upon him and Peter lost consciousness.

‘My poor Harry’

In Vienna that same September morning it was bright and clear. The low-pressure region that had provided the zeppelins with cloud cover over England had broken. Southern Germany and Austria had blue skies and cold winds.

Martha Somló – or Frau Winter, as she had engraved on her visiting cards – was awake. She’d been an early riser ever since she was a child, when she’d got up at five every morning to prepare the work in her father’s back-room tailor shop.

Harald Winter was sound asleep. He snorted and turned over. ‘Wake up! Harry.’ She had a tray with coffee and warm fresh bread.

He grunted.

‘Wake up! You were snoring.’

He rubbed his face to bring himself awake. ‘Snoring?’

‘Yes. Loud enough to wake the street.’ She smiled sweetly and forgivingly.

He looked at her suspiciously. Veronica had never mentioned his snoring, nor had any of the other women he enjoyed on a more-or-less regular basis. ‘It’s an ugly habit, snoring,’ he said.

He opened his eyes to see her better. She was wearing the magnificent silk dressing gown he’d bought for her on one of his trips to Switzerland. It was black and gold, with huge Chinese tigers leaping across it. He’d thought at the time how like Martha the snarling tigers looked. ‘It doesn’t matter, darling. You can’t help it,’ she said.

The truth was that Harald Winter did not snore, but teasing him was one of the few retaliations she got for being neglected.

She set the tray down on the bed and slid back under the bedclothes. This was her very favourite time: just her and Harry at breakfast. He gave her a quick hug and kiss before taking a kaiser roll and waiting for her to pour his coffee and add exactly the amount of cream and sugar he liked. From the street below came the sound of horses’ hoofs and wheels upon the cobbles and the jingle of harness. It was a large contingent of field artillery moving off to the war. The noise continued for a long time, but neither Harry nor Martha went to the window to look. Soldiers had become too common a sight in the streets of Vienna for breakfast to be interrupted.

Prompted by the sounds of the horse artillery, Martha said, ‘The war’s going badly for us, isn’t it, Harry?’ She removed the tray to the side table and came back to bed.

‘It goes up and down: wars are always like that.’

‘And you don’t care, as long as you sell your airships and planes, and make lots of money.’

‘My God, but you are a little firebrand, aren’t you?’

He grabbed her wrist and clutched it tight. It hurt, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of complaining. In fact, his physical strength attracted her even when it was directed against her. In the same way, her strong-willed antagonism fascinated him. She was the only woman who openly defied him.

‘I heard there were wooden airships now,’ she said spitefully, ‘and smaller, collapsible ones better than Count Zeppelin makes.’

He smiled. ‘I have persuaded the navy that airships made of wood and glue are not suitable for use over the sea in bad weather.’

‘You think only of money!’ she said.

He released her arm and said softly, ‘How can you say that, you little bitch, when I have two sons fighting for us?’

‘I’m sorry, Harry. I didn’t mean it.’

He gently pulled the silk negligee from her shoulders so that he could look at her pale body. ‘You are exquisite, darling Martha. All is forgiven in your embrace.’ It was the frivolous, supercilious manner he adopted for their bouts of lovemaking. It was a way of avoiding any serious discussion.

But as he reached for her there was a knock at the bedroom door. Martha twisted away from his hand and, pulling her dressing gown tight, went to the door.

It was her maidservant. He couldn’t hear what was said. Despite reassurances from his physician, he was convinced that he was growing deaf.

‘What is it?’ he said as she returned to the bed. ‘Come back to bed, my little tiger.’ But she remained where she was, a petite, pale figure, her face forlorn, with jet-black hair tumbling over her eyes till she pushed it back with her small, perfect hands.

‘The zeppelins over England last night…five didn’t return. Your son Peter…’ She couldn’t go on. Tears filled her eyes.

‘My Peter…What?’ He got out of bed, and went to her and held her. She was sobbing. ‘My poor Harry,’ she said.

It was almost noon next day when Peter started to regain his senses. Even before he tried to open his eyes, he smelled the ether in his nostrils. The hospital room was filled with yellow light: the sun coming through a lowered blind. When he moved his feet – an exploratory movement to discover if he was all in one piece – he felt the stiffly starched sheets against his toes. It was only then that he realized he was not alone in the hospital room. Two men in white coats were standing near the window, looking down at a clipboard.

‘…the only one to escape from the forward gondola,’ said one voice.

‘And completely unharmed, you say?’

‘Just scratches, bruises, and the finger.’

‘Did he lose the finger?’

‘No, he had the luck of the devil. I just removed the tip of it.’

‘And it was the left hand, too; well, I can’t imagine that that will make a scrap of difference to any young chap.’

‘Unless he was a pianist…’

‘And the pianist – Hennig, isn’t it? – was the one with the broken ankle. God moves in strange ways; I’ve always said that.’

‘It’s a curious war, isn’t it? The zeppelin staff plan to bomb Saint-Omer’s town hall when all the top Allied military commanders are there together with the King of England and the Belgian King. And the Kaiser forbids it.’

‘You disagree?’

‘After a night looking at the cruelly mutilated bodies of so many very young men, I simply say it’s a curious war.’

Peter heard one of them hang the clipboard back on its book before they went out of his room, but he kept his eyes closed and pretended to be asleep.

In England the next day, visitors went to the wreckage of the zeppelin that had been shot down near London. Frederick William Wile – one time Berlin correspondent of The Daily Mail – wrote ‘…even those who felt most bitterly about the brutality of raids upon unarmed civilian populations could not refrain from pity at the sight.’

Wile continued: ‘It is one of the traditions of the Hohenzollerns that the King of Prussia must ride across the battlefields on which his soldiers have fallen and look his dead men in the face. Trench warfare and a decent regard for his own skin have prevented William II from carrying out this ghoulish rite in his war. But I wish some cruel Fate might have taken the Kaiser by his trembling hand yesterday morning and led him to that rain-soaked meadow in Hertfordshire, and bade him look as I looked at the charred remains of human wreckage which a few hours before was the crew of an Imperial German airship. I wish Count Zeppelin, the creator of the particular brand of Kultur which sent the baby-killers to their doom, might have been in the Supreme War Lord’s entourage. I wondered, standing there by the side of that miserable heap of exposed skulls, stumps of arms and legs, shattered bones and scorched flesh, whether the Kaiser would have revoked the vow he spoke at Donau-Eschingen in the Black Forest eight years ago when he christened the inventor of airship frightfulness, “the greatest German of the twentieth century”.’

1917

‘Not so loud, voices carry in the night’

Paul Winter had been called ‘little Pauli’ for so much of his life that, now seventeen-years old, he still thought of himself in that way. He had the cherubic face that made some lucky men youthful and attractive all their lives. Some of the others called him ‘Lucky’. So what rotten luck that a member of the Prussian Officer Corps on active service on the Western Front should be attached to this wretched Royal Bavarian infantry regiment. What was ‘little Pauli’ doing sitting in this deep dugout on the Western Front, listening to the muffled thumps of enemy shells exploding? The morning bombardment had started with the adjoining sector, but now they were landing closer and closer. He tried to push the fears out of his mind and concentrate upon writing a letter to his parents. The dugout was dark; he had only the light of one flickering candle. He used a penknife to sharpen the stub of his indelible pencil, and he gave a deep sigh.

But this introspection didn’t mean that he felt in any way sorry for himself. The last remnants of self-pity had been eliminated during his years at the cadet school. Pauli accepted life day by day as it came but that didn’t mean that he never asked himself why his life had for so long consisted of spartan food, strict discipline, and so little rest. A regime to which had lately been added gluey mud, mortal danger, and long periods of boredom. Pauli was at heart an easy-going, pleasure-loving fellow who wanted only to live and let live.

My dearest parents,

Thank you for the parcel. It arrived safely. It was so kind of Cook to knit the socks for me, but they are very big – two sizes too big. No matter, one of the other men will benefit. I shared the tin of meat with only my friend Alex but we had a little party to eat all the other food. You must not worry about me. I am many miles away from where the real fighting is taking place. Most of the time I am in Headquarters and cannot even hear the artillery fire

He stopped writing. Perhaps that was going too far. Even back in Brussels they could hear the artillery fire, and his parents might well know that. He added:

except when the wind blows from the west. Peter is coming to see me today. I will have lunch with him at Headquarters.

He wondered what to say next. Several times reduced almost to despair by the cold, filth, mud and cruel loss of friends, he’d attempted to write a letter that truthfully described what it was like here. But each time he’d abandoned the effort and scribbled the same sort of reassuring banalities that everyone else sent home to keep the family ignorant and happy. So he wrote:

The weather here is good for this time of year and the war is going well for us. I must end this letter now. It is very early in the morning and I have a lot to do.

I will write again – a longer letter – after Peter’s visit,
Your loving son,

Carefully he signed it and read it again before he put it into an envelope. He was always promising ‘a longer letter’ but he never wrote longer letters, just short thank-you notes. Though he wrote wonderful letters in his mind, he never got them on paper. He felt constantly guilty about neglecting his parents. He knew how much they liked to hear from him and how much they worried all the time. Did all sons feel such guilt about their relationship with their parents? Most specifically, did his brother, Peter, feel guilty about his relationship with them? He knew the answer to that even before asking the question. Peter didn’t neglect them. He wrote a long informative letter to them every week. Pauli had seen the letters piled up high on his father’s desk. They read them again and again. And yet he knew that they didn’t worry about Peter as they did about him, especially since Peter was taken off flying duties after the crash. Since Christmas 1916 Peter had been assigned to liaison duties in Brussels, and his life was no more dangerous than it would be at home in Berlin. Here on the front line, life was more hazardous; the regiment had lost fourteen officers in five weeks, five dead and nine wounded. From his pocket he took the postcard that Peter had sent arranging their meeting. For the thousandth time he made sure he had the date, time, and place right. He put the postcard away again with other cards from Peter that made a bundle so thick he couldn’t button his breast pocket over them. Ever since cadet school, Peter had sent postcards regularly: every two weeks, never more than three. Sometimes it was no more than a sentence – a joke, a greeting, a memory from the past, one of their nanny’s oft-repeated Scottish aphorisms. How did Peter know how important the cards were to him? Pauli never told him and never even responded to them. Peter, Peter, Peter. How he missed him.

‘Runner!’ The command was that of a Prussian officer. Pauli was always a little surprised to hear the voice coming from himself.

‘Herr Leutnant?’ The man almost fell down the steps and into the dugout. He was typical of the farm boys that made up most of the regiment. The rest of them were older men with families or physical disabilities that had kept them out of the war until last year, when the casualties meant that more and more men were needed. They were only half trained. The regiment should not be holding a section of the line: it should be at a training camp, where these fellows could learn to march and shoot. On the ranges, half of them couldn’t even hit the target, let alone score. The machine-gun teams were pitifully slow at stripping the guns or even at clearing them when they jammed. If the British infantry decided to attack on this sector, they would be able to walk through. Or at least that’s the way it appeared to those who hadn’t seen the state of the British soldiers facing them. But Pauli had spoken with enough British prisoners to know that the winter of endless rain, and the waterlogged trenches, had brought enemy morale down to a point where some Tommies were thankful for the prospect of a dry POW camp away from the fighting.

The theory held by the generals at Imperial Army HQ was that a few experienced NCOs and some trained Prussian officers for each company would work a miraculous transformation in this fighting force, but of course it wouldn’t. The ‘trained Prussian officers’ were no better than boys from cadet schools, some with less training than Pauli. And as for the experienced NCOs, they were too damned experienced. They were disillusioned veterans, many of them only recently discharged from hospital, men who had hoped to spend the rest of the war in safe jobs with training units. Now they were back in the front line, but instead of being with their comrades, they were wet-nursing this raggle-taggle bunch of stupid peasants, some of them not even Bavarians, kids with incomprehensible Austrian accents or unpronounceable Hungarian names. No wonder there were mutterings of discontent, Marxist leaflets, and every now and again, a wound that looked suspiciously like something that might have been self-inflicted.

He put the letter into an oilskin pouch to protect it from the mud, the rain and the runner’s filthy hands. ‘Take this letter to regimental Headquarters and tell the clerk to put it with the officers’ mail so that it goes off this morning. Do you understand?’ There was a crash that made the candle flicker and some dried pieces of mud fell from the lintels overhead. ‘That’s not very close: the other side of the railway lines … even farther, perhaps.’ It was an automatic reaction, done always to reassure whoever was nearby. Pauli buttoned his precious stub of indelible pencil into his jacket.

‘Yes, Herr Leutnant.’ The boy didn’t believe it, of course; the runners got about and knew what was happening. The British artillery were softening up the communications trenches so that no reserves would get here when they attacked. Rumours said that it would come in two or three days’ time. Lots of British patrolling lately – that was usually a sign of an impending attack. Pauli knew all about it because he was the only officer in the regiment who spoke fluent English. He was called upon to interrogate the prisoners or sort through the personal effects of the British dead before the things were sent back to the intelligence officers. Two days, three at the most. A sergeant from the South Wales Borderers had virtually admitted it to him.

The soldier took the oilskin packet and stumbled over his rifle butt, striking his helmet against the low doorway as he hurried up the steps and out along the trench. Pauli watched him without comment: Pauli, too, was inherently clumsy. He, too, stumbled up the steps more times than not. Why were some people like that, no matter how hard they tried. Pauli would have loved to be adroit and elegant, but he couldn’t even dance without stepping upon his partner’s feet.

As the antigas flap on the door swung back, a heavy smell of fresh cordite and the stink of the latrine buckets came into the dugout. Oh well, it was a change from the steady smell of unwashed bodies and putrefaction that was the normal atmosphere down here.

‘What’s the time?’ From one of the wooden bunks built into the far wall a figure swung his legs to the floor and then slowly emerged from the blanket that cocooned him. Alex Horner – Pauli’s close friend at the cadet school – had found himself attached to the same regiment. Both boys had hoped to be assigned to one of the better Prussian units – cavalry, guards, or dragoons – instead of this collection of conscripts. But they were together, and that was the one consolation in the whole miserable, tormented existence they led.

‘Next time I’m in Wertheims department store, I’ll get you a watch with an illuminated face,’ said Pauli sarcastically.

‘Well, that might be a long time,’ said Alex. He rubbed his chin to decide whether he needed a shave badly enough for the company commander to admonish him. He decided to risk it: seventeen-year-old chins did not show much stubble per day. Leutnant Alex Horner was already acquiring the look of the Prussian officer. A duel at cadet school had left him with a sabre cut along his jaw, and the lice-infested conditions here on the front line required him to have his head almost shaved. But he was not yet the austere, unbending Prussian figure: he smiled too much, for one thing, and his nose was pert and upturned, the sort of nose more often to be seen on farmers’ daughters than on Prussian officers.

‘It’s three-thirty-two,’ said Pauli.

‘What a terrible time to be awake.’

‘Stand-to in fifteen minutes.’ At dawn the front-line trenches had to be manned, because it was the best time for the British to attack. But, since the trenches were full of infantry, it was also a good time for the British to strafe them with a barrage of mortar shells.

Alex Horner groped on the floor to find his cigarettes. Together with the matches, he found them in his steel helmet. Unlike most of the soldiers, Alex Horner couldn’t sleep with his helmet on his head. When he’d got his cigarette lit, he tied up the laces of his boots and buttoned up his woollen cardigan, his jacket, and the overcoat in which he’d been sleeping. He moved slowly, as a man does when drunk. Stress, lack of rest, and the stodgy food so lacking in protein made them all a bit robotic.

‘If only the army had not disbanded their airships…’ said Alex. He put some eau de cologne on a dirty handkerchief and wiped his face with it.

‘Well, they have,’ said Pauli, who’d heard Alex’s sad story a hundred or more times.

‘My application was completed and approved. The physical exam would have been no more than a formality. I’m a hundred per cent fit; you know that, Pauli.’

‘I know,’ said Pauli. He couldn’t be too rude to his friend; they both needed someone to complain to. In the absence of any other sympathetic friends they told each other the same stories over and over again.

‘I’d be flying by now.’

‘Perhaps you could transfer to the Naval Airship Division.’

‘They’d never allow that, you know they wouldn’t.’

‘I’ll talk to my brother when I see him. Perhaps he could arrange something for you.’

‘I even bought those books on engine repair and maintenance.’

‘Airships are dangerous. My brother, Peter, was shot down.’

‘You talk to him. Perhaps if I was prepared to go in as a midshipman…’ They both knew that there was no possible chance that he’d be permitted to transfer to the navy, but by common consent they talked of it often.

‘Have you got your pistol belt and the flashlight? It’s time to go, Alex.’

‘It’s the monotony that gets me down. We’ll stand to and freeze for an hour; then we’ll spend ages while the captain inspects every rifle barrel.’

‘Not this morning; this is Easter Saturday. Wake up, Alex! We’re assigned to check the sentries and then be at the old supply line when the wiring party returns.’

Alex nodded, but he didn’t abandon his moaning. ‘Then, when the breakfast is coming, the British will mortar the communication trenches and those fools will drop our breakfast into the mud, the way they did three times last week. On Monday I only got a bread roll and half a cup of coffee.’

‘Don’t you ever think of anything else but food and drink, Alex?’

‘What else is there?’ It was Alex’s ‘morning moan’. Pauli had got used to his friend’s bad moods, which came immediately after waking. In another hour he’d be his normal cheery self again. Until then he needed to moan. ‘I suppose the planes will come over any time now.’

‘It’s too early. The attacks last week were planes coming back from patrol. The English patrol planes go out at dawn and come back about half an hour later. Perhaps the English pilots will stay in bed for Easter.’

‘Where are our planes?’

‘The British believe they must enter our airspace every morning. They say it keeps up their fighting spirit. They send the infantry patrols over to our trenches for the same reason. They are frightened that their soldiers will lose their appetite for the war unless they are sent often to fight us.’

‘Is that what you find out when you speak with the prisoners?’

‘They make no secret of it.’

‘Is Leutnant Brand on duty this morning?’ Alex asked, making the inquiry sound as casual as possible, and yet the imminent encounter with the dreaded Leutnant Brand was uppermost in the thoughts of both young men.

‘Yes, he’s duty officer.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Alex rubbed his beard again and regretted not shaving, for Leutnant Heinrich Brand was a tyrant, a cruel man who lost no opportunity to make the lives of his junior officers a misery. Brand was thirty-two years old, the son of a baker in a village near the Austrian border. He’d entered the Bavarian cavalry as a boy and risen to the rank of Feldwebel by 1914. It was a rank beyond which he would never have been promoted except for the coming of the war. By the end of December 1914 he was a senior NCO in the regimental training camp. But it was on the Eastern Front, in the fighting of early 1915, that he saved the life of his commanding officer. Attacking Cossacks cut his cavalry regiment to pieces as they retreated through woodland that became marsh and then an open piece of ground that gave the Russian cavalry a chance to demonstrate their superior skill and reckless courage. Brand got the Iron Cross and a commission for that day’s hard fighting. But the same officers who applauded Brand’s bravery did not want to share their mess with this coarse-accented villager, and Brand soon found himself amongst strangers. And this time he was not even in the cavalry.

It was dark and cold, and there was rain in the air. The wind was singing in the massed barbed wire that filled no-man’s-land. As Pauli and Alex plodded their way along the duckboards which made a slatted floor for the deep trench, both were thinking of Brand. The Leutnant saved his particular hatred for these two products of the Prussian army’s most exclusive officer-cadet school. Brand envied them. He would have given almost anything to have the panache, the style and the background – to say nothing of the proper Berlin accent – of the two youngsters.

‘I hate him,’ said Alex Horner as they negotiated the zigzag trenchline, the skirts of their greatcoats heavy with accumulated mud. The sky was clear with a thousand stars and a moon that was almost full and very yellow. The night was bitterly cold. Underfoot the duckboards had frozen hard into the mud, so that they didn’t sink under the boys’ weight the way they usually did in the daytime.

‘Not so loud,’ said Pauli. ‘Voices carry in the middle of the night like this. Last night I could hear the stretcherbearers taking the casualties back to the medical post near Regimental HQ, and that’s a long way away, isn’t it?’

‘What about that Englishman in no-man’s-land last week? Did you hear him sobbing?’

‘I heard him cursing,’ said Pauli. They were both speaking in whispers now as they plodded along the trench.

‘That was later,’ said Alex. ‘That was at the end.’

‘Imagine being out there with a leg shot off. Do you ever think about that, Pauli?’

‘No, I never think about it,’ said Pauli. In fact, like all the rest of them, he found that such ideas haunted his thoughts and gave him nightmares. The shouting and weeping of the mortally wounded Englishman had affected all who heard him. Even Leutnant Brand was heard to curse the dying man.

They reached the first sentry. He was standing on the fire step looking over the parapet. Even the farm boys could look heroic in such a pose, cloaked in a muddy blanket and as still as a statue. ‘Any sign of the wiring party?’ Pauli asked.

‘No, Herr Leutnant,’ the sentry answered without turning his head. Sentries soon learned how dangerous it was to make any sort of movement that might be seen by the British snipers. Twice in the last week snipers had killed sentries. Both times the casualties had been men wearing glasses. It was assumed that the moonlight – or in one case a flare – had glinted on the glass. One of the officers had suggested that men with eyeglasses be excused sentry duty, but in a second-rate unit like this, with so many men from lower medical categories, it would have been an unfair burden on the rest of them.

‘No movement anywhere, Herr Leutnant,’ said the sentry.

It was the same at the next sentry, and the next. But this didn’t mean that there was no one out there in the twisted, tangled chaos of no-man’s-land. The British patrols could move silently and swiftly. They used trench knives and clubs. More than once in the last month a British raiding party had come right over into the German front-line trenches and got out again before the alarm could be sounded. They were trying to get an officer prisoner: that was usually the reason for such raids: an officer prisoner and secret papers that might help their intelligence find the place where the German armies joined, for such a place was an ideal one to attack when the big offensive came.

‘Leutnant Brand should never have sent out a wiring party on a night like this,’ said Pauli. ‘It’s too light.’

‘The wire was broken.’

‘The wire is always broken. It’s murder to send men out to mend it on a night like this.’

They turned the corner and started down the ‘old supply line’. These trenches, captured from the British, were poorly made by German standards. The British infantry always improvised them, with only shallow dugout shelters roofed with corrugated iron sheets and none of the deep dugouts that were standard design when the German engineers constructed their front-line positions. No one liked this section of the front line. Apart from the inferior workmanship, the trench system was all the wrong way round: the old fire steps faced east and there were ‘saps’, bombing sections and machine-gun positions all on the wrong side, so that they were vulnerable to enemy gunfire. Worst of all was the smell. This section of the line was littered with ancient corpses that were integrated into the earthworks.

The much-feared Leutnant Brand was standing on the fire step in order to look across the endless shiny mud of no-man’s-land. He wasn’t using a periscope or the pierced steel that offered some protection. He liked to show how fearless he was: he liked to be thought of as brave to the point of madness. ‘Crazy Heini’, the men called him, and he was proud of that nickname – although he would have severely punished anyone heard using it.

He got down from the fire step. ‘Horner! Winter! You’re both late, you’ll go on report.’ They weren’t late of course – they were three minutes early – but there would be nothing gained from arguing with him. The major would, in any case, believe what Brand told him, or at least the major would pretend to believe it. The major was worn out; he did whatever was easiest, and arguing with Brand was heavy going. Brand knew the regulations word for word – he’d learned them when he was a junior NCO – and now the major had long since learned that he was no match for Brand’s sort of ‘lawyer’s talk’.

‘Young officers should be setting an example to the men,’ said Brand. He always said that, but each time he said it as if it was a new, fresh and original observation that should be carefully noted. ‘Horner! You haven’t shaved. You people think that you are a law unto yourselves. You think a Bavarian regiment isn’t good enough for you Prussians. Well, I’ll have to persuade you it is. And if punishment is the only way, then punishment it shall be!’ Brand did everything he could to speak like a gentleman, but when he got excited his Bavarian accent thickened.

Pauli looked at him. When he’d first heard about this Bavarian sergeant major who’d become an officer on the battlefield, he’d expected to see some red-faced, beer-bellied old fellow with a big nose and a huge moustache. But Brand was younger than the other company commanders, slim-hipped and rather handsome. His nose was thin and bony and his forehead high, with trimmed eyebrows and quick, crazy eyes. His eyes moved all the time, as if he was constantly expecting to be assaulted. When he took off his helmet, as he did when looking through the trench periscope, one could see that his hair was not cropped close to the skull in the way that he insisted all the others under his command had their hair cut. Brand’s hair was of medium length and wavy. Somehow, even here in the front line trenches, he always managed to find ways of keeping clean. He wore a long waterproof coat that he’d got from a British-officer prisoner – ‘trenchcoats’, the British called them – and under it his uniform, complete with Iron Cross medal on his pocket, was relatively clean and dry. In his hand Brand carried a riding crop with which he liked to point at people or things, prod soldiers who needed prodding, or simply slap his thigh reflectively. He slapped his thigh with it now.

‘You’re both going to work hard today, my friends. Winter will go back to the village and bring a burial party up to number-three post. It’s time we got rid of those bodies: it stinks down there.’ Slap, slap, went the riding crop against the skirt of the trenchcoat. He turned to Alex and nodded. ‘Horner! The major wants someone to supervise the detail rebuilding the long dugout. It should have been finished two days ago. Hurry them up. I’ll be along later to see what’s happening.’

Pauli said, ‘I’m going back to Divisional Headquarters today, Herr Leutnant. My brother is coming. The major gave permission.’

‘You’ll do as you’re told, Winter. I want those bodies buried tout de suite.’ Leutnant Brand liked to use French phrases; the officers in his cavalry regiment had all done so.

‘My brother is coming from Brussels. The major asked the colonel: it’s all official.’

‘The war is official, too,’ said Brand. He was enjoying himself now. He looked at both of them and gave a grim smile, as if inviting them to join in the fun. Then he slapped the skirt of his trenchcoat with the riding crop. ‘Family reunions take place with the commanding officer’s permission, but even then they are subject to the needs of the military situation. I don’t know if your brother is a slack, good-for-nothing nincompoop like you, Winter. He probably is. But unless he is a complete idiot he’ll know that the army comes first. Right, Winter? Understand now, Winter?’

Leutnant Brand was unusually agitated that morning and the reason for this became clear when the Vizefeldwebel came to report that the wiring party had still not returned. Brand went back to surveying no-man’s-land, but this time he used the trench periscope. The sky had gone blood-red and it was getting lighter every minute. If the wiring party – twelve men – were still alive somewhere out in the mud, their chances of surviving through the day were slight. The British would shoot up anything unusual out there; it was the standard practice for both sides. Anything that might be some new sort of weaponry was to be feared, ever since the tanks had appeared last year. And today the weather forecast said the wind was from the west, a light breeze, which would exactly suit the British if they decided on another gas attack. What would happen to the wiring party then? They had gone out wearing the bare minimum of equipment – some without helmets, even – and it was doubtful there would be one gas mask amongst the lot of them.

‘You two, get going!’ said Brand as he remembered that they were still waiting his orders. ‘And don’t let me see you slacking off. Remember what I said: you are going to set an example to the men.’

The Vizefeldwebel watched the exchange with a blank face, but Brand was not willing to let the old man stay out of it. As he watched the two officers hurrying back along the trench, he smiled to show that he was really a good fellow, an ex-Feldwebel who knew that young officers were lazy rogues. But the old man didn’t respond to the smile.

Once Pauli and Alex got back to where the communication trenches started, Pauli said, ‘I so wanted to see my brother. I miss him. It’s nearly a year and he’s come all the way from Brussels.’

‘Just go,’ advised Alex. He knew what the meeting meant to his friend: Pauli had been talking of little else for the last two weeks. ‘The burial party don’t need you to watch them work. They won’t slack on that detail: you can be sure of it. They’ll work to get that stinking job done as quickly as possible.’

‘They’ll need an officer to collect the identity discs from the bodies,’ said Pauli doubtfully.

‘Rubbish!’ said Alex. ‘The NCO will do that. It’s Winkel, a good fellow.’

‘Brand will find out.’

‘How will he find out? Will you tell him? Will I tell him? Winkel won’t make trouble.’

‘He’ll go and check on the burial.’

‘Not Brand. He won’t go near number three until they are all buried. Brand doesn’t like that sort of job. That’s why he always gives them to us to do: it’s the worst thing he can think of to do to us.’

‘I promised Peter….’

‘Go! Go! I told you, go.’

‘I’ll go as far as the village and talk to the NCO in charge of the burial party.’

‘I told you, Winkel is in charge. What are you going to say to him? That you’re frightened of Brand but you are going to disobey him anyway?’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘Tell no one. Get the ration truck from the village and go to HQ. Is that where you’re meeting your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, get going. It’s a long walk. I’ll cover for you. I’ll have plenty of opportunities to get away from the party rebuilding the long dugout. It will take them ages yet. You know the way it’s flooding. Only an idiot like Brand would make them persevere with that job.’ He slapped his friend on the arm.

‘Thanks,’ said Pauli. His fears and doubts began to fade as he hurried back along the trench towards Divisional HQ. He decided to consult his brother about dealing with Leutnant Brand. Peter would know how to handle him; Peter knew everything. The more he thought about it the happier he was. The prospect of seeing his brother again filled him with joy.

It was a long way to HQ. To start with, it was just over half a kilometre along communication trenches before the road was reached, but in the drizzling April rain it seemed much farther. At places the trench walls had collapsed and there was a constant movement of men coming the other way. Pauli had to ease his way past ration details and had to wait while reinforcements came through, so it was nearly an hour before the trenches gave way to a sunken road. The road – little more than a track in places – was unseen by even the best positioned of the British artillery observers, and safe from everything except the odd salvo of twenty-five-pounder fire that greeted any dust that was raised at the crossroads. And in this weather there was no dust.

At the crossroads were three military policemen. Two of them were squatting in a dugout shelter roofed with galvanized iron. All three were young, not much older than Pauli. Chains at their collars supported the small metal gorgets that were the badge of their trade and caused their fellow soldiers to call such unpopular men ‘chained dogs’. But theirs was an unenviable job. They were there not only to check the papers of any soldiers leaving the front-line area but also to keep the traffic moving through this place in which the British artillerymen were so interested. Such a task would produce more regular casualties than even the front-line infantry suffered. Pauli felt somewhat better to find that there were more dangerous jobs than his own.

Pauli asked one of the policemen the way. He knew the way, but he still felt nervous about deliberately disobeying Brand’s order, and talking to the military policeman was somehow reassuring. The policeman – a well-fed fellow with a pale, pocked face and a straggling moustache – welcomed a chance to talk. He was not insubordinate, nor was he properly deferential to the difference in rank. Pauli had found this same man to man attitude among some of the men in his regiment, often the older men with families. It was usually the mark of a man who has resigned himself to the inevitability of death.

‘The general found a conspicuous landmark for himself,’ said the military policeman. There was a note of derision in his remark. Conspicuous landmarks were not eagerly sought after in this wartorn terrain. ‘A chateau with two pointed towers …I was on duty there until last month. You’ll see the ruins of a church as you get into the village. Then there’s the officers’ brothel – you’ll see the signs – and then look for the sentries on the right. But it’s a long way yet.’ He didn’t ask to see Pauli’s papers. Pauli wondered if an officer could be shot for such disobedience. With Brand quoting the appropriate rules and regulations, it seemed highly likely. He wished he hadn’t come, but it was too late now.

‘You’ll get a ride on the ration wagon,’ said the policeman. ‘It will be coming back this way. Wait in the shelter, if you want to.’

‘I’ll keep going,’ said Pauli. The other two policemen might not be so negligent about his written orders, or rather, his lack of any.

‘I’m not even German,’ said the policeman. ‘I was born in Vienna.’ It was hardly necessary to say it: the man spoke with a strong nasal, Viennese accent.

‘So was I,’ said Pauli.

‘Really? I wish we were there now, don’t you?’

It was at this point that Pauli felt the policeman’s familiarity had become insubordinate, but even now he didn’t want to upset the fellow. ‘Soon we will be,’ said Pauli.

‘Yes, Herr Leutnant,’ said the policeman. Sensing the young officer’s resentment, he saluted. The rain made his helmet shiny and ran down his face like tears. Of course the man didn’t believe that Pauli had been born in Vienna. Pauli had never had a Viennese accent – although he could mimic one with commendable accuracy. He’d grown up to know the voices of Berlin, and his voice, although not his manner, was that of the Officer Corps.

By the time he started walking again, it was raining heavily. He passed the bloated, rotting corpses of two huge horses. Alongside, a broken wheel stood like a grave marker. The stench was overpowering. Pauli buttoned his overcoat tight against his neck and took off his steel helmet to wipe the sweat from his head and face. To some extent he was sweating with the exertion of his walk, but he felt hot with fear, too.

Only a few hundred yards past the crossroads, he got a ride on the ration wagon that was going back to the depot empty. He sat up beside the driver – a taciturn man, thank goodness – and watched the rain-washed Zeeland horses plod along the ridged track. Their pace was little faster than he’d made on foot, but up here on the driver’s platform was better than picking his way between the submerged potholes and deep mud patches. The landscape was dull, misty and monochrome. There was little movement except for military traffic on the road and a few peasants who, despite everything, clung desperately to their patches of soil.

It was nearly 9:00 a.m. by the time he reached Divisional HQ, situated – as the policeman had promised – in a grand house. There was a large paddock and a dozen magnificent cavalry horses grazing there. They looked at Pauli as he walked past, then went back to their fodder. Clerks were bivouacked in the orchard, and there was a soup kitchen sited in what must once have been a herb garden. Pauli didn’t want to go to the officers’ canteen in case he saw someone from his regiment, so he asked the Feldwebel for something to eat and got a metal cup of hot dried-pea soup with two miserable bits of sausage floating in it. Both soup and sausage were bland and almost tasteless, but it warmed him.

In the grand, marble-paved entrance hall an NCO wearing the smart uniform of a Bavarian rifle regiment was seated at a table. Around him was a constant traffic of messengers, while noisy young staff officers were grouped at the foot of the great staircase. Their voices were not of the sort that Pauli had heard on the parade ground at Lichterfelde; they were the shrill, excited voices of wealthy young aristocrats. The NCO stared at Pauli. Men straight from the battlefield were seldom seen this far behind the lines, and the NCO clerk – who’d not been to the trenches – had never before seen an officer so dirty.

After his inquiries Pauli went up the magnificent staircase and found Peter in an upstairs room talking to an elegant-looking captain. The captain was about forty years old and wore the badges of a heavy cavalry regiment. His striped armband marked him as a staff officer from Corps HQ. Peter and the captain were laughing together as Pauli went into the office and saluted.

Peter! This was the moment he’d risked so much for. This was the meeting he’d waited for so impatiently. Peter! He wanted to throw his arms around his beloved brother and hug him, but that wasn’t something he could do in the presence of a stranger. So he stood anxiously smiling at Peter.

‘So this is the brother?’ said the captain, and both men laughed again. Pauli envied the way his elder brother could make friends so easily. Peter was able to bridge the gap that rank and age created. Peter could even laugh and joke with his father, whereas Pauli was always treated like a baby, both by family and by strangers. Whenever Pauli got away with some misdeed or other, it was always by means of his charm, but Peter talked to other men as an equal, and that was what Pauli so admired. This relaxed and sophisticated elder brother of his would never have endured the bullying of Leutnant Brand; he would have found some way of dealing with him. But God only knows how.

Peter stood up and clasped Pauli’s offered hand. ‘Pauli,’ he said, ‘Pauli.’

Without taking his eyes from his brother for more than a moment, Pauli sat down on a hard wooden chair. It always seemed strange to sit on a proper chair after a long spell in the trenches.

‘I’ll leave you together,’ said the staff officer. ‘There’s not much doing over the Easter weekend. Most of the staff are probably in Brussels on leave.’

The friendly staff officer gave Peter and Pauli the use of the little office room and even sent a soldier to serve them coffee and schnapps.

‘You’re in a terrible state,’ said Peter when they were alone together. He was staring at his younger brother’s dark-ringed eyes and shaved head and at his rain-drenched greatcoat and mud-caked boots. As Pauli loosened his collar, he caught sight of a dirty undervest, too. ‘Haven’t you had time to change into a clean uniform?’ It was the voice of the grown-up brother admonishing the baby about his gravy-stained bib, but Pauli didn’t allow the condescension to spoil things.

For a moment Pauli didn’t reply. He knew, of course, that the civilians didn’t realize that the front line was no more than a filthy ditch from which the sound of bronchial coughing could be heard across no-man’s-land, and where pneumonia was as deadly as enemy bullets and shells. But that his brother should think it was someplace where clean uniforms and pressed linen were available shocked him. ‘There was no time,’ said Pauli. He wished he could take Peter to the trenches and show him what it was like. He’d never understand otherwise. No one could visualize it. It was useless to explain.

‘It’s an officer’s first task to set an example,’ said Peter primly. ‘Surely they taught you that at cadet school.’ Oh, God, how like Leutnant Brand he sounded, thought Pauli. But Peter smiled suddenly and the mood changed. ‘You’ve grown so big, Pauli. So big across the shoulders…’ Was that Peter’s polite way of saying that Pauli had not grown much taller? Pauli had always wanted to be as tall as his brother, ever since he could remember, but now he knew he would never be tall, slim, and elegant: he’d always be short, thickset, broad, and clumsy.

‘You’re promoted,’ said Pauli. Perhaps his elder brother’s shiny new gold ring on that so very clean, neatly pressed naval uniform had gone to his head.

‘Oberleutnants are little more than office boys in Brussels, where I work,’ said Peter. But, in a gesture that belied his modesty, he brushed his sleeve self-consciously as he spoke.

‘You’re looking well, Peter.’ He made no mention of his elder brother’s mutilated hand and tried not to look at it. Peter’s injury frightened him in some way that the firing line did not. Peter was family: an injury to him injured Pauli.

‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be back on flying duties. As an Oberleutnant with my experience, I’d probably get command of one of the new high altitude zeppelins. I even tried for the High Seas Fleet. But the damned medical board won’t clear me. Sometimes I wonder whether Father hasn’t found some way of keeping me from active duty.’

‘There’s no doubt he’d try if he got the chance,’ said Pauli. They both knew that their father would have done anything to keep Pauli from the Western Front, and for Pauli his efforts had obviously failed.

‘Now that the army have stopped using airships, Father probably has less influence with them. But the navy still listen to him.’

‘When did you last see him?’ asked Pauli. He scratched himself. Fleas were a fact of life in the trenches – and lice, too – but Pauli noticed his brother’s look of horror as he realized he was lousy.

‘Christmas. I got seven days’ leave. Everyone hoped that you’d come home too.’

‘Training. I got a twenty-four-hour pass for Christmas. No one was permitted to leave the barracks. Even the colonel stayed.’

‘The infantry are winning the war,’ said Peter.

‘We’re not winning the war,’ said Pauli. ‘We’re being shot at, and we’re shooting back. We are not winning the war. We will win it, of course – no one doubts that – but for the time being it’s a sort of stalemate. Neither side advances more than a few metres, and the English leave battalions of dead on the barbed wire.’

‘At least the Russians are kaputt,’ said Peter.

‘We don’t get much news where we are.’

‘It started in March; there were food riots in Petrograd, and when the troops were called out they shot their officers and joined the mob.’

‘My God!’

‘You didn’t hear?’

‘Only that the Tsar abdicated and a provisional government was formed. The troops joined in? It’s true?’

‘Including the Imperial Guard. Some say it started in the Imperial Guard but even in Brussels it’s difficult to get reliable news. Each newspaper story contradicts the one before. A fellow I know on the Supreme Command at Spa told me the little I know.’

‘What will happen now?’

‘The Russians can’t go on fighting much longer. In Berlin there are rumours that the Kaiser has arranged for Marxist revolutionaries to be given safe passage across Germany to return home to Russia.’

‘The Kaiser would allow such a thing? Never!’

‘The revolutionaries have always been opposed to the war – the world brotherhood of man, and so on. So if they took power in Petrograd, they would immediately order a cease-fire. If we have no enemy to fight in the East, all our divisions would be turned to face the French and the British. The war could end within the month.’

‘It sounds too good to be true.’

Peter nodded his agreement and said, ‘What will you do when it ends, Pauli? Will you stay in the army?’

‘What else am I fit for? I have no head for banking or business and even if I did have, I’m not sure that I’d get along well enough with Father to be working alongside him every day. What about you?’

‘No more piano playing.’ He held up his gloved hand. ‘I’ll go to college. If Father wants me to study law, I’ll do it. Then, if I don’t get along with him, I can go into a law practice somewhere.’

‘Tell me about dear Mama…. It’s such a long time.’

‘She still has the awful American accent, but her German is much better now. She found people would be rude to her, thinking she was British. It made her improve her German in a way that nothing else ever did.’

‘Rude to Mama? Who would be rude to her?’

‘People standing in the food lines.’

‘Mama standing in the food lines?’

‘Mother has changed, Pauli. Just as the Jews have become so determined to prove their patriotism, so Mama and other foreign-born Germans feel that they must outdo everyone else in the struggle to win the war. She helps the wounded soldiers to write letters home, she rolls bandages, and even makes speeches at War Loans rallies.’

‘But she was so sick.’

‘Then the war has cured her sickness. When you go back to Berlin, you will not recognize her, Pauli.’

‘And what of Father?’

‘Work, work, work. Did you hear that Hauser joined the army?’

‘Old Hauser? Father’s valet? But he must be at least forty years old.’

‘Thirty-eight years old. I’m surprised they took him, but he shaved off that awful beard and gave a false age to the recruiting officer. He’s now a driving instructor at a transport school in Frankfurt. And from what I hear from Father, he’s lording it with stories about how he used to drive Papa’s old Itala.’

‘How does Father manage without him?’

‘It’s amazing. Father drives himself almost everywhere.’

‘And women?’

His brother hesitated. It was a taboo subject, or had been until now. ‘He goes to Vienna a great deal,’ said Peter finally.

‘I thought that was finished.’

‘So did poor Mama, I think.’

‘I wish Father could see how ridiculous it makes him look,’ said Pauli. He loved his father and respected him to the point of reverence, but now he’d reached the age at which he judged him, too.

‘Does it make him look ridiculous? Most of his friends seem to admire and envy him. We are the only ones who think him ridiculous, and that’s just because we feel sorry for Mama.’

‘Perhaps she would have been happier with the Englishman.’

‘Which Englishman?’

‘Surely you guessed that the Englishman, Piper, wanted her to go away with him.’

‘Mama?’

‘Mama had a love affair with the Englishman. At Travemünde, when we lost the Valhalla.’

‘Are you crazy, Pauli?’

‘It took me a long time to understand what had happened between them. But now I look back at it, I can see how desperately unhappy she was for years afterwards.’

‘The Englishman? The spy?’

‘He was no spy. That was just Papa’s way of attacking him.’

‘Are you saying that Mama had a love affair with the Englishman and that Papa knew about it?’

‘I found his wristwatch under Mama’s bed….’ There, he’d said it. A thousand times it had been on the tip of Pauli’s tongue to reveal the secret, but now he’d said it. And now he regretted it.

Peter closed his eyes. ‘It’s incredible,’ he said at last.

‘Incredible or not, it’s true. I think Mama was afraid I would blurt out something that would betray her secret.’

‘But you never did?’

‘I didn’t understand the significance of finding the watch there until years later. But then, when Mama took the chloroform in the summer of 1914, and Frau Wisliceny came round to look after her…That night, when I went in to kiss Papa good night, I noticed that he was piecing together torn fragments of a letter. It must have been a letter to Mama from the Englishman.’

‘I wish you hadn’t told me,’ said Peter. ‘I feel besmirched by it.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Pauli. ‘Does Mama have no right to be with someone who loves her?’

‘She has Father.’

‘And Father has half a dozen other women. He has no real, deep love for Mama. Sometimes I think he might have married her only for the Rensselaer money.’

Peter was affronted. He could hardly believe that Pauli had changed so much. Pauli had always been in awe of father. ‘If you were not my brother I’d call you out for saying that.’

‘A duel?’ Pauli laughed. ‘You think I’d care about losing my life in a duel? Where I am, I see men maimed and dying every day. I stood next to a sentry last week while a shell splinter trepanned him. His brains spattered into my face. You complain about my dirty uniform. Do you know what the stains on my jacket are? Blood; the blood of boys who forget to lower their head at the right time, or make too much noise mending the wire at night. Would you like to know about the stains on my trousers, Peter? Faeces! I shit myself with fear every time I hear the whistle of a mortar bomb or shell, or hear at night the movement of a few rats, which might in reality be a British raiding party coming to bury a trench knife in my throat. It’s quick and quiet, the throat, you see. You learn how to cut a man’s throat while holding a hand very tightly over his mouth so that he doesn’t scream.’

‘You did this, Pauli?’ His elder brother’s eyes were wide and his face had gone pale. ‘Killed with a knife?’

‘Half a dozen times. I have a superior officer – a contemptible cad – who thinks young Lichterfelde graduates like me should be exposed to maximum danger. He tells us that. He also told me that I mustn’t come here today. I suppose that shocks you, too. I came here today – in this dirty uniform of which you so disapprove – having defied the lawful orders of a superior officer. And I shall do it again whenever it suits me.’

‘You are insane, Pauli.’

‘No, I’m not insane, but sometimes I think His Majesty must be insane to continue with this mad war.’

‘Pauli, you must see a doctor. You are insane.’ Peter looked round fearfully, astounded to hear such treasonable talk from his young brother.

‘Perhaps you’re right. Then come to the front line with me, Peter, and perhaps you’ll become insane, too. But I promise that you’ll lose all fears of death, disgrace or anything else that fate has waiting for us.’ Pauli reached forward to take the glass of schnapps that the captain had sent to them, and he downed it in one swallow.

When Peter spoke again, his voice was soft and low, his tone more conciliatory. ‘Whatever may be the truth of it, Pauli, I beg you, for your own sake and for that of the family, to leave such thoughts unspoken. It can be very dangerous. People might even think you are mixed up with these crackpot radical groups who are so outspoken against the war.’

‘After this war I want things to be different, very different, but I’m not a Spartacist, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I know you’re not. That man Liebknecht is a traitor and a swine. It’s a good thing he’s gone to prison. But now the Tsar’s been deposed, everyone who says anything against the war is lumped together with the revolutionaries. In the North Sea Fleet we have already had some serious insubordination, bordering on mutiny. The admiral jumped on it vigorously, I’m glad to say. I was sent to Wilhelmshaven with the legal team. Do you know who I saw there? Fritz Esser.’

‘Fritz? That rogue.’ Pauli laughed. ‘Was he the ringleader? With all his hero-worshipping talk about his precious Karl Liebknecht, I wonder how the navy ever accepted him.’

‘If he was the ringleader he was too cunning to be caught. He’s found himself some soft job in the supply branch and is already a petty officer.’

‘A petty officer. I thought he was illiterate.’

‘Esser? Of course not, Pauli. Can’t you remember all those books and pamphlets he’d read about the coming revolution?’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘You thought the world of him.’

‘We both did,’ said Pauli, ‘but we laughed at him too.’

‘I’m not laughing now, Pauli. Esser and his ilk are dangerous men. Make no mistake, Germany has many such uneducated, treacherous fools, who will sell out their country if they get the chance.’

‘Sell out their country? To what?’

‘I don’t know…they don’t know, either …some fantasy about a world revolution and the brotherhood of mankind. They want power, Pauli. I saw these people at close hand when we were preparing the court-martial evidence in Wilhelmshaven. Many of them were simple men – stokers mostly – but among them were some trained agitators, well equipped to argue their crackpot political theory with lawyers, or anyone else.’

‘It’s all finished now?’

Peter glanced round nervously. ‘No, it’s not finished, I’m afraid. We put a few troublemakers behind bars, but there are too many Essers at large. Back home, civilians are working regular twelve-hour days and food is very short, thanks to the British naval blockade. So many tired and hungry workers provide opportunities for rabble-rousers. Unless conditions improve soon, I’m afraid we’ll see more and more trouble from servicemen and civilians.’

‘I’ve never heard anything of this before, Peter.’

‘I didn’t intend to talk about it.’

‘We don’t hear anything at the front.’

‘This revolution in Russia will give Liebknecht and the Rosa Luxemburg woman encouragement to renew their efforts. The radicals will bide their time, and when they make their bid for power they’ll be ready to spill blood. Not only their own blood, either!’

The two of them sat for several minutes, looking at each other and drinking the delicious coffee that was available to these lucky men who fought their war behind desks. Then there were loud voices in the corridor, the sort of anxious exchanges seldom heard in these quiet corridors. Suddenly the door opened and the staff captain came in, looking agitated. With no more than a nod to the two officers, he grabbed papers from a tray on his desk and retrieved others from the top of a cabinet. ‘The Americans have declared war,’ he said over his shoulder as he sorted through his papers.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Peter. It was impossible to take in. America was thousands of miles away, and their army was negligible. Even if their army was enlarged, the U boats would make sure the Americans never got to Europe.

‘The American Congress ratified it yesterday. What a thing to happen at Eastertime!’ He threw papers into a file. ‘Do you realize what it means?’

‘Will they send armies to Europe?’ said Pauli. Already they were stretched to the limit to hold the front.

The captain said, ‘We must disengage from the Russians and crush the French with one quick, massive offensive before the Americans arrive.’ It sounded like something he’d been told.

‘Is such a thing possible?’ said Peter.

‘We will discover in good time,’ said the captain. He dropped a handful of papers against the desktop to get them straightened. ‘If we haven’t won the war by Christmas, it will be the end of the Fatherland. The end of everything we’re fighting for.’ Peter looked at the staff officer and was disturbed by his demeanour. Perhaps the Americans would make a difference. There were so many of them, and their resources were limitless.

As the captain went out through the door, Pauli could see, at the top of the grand staircase, the general who commanded the division and two aides. They were magnificently attired: swords, Pickelhauben, gleaming boots, and chestfuls of orders and decorations. He got only the briefest glimpse of the three men, but all his life Pauli remembered the scene in every small detail, even the way in which the general was holding his Turkish cigarette in a jade holder.

The two brothers had not resumed their conversation when they heard the distant explosion of an enemy shell. The rumble of gunfire had been a background to their talk, but this one was nearer, about three miles away. They went to the window in time to see the plume of brown smoke that marked its fall. By that time another shellburst shook the glass. The second round landed only slightly closer.

Peter said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve been on the receiving end of it.’

‘A heavy-calibre gun,’ said Pauli. ‘Somewhere up there a couple of men in an observation plane are trying to locate us. I don’t know why they find it so difficult: a big mansion like this with two big spires.’

‘It’s not so easy when you are up there,’ said Peter. ‘In this sort of poor light, through the overcast, it all looks grey. In evening or morning sunlight the shadows make it easier.’

‘Then why do they always come over in such bad weather?’ said Pauli.

Peter gave a grim smile. It seemed so safe and simple to those who stayed on the ground. ‘The poor devils want to disappear into the clouds if our fighters get near them or the anti-aircraft fire does.’ As he said it, small black puffs of flak appeared in the sky to the south, but they could see no sign of the artillery-spotting plane.

‘The fliers won’t hang around long,’ said Pauli. ‘And these long-range guns can fire only a few rounds at a time. Then the barrels are worn out. War is a damned expensive business, as the taxpayers are discovering.’

‘When we win, the French will pay reparations, as they did last time.’

‘Ah! When we win,’ said Pauli.

They stood in silence, looking at the shattered landscape. The grounds of the château had been beautifully cultivated for a couple of hundred years, but now the whole place had been ravaged by the soldiers. The orchard was no more than tree stumps, the lawn a camp, and everywhere a quagmire. Farther away, the woodland had been scavenged for firewood through three winters of war; and the country roads, built for carts and carriages, were churned by endless divisional horse-drawn traffic and the occasional staff car and truck.

‘Was it terrible?’ asked Pauli, still staring out the window. ‘The zeppelin flights, the raids over England, and the crash: was it terrible?’

‘The raids were all right. I didn’t realize what danger we were in until, on the final one, I saw an airship burn in the sky.’ Peter’s voice was different now: the voice Pauli remembered from when they’d exchanged confidences in the darkness of the nursery. ‘I was so frightened, Pauli, that my hands were shaking. She was gone…. The whole airship was gone in a few seconds. So many friends…’

‘And you crashed.’

‘That wasn’t so bad but they operated on my hand three times and I was convinced that I would relive my fears … scream or reveal my cowardice under the anaesthetic.’

‘And did you?’

‘God knows.’

‘Papa told me that most of your crew were killed.’

‘We were hit over the English coast – gunfire – the control gondola was damaged and we lost some of the officers. We limped back across the North Sea, sinking lower all the time. I thought we’d get home in one piece, but it was not to be. Most of the casualties came when we hit the trees. The observation officer, an elderly chap named Hildmann – the staff captain just now put me in mind of him – was killed. While he was alive I didn’t ever give Hildmann a thought, but after he was dead I realized how much I owed to him. He’d looked after me right through all the training flights and on our first war missions over England. After a man is dead you can’t say thank you.’

‘And Hennig was with you?’

‘He survived, the insolent little swine.’

‘And he’s married Lisl Wisliceny, I hear.’

‘Yes, a flashy ceremony – Frau Wisliceny arranged it all, of course – and a big reception in the Adlon afterwards.’

‘Mama wrote me a letter.’

‘Mama had to go: Frau Wisliceny is her best friend. She’s a fine woman. Yes, Mama went, but Papa was in Friedrichshafen with the airship people.’ Peter said it with satisfaction. He was pleased that his father had found a reason to stay away from the wedding of the hateful Hennig.

‘Did you want to marry her?’

‘Lisl? Yes, once I did. Or at least I thought I did. But then, as I realized the way in which she was playing a game with me and Hennig – playing us off one against the other – I didn’t love her any more.’

‘They’re all pretty girls, the Wislicenys.’

‘I was close to Inge once…’ He turned suddenly. ‘By God! I’ve just thought of something. If America has declared war, Mama is an enemy alien. They might make us resign our commissions, Pauli.’

‘You’re a selfish pig, Peter. Instead of worrying about your commission you should be worrying about poor Mama. She must be feeling terrible about it. Let’s pray she’ll not be sent to an internment camp like the English civilians have been.’

‘Yes, of course, you’re right. I should have been thinking of her. But it will affect us, too, Pauli. It could make things very difficult for both of us.’

A light tap came and the office door opened immediately. A man stepped inside, a formidable figure, a captain, fortyish, with hard grey eyes and a mouth like a rat trap. He nodded to Peter and without any preliminaries asked Pauli for his papers. Pauli knew it was the end for him as soon as he saw the metal gorget at his neck. A Feldgendarmerie officer complete with Bavarian-style shako, and sword hung with ornamental knot. ‘You are absent without leave, Leutnant Winter. You have absented yourself from your post while on active service. From the front line …It’s a death-penalty offence. I suppose you know that?’ A slight Bavarian accent: it wasn’t the voice or the manner of a career soldier, but there was that touch of informality that professional policemen use to make apprehended men amenable. Pauli guessed that he’d once been a senior police officer in Munich or some such town.

Pauli didn’t reply. He knew what was expected of a Prussian officer. He stood rigidly at attention, as he’d stood for so many hours on the parade ground at Lichterfelde. He’d known, deep down, that it was going to happen, and now it had happened. His guts were churning, but in some ways it was a relief. Now all he had to do was face his punishment. He’d always been better able to face the consequences than to worry about them.

He had plenty of time to think about what he’d done. He was held for two nights in the cells at Divisional HQ before facing his court-martial. But for his colonel, Pauli would probably have faced a firing squad. It was the colonel – prematurely aged from sending so many youngsters into battle – who gave such a glowing account of Pauli’s bravery and devotion to duty. It was the colonel who put such emphasis on Pauli’s extreme youth, and it was the colonel who arranged that Leutnant Brand did not appear in person.

But Brand’s written deposition was carefully worded. He must have spent many hours upon the document, and he covered every eventuality, even to the extent of finding the military policeman with whom Pauli had spoken at the crossroads.

The verdict was inescapable.

The sentence came like a slap in the face, but Pauli didn’t flinch. Six months with a Punishment Battalion. Everyone knew that a spell with a Punishment Battalion was intended as a deferred death sentence. Such units were used only where the fighting was most bitter and the personnel were considered expendable. But the one consolation was that his Field Post Office address didn’t reveal what had happened, so his parents believed he was simply transferred to another regular infantry regiment.

And thus it was that Pauli endured the worst of the fighting of that year, so that afterwards some men did not believe that he could be a veteran of so many infamous fields of battle. But he did not survive the year unharmed. Though his skin was intact, his soul was hardened – ‘as hard as Krupp steel,’ he sometimes claimed after a few drinks. He had learned to suffer without complaint, to hurt without whimpering, and to kill without emotion.

And yet, paradoxically, there were aspects of him that stayed unchanged. Outwardly he remained genial, careless, clumsy Pauli. He was too anxious to please ever to become really sophisticated. And now more than ever he relished the simple pleasures of life. Unlike his brother, Peter – who was austere, cultivated and brimful of ambition – Pauli served his sentence and went back to active duty asking no more than to sit down now and again to a big bowl of beef stew, smoke twenty cigarettes a day and have an extra half-hour in bed on Sunday morning.

1918

‘The war is won, isn’t it?’

Leutnant Pauli Winter had never been in no-man’s-land like this before. He’d never known it in the full foggy raw light of morning. Like all the other front-line infantry, he’d come here only at night, on patrols to mend the great jungle of rusty barbed wire, which was constantly damaged by shell and mortar fire, or to raid the enemy trenches. Always under cover of darkness.

Until now his world had consisted only of narrow trenches and dark dugouts. The sky, seasonally grey, azure, or black with rain clouds, had been only a narrow slot framed by the muddy edges of the trench parapet. No one in his right mind raised his head above the parapet to stare across at where the unseen English inhabited their own subterranean dominion.

It was impossible to remember all the stories he’d heard about no-man’s-land. There were stories about fierce animals that were said to live out here, skulking in their warrens and emerging by night to feast on the dead and dying. And certainly some of the noises they’d all heard encouraged the belief. Other soldiers’ stories said there were men living out here in this great churned-up rubbish tip. Deserters of all nationalities were said to have formed a community, a bandit gang, who lived deep in the ground, stole money, watches and personal possessions from the bodies that littered the ground, and fed upon stores plundered from both sides of the line. It was all nonsense, of course, but hugging the ground out here, the barrage whistling overhead, the earth stinking of cordite, faeces and decomposing flesh, made such yarns seem only too likely.

But today was March 21, 1918, the start of the great attack that was going to break the British-held front line and end the war with a victory for the Kaiser. Pauli and two of his company – his runner and his youthful sergeant major – were crouched in a shell crater about a hundred metres in front of the German lines. The rest of his company were similarly hidden nearby, and so were other ‘Storm companies’ crouching unseen in no-man’s-land all along the front line.

The three men had their hands clamped over the sides of their heads to protect their eardrums against the deafening roar of the German guns. The preparatory bombardment had been going on for nearly five hours. Now it was nine-forty and the guns would stop, and in the pearly light Pauli would lead his men into the attack.

‘Nothing could have lived through that,’ shouted Feldwebel Lothar Koch as the artillery fire lessened. Koch was young – he’d given a false age to get into the army – a pimply fellow with a square protruding jaw that moved as he chewed on a plug of tobacco. Partly due to the immense pride his promotion had given him, he was still optimistic about the outcome of the war. Deep down in his heart, young Koch entertained the hope of being commissioned, or at least becoming a noncommissioned deputy officer by the time he took part in the promised victory parade through conquered Paris. He looked at the other two men with his mournful eyes. They both stared back at him blankly. ‘Nothing could have lived through that,’ repeated Koch.

Pauli touched the silk stockings under his collar: black, a pair of them knotted to form a long scarf that wound around his neck five times. It prevented the collar of his uniform from chafing his neck, and also reminded him of a glorious few hours in Brussels with a girl he’d met in church! He looked at his pocket watch – wristwatches did not survive in these conditions – and up at the heavy fog. Thank God for it. He dragged himself to his feet. His uniform was caked with mud; his canvas bag of stick grenades felt heavier than ever. ‘Bugler!’ he shouted and from a muddy hillock nearby the bugler slowly pushed up through a chrysalis of heavy mud. ‘Sound the advance.’

On every side German ‘storm troops’ emerged from the incredible collection of broken debris that littered the ground. They met with the clattering sound of a British Lewis gun and some intermittent rifle fire from Tommies who had not been rendered useless by the artillery’s systematic destruction of the British front line trenches. But the fog was too thick for the British to see what was happening, and the fire that greeted their advance was aimed into the white mist, so that only a few unlucky Germans screamed and fell. Pauli heard calls for stretcherbearers and a bugle sounding the advance.

‘Is the company advancing?’ Pauli asked the young Feldwebel. There was mud in his mouth and he spat it out and wiped his face with a dirty lace handkerchief. Her handkerchief! Her name was Monike. She spoke the Belgian sort of Plattdeutsch that he could understand. A tall, slim, shy creature with wonderful green-grey eyes, heart-shaped face, and all the mysterious promises of a first love. She’d taken him home and given him chicken soup that her mother had left on the stove for her. Thick chicken soup with beans and carrots. He loved Monike. He thought of her every day. And wrote her long letters, every one of which he carefully tore up.

‘Yes, Herr Leutnant. The company is advancing.’ Koch could see through the fog no better than his company commander, but they both knew that the men would do as they were ordered. They were Germans, and their readiness to obey instructions was a measure of their civilization, and their tragedy.

Pauli kept running over the uneven ground. With the swirling white fog wrapped round him, he stumbled into pot holes and tripped over the roots of trees, sandbags, corpses, balks of ancient timbers, and large sheets of corrugated iron that, together with untold other stuff, littered this old battlefield. The intelligence reports said no-man’s-land was two hundred metres wide at this place, but now it seemed much wider.

Sergeant Major Koch, a thin, wiry figure, was just a few paces ahead of him: hurrying as best he could, ungainly and uncertain about the going. His machine gun was slung over his shoulder, and in his hands he held a huge set of heavy-duty wire cutters. Bullets zinged past but the German bombardment was now no more than a few desultory bangs and crashes far in the enemy’s rear areas. How soon before the British artillery and mortars began to lob their explosives into no-man’s-land? Surely they must have guessed that the five-hour bombardment was a prelude to an infantry assault. Or were the British pulling their howitzers and field artillery back into safer, rear areas. Such defeatism was too much to hope for. Or was it.

Now Koch had started cutting through the wire. The artillery had done their job well; endless fields of wire – so carefully tended by the night patrols from both sides – were now a shambles. Koch found the weakest parts of this metallic thicket and cut a path just wide enough for the infantry to follow through. The wire sprang back with a loud noise like a peal of bells. At night such carelessness would have brought a burst of fire and almost certain death, but now speed was all that mattered. The stolid Koch, crouched low, went chopping his way through the undergrowth of rusty tendrils.

Behind Pauli the bugler was sounding ‘close up!’ the prearranged call to indicate the way through the defences.

‘Koch! Get back, damn you.’

Once through the last of the wire, Pauli pushed ahead of his sergeant major. In the storm companies it was a matter of pride that the company commander led his men into battle. More bullets came now: closer, for they no longer zinged but cracked like a ringmaster’s whip. Chest-high. Alongside him, two men bowed low to die, heads down, snorting and gurgling briefly as the blood flooded into their lungs. He ran on, stumbled and touched the silk stockings – or, rather, made a gesture in the direction of his throat – Monike had said that she would be his good luck. It was a childish thing to say, for she was a child, and he believed it, because, for all his brutal experiences, he too was little more than a child. She hadn’t given him the stockings, of course. She was not that sort of girl. He’d taken them from the laundry basket in her bedroom.

More firing of rifles and machine guns. Over to the left – and very close – there came the sound of a heavy Vickers gun, stertorous, like a wheezing generator. But it was too late now to worry about bullets. Pauli found himself on the brink – the parapet – of the foremost enemy trenchline. He jumped. It was almost three metres deep. Burdened as he was with bombs and machine pistol, his weight took him right through the damp duckboards that formed the floor of the trench. The rotten wood snapped with a loud noise, and Pauli went deep into mud, so that he had to bend and extricate his boots from the broken slats. Thank God this section of the trench was unmanned.

He ran along the trench, splashing his way through the stagnant, watery mud. God! Did the British stand in this shit night and day. He came to a surprised looking British soldier. Pauli pulled the trigger of his pistol and the youngster was punched backwards by the force of the bullets. He sank down without any change in the expression upon his pinched, pale face.

Pauli ran on, along the communications trench and then to a junction of the support trench. Here the conditions were even worse: he was ankle-deep in stinking mud. The trenches were unmanned here. Had the British gone over the top to face the attackers, or fled? A sign marked the rear trench ‘Pall Mall’, and there were other painted wooden signs pointing the way to Company HQ and a field dressing post.

The trench lines zigzagged to minimize the effects of blast. At the next turn half a dozen khaki-clad soldiers were bunched in the corner of the entrance to a dugout. They were wide-eyed with fear. Two of them were sitting on the fire step hugging themselves. Their uniforms were blackened with rain, and the heavy wet cloth hung on them like a dead weight. Pauli swung aside. From behind him Koch fired a burst from his MP 18, and the brown-coated soldiers stiffened and grew taller before toppling full-length like lead toys.

As they ran forward again, a British officer put his head out of his dugout immediately ahead of them and shouted loudly. He was a middle-aged fellow with a neat moustache. He looked not unlike Pauli’s father.

Pauli stopped, undecided what to do, but Koch hit the officer with the butt of his gun and then threw two stick grenades down through the dark entrance and raced on. There was a tremendous bang and muffled screaming. Pauli looked back. He saw the British officer as the blast caught him. The wretched man was blown to pieces in a pink cloud of blood. The mangled body, its khaki sleeve and insignia intact, hit the sides of the trench. Round the upper part of the arm was a mud-stained white armband with a red cross on it. The dugout was of course a temporary casualty station. Too late now.

Ahead of them the sound of firing and, emerging from the white fog, more men. ‘Wer da?’ He climbed up one of the trench ladders and ran along the edge of the parapet.

‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ They were Germans from the next company. ‘Wer da?’ More challenges as grey-uniformed men appeared like wraiths in the dispersing fog. Pauli recognized the faces of some of them. The bugler sounded the close-up signal again. Pauli saw their officer, a captain named Graf, a thin, irritable man with a red nose, his heavy steel helmet grotesquely large for his small ferret face.

‘Keep going, Winter. We’ve got them on the run.’

‘Ja, Herr Hauptmann.’ He turned and shouted to the rest of his men to hurry. The Punishment Battalion had changed Pauli. At one time he would have been terrified by a man like Hauptmann Graf. Now it took a great deal more to frighten him.

There was a loud roar behind him, and the narrow trench was suddenly lit by a brilliant orange glow. Pauli turned to see the great balloons of ignited fuel ripping a hole through the white fog. The flame throwers were systematically burning out the dugouts all along the support trench. Poor devils – even a bayonet in the guts is better than that.

They hurried on; the earth was firmer behind the support trenches and the fog much thinned. Crossing the sunken road that the British had used for their supplies and reinforcements, the Germans chased across the open ground. No one was firing at them now. To the left was a forest of tree stumps, the trunks short, broken, and bared white like pencil stubs. To the front of them the ruins of a village, with only waist-high walls remaining. The church had been devoured by the war: its relics and valuables stolen, its doors and pews chopped into firewood, the roof collapsed, its lead improvised into drains for waterlogged trench-lines, and its tower reduced to rubble by artillery fire to deprive the British of an observation post.

Behind the village were twenty or thirty brown-clad soldiers, British service troops without rifles, an officer wearing the badges of the Royal Engineers, and two men carrying wooden crates. At the first sign of the Germans they raised their hands in the air. The Germans, in too much of a hurry even to rob them, pointed back the way they’d come. Reluctantly the British shambled off to the east, walking slowly, in the hope that a counterattack would free them before they got to the German rear.

In the ruined village was a mobile bath unit. It had been abandoned hastily by men who’d left behind parts of their uniforms, towels, webbing and even a rack of Lee-Enfield rifles. But even the sight of clean hot water and the wonderful fragrance of disinfectant and soap did not halt the advancing Germans.

They pressed on. Pauli was fit and strong, but the pace was wearing. He sniffed the air. Was it gas? And if so what type? Not mustard gas anyway. That was the one most to be feared, but the plan of attack said that the artillery would only put mustard into British rear areas, into which the Germans would not advance. So it couldn’t be mustard. Could it? He stopped and bent down to prod loose a clod of earth and sniff at it. Foolhardy, but it was what was expected of men in the storm companies. He started running again and swung his gas mask round to the front of his belt as he ran. Soon they slowed: the pace was too demanding even for young, fit bodies, and there was no sign of the enemy.

Walking now. The girl came back to his mind. The house was empty, she said, her parents visiting her grandmother. They’d kissed and ended up in bed. First time for Pauli and first time for the girl. What a fiasco. All his sexual fantasies shattered by two minutes in bed. The girl had cried. I’m still a virgin, she’d said. Then, her mood changing, she’d laughed. Well, it wasn’t funny for him. He’d fled from the house with only the stockings around which to weave stories for his fellow soldiers. But by the time he’d got back to his company, he had no wish to mention her to anyone. There was no one to whom he could confide his story. He was in love; he wanted her too much to talk about her. What a fool he’d been. If only he’d let the relationship develop at its own pace. Then perhaps he wouldn’t have got the letter telling him that she never wanted to see him again. He blamed himself unceasingly: a girl you meet in church doesn’t expect to be treated like a whore.

Twice they were halted by pockets of determined resistance: fierce Scots veterans whose rapid, accurate rifle fire caused severe casualties among the by-now careless Germans. Soon the regiment’s trench-mortar units arrived, and after a relentless pounding the Scotsmen came out, calling, ‘Kamerad!’

By this time it was late afternoon and already the wintry daylight was beginning to go. They moved on again. They were all more cautious now, and tired. On the left, the bugler for the next company was sounding rally. Pauli stopped and his bugler did the same. Time for reforming, and a moment for the fleet of foot to recover their breath and the slower men to catch up.

A runner from Battalion Headquarters told him to consolidate his position and take possession of a British twelve-inch howitzer battery several hundred metres to the west. They found it without trouble. Hauptmann Graf was already there. His men were energetically plundering the enemy stores.

The captured battery was a revelation to the German storm troops. The Germans were trying on the superb sheepskin coats that the British supplied to their sentries, and there were many who wanted one of the fine leather jerkins. More than one fellow was striding around in British officers’ hand-sewn leather boots. In the officers’ mess were all manner of forgotten luxuries, including Stilton cheese, smoked salmon, and a dozen unopened cases of Scotch whisky.

Pauli looked around with interest and apprehension. These were specially selected and well-trained soldiers. Given the order, they’d abandon their booty and continue the advance. But what of the ordinary German conscripts behind them? What would they be doing tonight?

Pauli decided that such conundrums were best left to the generals. He went to report to Captain Graf. ‘It’s disgraceful,’ said Graf. He took off his heavy helmet. He was a jug-eared little man, gnomelike: a homosexual it was whispered. But homosexual or not, Graf was a fearless soldier, respected by every man in the regiment. ‘Shells were ready and fused. I blame the officers. No attempt to disable the guns: dial sights in position, breech blocks in full working order. It’s disgraceful.’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli, amused that Graf should be so indignant about the enemy’s lack of soldierly dedication.

‘Cowards.’

‘We must have come five kilometres,’ said Pauli. ‘There’s never been a breakthrough like this before.’

Captain Graf grunted. He was smoking and holding in his hand a gold-coloured tin of fifty English cigarettes. ‘Try one,’ he said and offered the open tin.

Pauli lit one up and, after breathing out the smoke, said, ‘If the advance has been the same all along the battlefront, we must have captured a huge piece of ground.’

‘Like them?’ said Graf. ‘English cigarettes: damned good.’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. He’d never smoked anything so delicious. He studied the pale tobacco appreciatively and decided that if he ever became rich enough he’d smoke such cigarettes all the time. In the sandbagged shelter behind Graf, one of the men had found a gramophone and was winding it up. ‘Do you think we’ll go all the way to the coast, Herr Hauptmann?’

‘The coast?’

‘The war is won, isn’t it?’

‘Look at those stores, Winter,’ said Captain Graf, turning to look at the German soldiers gobbling the captured food. ‘Last week I severely punished four of my men who’d ground up horse fodder to make flour. They said they were hungry. They were, of course. We are all hungry. We ration out the shells to our artillery. We don’t have enough rubber to make more gas masks.’ He blew smoke. ‘Have you seen what’s in that mess hut, Winter? Food for the rank and file. Tinned beef, plum jam, good white bread, that yellow English cheese. Did you see how much of it there is? They told us the English were starving, didn’t they?’ He sniffed. ‘No, the war is lost, Winter. The courage of our young men and our meagre supplies of shells and bullets can’t prevail against this sort of plenty.’

‘The war is lost?’ said Pauli. Captain Graf was a tough regular officer from a good regiment, not the sort of fellow who was easily discouraged.

‘The war is lost,’ said Graf. ‘No matter how much ground we occupy, we cannot win.’ The gramophone started playing ‘Poor Butterfly’. For a moment the two officers listened to it. ‘Get your casualty returns sorted out. The infantry will be close behind us. They’ll pull the storm companies back later tonight, or before first light in the morning.’

Pauli looked to where Koch and other men of his company were sitting on the ground, too exhausted even to join in the plundering. How could the war be lost? It wasn’t fair; it just wasn’t fair.

‘The damned war’s not over’

‘I wish to God that you’d stop saying the war’s over,’ Peter told his father. He was propped up on an armchair in the drawing room of his parents’ house in Berlin. His dark-blue naval officer’s tunic was resewn where it had been ripped, and the gold was missing from one sleeve of it. His left leg was in splints and his face badly bruised. ‘The damned war’s not over and perhaps never will be.’

‘They signed the armistice nearly two months ago,’ said his father gently. His son was in pain and frustrated by his immobility.

‘The British navy is still blockading us. Our people are starving. The warships of the High Seas Fleet have red flags flying from their mastheads. There are bands of armed ruffians in the streets shooting at each other. That traitor Liebknecht has been carried shoulder-high through the streets by soldiers wearing the Iron Cross – and has made a speech from the balcony of the Royal Palace. The army has disintegrated. The Kaiser has run away to Holland. How can we negotiate a peace treaty? We have nothing to bargain with.’ It was a cry of pain. The defeat seemed to have affected Peter more deeply than any of the rest of the Winter family. Attacked in the street by a group of Spartacists, he’d been knocked to his knees by clubs and rifle butts. There is little doubt that this drunken, vicious little mob would have killed him, but for another mob that came along and started a brawl, during which Peter escaped. Since then he’d been confined to the house and had done nothing but stare out the window and brood on the consequences of the chaos in the streets below.

Pauli Winter got up from the armchair. He was wearing the better of his two army uniforms. It was far from the elegant costumes in which Prussia had sent officers to war. Its motley stains had not been removed by scrubbing and cleaning, and its shape not been improved by regular baking in the delousing ovens. The fine leather boots he’d gone to war wearing were long since lost and he wore simple boots and grey puttees like the ones worn by the storm troops. ‘I must get back to Battalion Headquarters,’ said Pauli. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Peter.’ He was in fact on a twenty-four-hour pass, but Pauli found that a couple of hours in the gloomy house near Ku-damm was all he could endure. He’d bought a few cheap presents from a department store in Leipziger Strasse, and now he placed them carefully under the Christmas tree in the corner. One of the servants had found a few logs, and today, with Christmas so near, a fire was burning in the stove. On the sideboard he noticed that all the family photos were arrayed, their silver frames gleaming. There they were in 1913, the happiest of happy families: two smiling children and Mama and Papa standing proudly behind them. How long ago it seemed. The family had changed dramatically since then. Now – with riots in the streets and Bolsheviks occupying Winter’s factories – even a log on the fire was a treat to be relished. Harald Winter was stunned by the sudden change in his fortunes, and Peter had become a crusty invalid. Now it was Mama who held them all together, ventured onto the streets, coaxed food from the shopkeepers, and persuaded the servants to keep working.

‘Battalion Headquarters! With that ridiculous little Captain Graf in command,’ said Peter scornfully. ‘You still go on pretending, do you? Your Freikorps battalions are just a lot of uniformed gangsters, and Graf is no more than a brigand.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Pauli. It was because they were so close that Peter knew where to put the knife. ‘The Freikorps is a fine organization and the army fully approves. There are thousands of us: disciplined and armed. And not just in Berlin – they are being formed all over Germany. Every one of our soldiers is a volunteer signed on month by month. In the East they will be defending our borders now that the army are withdrawing. The Poles, and the rest of them, would have been looting Berlin by now if it wasn’t for the Freikorps units out there.’

‘Then why don’t you march eastwards?’ said Peter.

‘Because, like you, we are temporarily immobilized. When the transport and our orders arrive, perhaps we’ll go.’ Pauli’s tone was mild, not just because he remembered the good times they’d shared, but because he was frightened that Peter might thoughtlessly blurt out something about the court-martial and Pauli’s assignment to a punishment battalion. He’d do almost anything to prevent his parents from finding out about that.

‘An under-strength battalion commanded by a captain?’ said Peter sarcastically. ‘Four machine guns, an antique tank, and two armoured cars? What sort of battalion is that?’

‘The next time the Reds try to take over Berlin, you’ll see,’ said Pauli. He put on his field-grey overcoat and steel helmet and tightened the strap under his chin before reaching for his belt and pistol.

‘What’s that crooked cross sign you’ve painted on your helmet?’ his father asked.

‘It’s called a swastika. Many of the Freikorps units wear it to distinguish us from the regular army.’

‘Be very careful, Pauli. Remember what happened to your brother.’

Pauli did remember. Peter had been beaten up just because of the ‘imperial insignia’ on his officer’s uniform. Many army and navy officers had been similarly beaten – and several murdered – by jeering and catcalling thugs who were determined to blame the officer class for the war and its outcome.

‘I wear a private’s greatcoat and no badges,’ said Pauli.

‘But you have an officer’s sidearm,’ said his father.

‘And I’ll use it, too,’ said Pauli. ‘I’d be grateful for a chance to pick off a few of the bastards who tried to kill Peter.’

‘Don’t say goodbye to your mother: she’ll only worry until you telephone.’

‘I’ll telephone if I can, but the telephone lines are sometimes cut.’

‘Take care of yourself, Pauli,’ said his father. ‘Those mutinous swine are holding the Chancellor to ransom…. My God, who could have guessed it would come to this? The Chancellor held prisoner by Marxist hooligans.’ They embraced, and as he grasped him in his arms Pauli was struck by the slight, frail frame of his father. Although not yet fifty years old, Winter had grown old and tired and apprehensive. Perhaps it was only temporary, but it was a sad transformation in a man the boys always remembered as dynamic and rather frightening.

Harald Winter regarded his son with equal sorrow. The war had made Pauli into a ruffian. He was brusque and dismissive of all the values that Harald Winter revered. This new Pauli who’d come back from the war was someone his father found difficult to cope with. As much as he’d disliked the dependence that Pauli had demonstrated as a child, he preferred that to the new rough-spoken man he’d become. In other words, like many fathers, Harald Winter hated to see that his son had grown up.

Pauli took the S-Bahn to Alexanderplatz. The trains were running normally but as Pauli walked towards the palace he kept a wary eye open for marauding bands of troublemakers. He saw a small procession of factory workers – women, too – going over the Schlossbrücke. They were not armed but they carried red banners and chanted slogans, so he remained in the shadows until they passed. It was as well to be cautious. Schinkel’s beautiful little guardroom – designed like a Greek temple – was brightly lit and he could see soldiers inside, some of them huddled in blankets on the stone floor. Were they loyal soldiers assigned to duty by the High Command, or Bolshevik renegades? There was no way to know. He hurried past.

The Royal Palace, or what was usually called just the Schloss, was lit only by light from the cathedral across the road, but against the darkening sky he could see the red blanket that mutinous sailors had hoisted up. The palace had had no official residents ever since the Kaiser abdicated and ran away to Holland. It was at present the home of about three thousand bellicose revolutionary sailors of the self-styled ‘People’s Naval Division’ who were now holding the head of government for ransom.

Pauli kept walking along Unter den Linden. The streetcleaners were not in evidence, and in places Pauli had to clamber over piles of snow. Only the streetcar tracks had been systematically cleared of it. Despite the occasional sounds of rifle fire – and sometimes even the explosion of a grenade – the shops were open, and some taxicabs, buses and streetcars were still running. But the shortage of fuel meant that there were more horses: ancient Droschken with half-starved animals plodded through the snow. There were a few shoppers hurrying home past street peddlers selling crudely made paper Christmas decorations and hot chestnuts.

Pauli crossed the road to avoid the crowd milling around the gates of the Russian Embassy. Since April 1918 the Imperial Russian Embassy had been called the Soviet Embassy. At the 1918 party conference, Lenin had told the delegates that ‘…we shall go under without the German revolution.’ And in response the new staff, of no fewer than three hundred people, had been frantically circulating Bolshevik agitators, ready cash and crate-loads of revolutionary literature throughout Germany. The new ambassador – a wealthy Jewish philanthropist from the Crimea – had had hoisted across the embassy’s façade a huge red banner that urged ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ Soon afterwards he’d been deported back to Russia, but the banner remained.

Guarding the Interior Ministry were three men with rifles slung over their shoulders. Round the corner was a truck with more armed men, their shabby, makeshift uniforms and red armbands identified them as members of an irregular band recruited by the new police chief – Emil Eichhorn – a radical of the extreme left. On the corner of Wilhelmstrasse were some women, one of them weeping uncontrollably. They were on their way back from Dorotheen Strasse, where the army’s casualty lists were still being displayed, with new names every day. The fighting had ended, but corpses were still being identified. Pauli walked past them and crossed back across the road to the Adlon Hotel.

He checked his helmet, overcoat and pistol belt at the cloakroom. The elderly attendant showed no surprise. He placed the gun and helmet on a shelf with silk hats and gave Pauli a small yellow ticket. Pauli went into the bar. There was a crowd in here, but the heating was not working, and some customers had their overcoats on. He had arranged to meet Alex Horner here, and true to form, Alex was sitting near the door with a bottle of wine in an ice bucket at his elbow. An extra glass was in place. From the dining room next door came the high-spirited music of a gypsy band.

‘How goes the army command?’ said Pauli. He sat down and waited for the waiter to pour his wine.

‘Excellent!’ said Alex. ‘And how are things at home?’ Alex was not in uniform. He was wearing a smart new grey flannel suit, white shirt and dark tie, but no one in the bar – or in Berlin, for that matter – could possibly have mistaken him for anything but a Prussian of the Officers Corps.

‘Peter is still moaning. Papa won’t leave the house and says it’s on account of the influenza epidemic. Mama has become something of a tyrant but she still manages to serve meat, even for lunch: sauerbraten today. I had two helpings.’

‘Your mother is a woman of infinite resource,’ said Alex.

Alex had secured an excellent job – or rather, his influential relative in the War Department had secured it for him. After the failure of the big German offensive of 1918, he was sent to Supreme Headquarters in Spa, Belgium, and appointed an aide de camp to General Schammer, the military governor of Berlin.

The present military governor was a rather disreputable civilian but that didn’t prevent Alex from lording it over his old friend, for there was a great difference between duties on behalf of the headquarters of the Imperial German Army and being with the Freikorps, an ad hoc assembly of enthusiastic volunteers consisting almost entirely of men the army had no place for.

Alex liked to give his friend insightful anecdotes about life among the generals. For a few minutes Alex entertained him with stories about the new commander of the German Army. ‘General Groener is a good sort,’ said Alex. ‘He’s highly intelligent and not at all stuffy.’

‘He’s a Schwab,’ said Pauli before sipping some wine. ‘Get rid of all these damned Prussians, I say.’ It was a Riesling from Alsace, just cold enough and it tasted delicious. Goodness knows when he’d taste its like again: under the terms of the armistice Alsace was now a part of France once more.

Alex grinned. Although Pauli was born in Vienna to an American mother, his upbringing was hardly less Prussian than his friend’s, but there was a running joke that Alex was a Prussian of the most inflexible old-fashioned kind and Pauli was the oppressed Southerner. The friendship between the two boys was based on a long time together and mutual respect. And yet, right from the time they’d first met at Lichterfelde, Pauli was the admirer and Alex, by common consent, was granted an edge of seniority. The admiration that Pauli had always shown for his elder brother Peter was reflected in his respect for Alex. And, typically, Alex responded to this faith that Pauli showed by revealing to him his most treasured secret. Alex said, ‘Although the Chancellor is being held prisoner in his office there’s a secret telephone line from the Chancellery to the army. Chancellor Ebert has asked the army for help.’

‘Good God!’ said Pauli. Everyone believed that the mutinying sailors had cut all the lines from the Chancellery and that Ebert – the new socialist head of government – was being held incommunicado.

‘That’s just between the two of us,’ said Alex. ‘It’s a closely guarded secret, not to be passed on even to your father.’

‘Just as you say, Alex. But it changes things, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, and the army will do what has to be done,’ said Alex enigmatically. ‘Those mutinous pigs will find out what it means tomorrow.’

‘Christmas Eve?’ said Pauli. ‘Why?’

‘Are you in a hurry?’ said Alex languidly.

‘I’ve got all the time you need,’ said Pauli, sipping some more wine and leaning forward to hear what Alex had to tell.

‘It all began on November 9,’ said Alex.

‘Everything did,’ said Pauli.

That much was true: everything began on November 9, 1918. The army’s commanders – too arrogant to face the consequences of their own defeat – had sent some unfortunate civilians through the wire of no-man’s-land to seek an armistice from the Allies, as the Turks and Austrians had already done. During that Saturday, the Imperial German Army ceased to exist as a unified fighting force. Red flags were flying all over the land as soldiers’ committees took control. Alex Horner, on one of his regular visits to Supreme Headquarters from Berlin, was shown the reports. It was amazing: the army’s command structure collapsed like a deck of cards. ‘Riots in Magdeburg’; then, early in the afternoon, ‘7th Army Corps Reserve District rioting threatened’. Halle and Leipzig were declared ‘red’ by 5:00 p.m., and soon afterwards Düsseldorf, Halstein, Osnabrück and Lauenburg went, too. So did Magdeburg, Stuttgart, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and Cologne. By this time the soldiers at Supreme HQ had stopped saluting the officers, and some of the offices were deserted. At 1900 hours, news came that the general officer commanding 18th Army Corps Reserve at Frankfurt was ‘deposed’. It was all over. By early evening Kaiser Wilhelm, German Emperor and ‘All-highest Warlord’, was sitting in the dining car of his private train, waiting for it to leave the siding and start the journey that would take him to exile in Holland.

In Berlin the socialist Cabinet, which had been created without any legal transfer of power, could not contain the disorder. They ordered the army to rip up sections of railway line and so interrupt the trainloads of mutinous soldiers and sailors that were arriving in the capital in ever-increasing numbers. When Alex arrived at the Lehrter station, in a train that had taken two and a half days to reach Berlin from Belgium, he was startled to see that army machine-gun teams commanded a field of fire along every platform and the main concourse. Troops were occupying the gas and electricity works, the government buildings on Wilhelmstrasse were all guarded, and there were even armed soldiers outside some of the town’s finest restaurants.

By the time that Leutnant Horner reported to Berlin’s military governor, that governor was a socialist civilian named Otto Wels. The Imperial Army’s Berlin garrison having deserted – and having no more than a handful of civil policemen at his disposal – Wels had put together a force of ex-soldiers and armed civilians. Most of the rifles had been bought from the deserters who, standing alongside the flower girls, were doing a brisk trade at the Potsdamer Platz at two marks per gun. Even the ‘army’s’ trucks had been purchased in this way from the deserters. Wels had given his scratch force the grandiose title of Republikanische Soldaten – the Republican Soldiers’ Army – but they were a motley collection difficult to distinguish from the extreme left Sicherheitswehr that the Police President employed, or from any of the other armed mobs who patrolled the city looking for victims and plunder. Moreover, Wels’s army was infiltrated by many Spartacists and the extreme-left Independents.

It needed only one visit to the military governor’s office to convince Alex Horner that his officer’s uniform was not suitable attire. He bought a suit in a tailor’s shop in Friedrichstrasse – the first ready-made suit he’d ever worn – and went back to work feeling less uneasy. He did notice the way that the carefully positioned beggars watched him as he arrived. There were few beggars to be seen on the streets in these early days of the revolution. Most of the uniformed ex-servicemen who stood outside the department stores and food shops hoping for money still had enough dignity to be offering a tray of bootlaces, matches or candles. Yet these fellows made no pretence of being pedlars, and Alex was convinced that they were spies. Police spies, Bolsheviks, Spartacists and foreigners, too: the city was alive with spies of all shapes and sizes, and of every political colour. Berlin had always been a city of spies and informers, and it probably always would be.

Berlin’s most serious problem was created by the naval mutineers who’d arrived from the Northern naval bases and settled themselves into the Imperial Palace. The fiasco of this People’s Naval Division turned sour when the sailors became more menacing and demanded their ‘Christmas bonus’. The sailors had been under the influence of Karl Liebknecht ever since occupying the Imperial Palace. And it was Liebknecht’s declared intent to bring down the moderate socialist government of Friedrich Ebert – a forty-seven-year-old ex-saddle maker – by anarchy and confusion. Having the sailors demand ever more money was very much to Liebknecht’s taste. If Ebert was frightened by the extortion and paid out the money, the government would demonstrate their weakness. If they moved against the sailors, it would be a sign that they were the sort of treacherous, reactionary, anti-working-class government that Liebknecht said they were. Either way it would make things easier for Liebknecht to seize power and set up his Leninist regime.

It was December 20 when the sailors announced that they’d spent the first 125,000 marks the government had paid them for guarding the Imperial Palace. Now they wanted more money.

Alex Horner was in the anteroom of the Chancellor’s private office when Otto Wels came out with Ebert. It was the first time Alex had seen the Chancellor at such close quarters. He was an imposing figure, broad and muscular, with jet-black hair and a large moustache and small beard. The government had agreed to pay more money, but first the palace must be evacuated and the People’s Naval Division reduced to six hundred men. The money would be paid only after the keys of the emptied palace had been given to Otto Wels.

On the morning of the day on which Alex and Pauli met, Alex had hurried down to the lobby of the Chancellery in response to a phone call from one of the secretaries. A delegation of sailors was being taken to one of the drawing rooms that were situated to the side of the fine Empire vestibule. One sailor was carrying a leather case that he said held the keys of the Imperial Palace. They wanted their money.

‘Herr Horner is one of the military governor’s assistants,’ said the secretary who was dealing with the sailors. He was a sniffy little man with the curt and superior manner that distinguishes career bureaucrats.

The spokesman for the sailors, a tall petty officer with crooked teeth, asked for Alex Horner’s identity papers. Luckily Wels had arranged such formalities as soon as the young officer got back to the revolution-stricken city. Taken to a Reichstag office by an attendant wearing the livery of the old regime, he’d been given a pass by a woman clerk wearing a red armband. It was an inexpertly printed card on stiff red paper. It said that Horner was ‘authorized to maintain order and security in the streets of the city’. Accompanying it was an identity card issued by the ‘Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council’ saying he was ‘trustworthy and free to pass’. Neither document mentioned his military rank, and if the woman issuing the papers to him knew him to be an army officer she gave no sign of it. From the way she handled the office files, it looked as if she was occupying the same desk as she had before the revolution. Most of the workers were doing the same thing that they’d done during the Kaiserzeit without the red bands and banners. For the Berliner, life was simply a matter of exchanging time for money and money for food. Even during the shooting, the buses ran on time and the water and electricity supply continued normally.

Having scrutinized Horner’s papers, the petty officer showed him his card in return. ‘Petty Officer Esser’. How curious that so many of these revolutionary servicemen clung so tightly to the badges and titles and privileges of the old regime.

Esser politely but firmly explained to Horner and the secretary that the political committee of the People’s Naval Division had decided that they’d not deal with Otto Wels, who, although a socialist, was ‘a class enemy’.

‘Then give the keys to Herr Barth,’ suggested Alex. He was grateful that the secretary had not revealed the fact that he was an army officer.

‘Herr Barth is in a meeting and cannot be disturbed.’ The secretary expected them to hand the keys to him and depart without further delay. Despite wearing a small red ribbon in his buttonhole – a sartorial accessory that had been adopted by many middle-class office workers during the previous few days – the man did not hide his impatience and his distaste for the unwashed revolutionaries.

‘Then get him out of the meeting,’ suggested Alex.

The secretary shook his head to show that there could be no question of interrupting the commissioner. Emil Barth was amongst the most radical of the commissioners, but these wretched socialists had quickly adapted to the bureaucracy of Wilhelmstrasse: meetings, meetings, meetings. And the bureaucrats had easily adapted to their new masters.

‘That would be impossible,’ said the secretary. He was an elderly man with rimless spectacles, bushy eyebrows and a celluloid collar that was going yellow at the edges, like the documents that were to be seen on every side.

‘Try,’ suggested Alex, and the sailors vociferously agreed.

Now there were more arguments and some telephone calls. Everyone who might have placated the sailors had gone to lunch, and the revolutionaries were becoming angrier every minute.

Before the problem was resolved, a messenger came rushing into the lobby with an urgent request for Alex Horner. He must go immediately to the office of Herr Otto Wels. Wels had been kidnapped.

It was not difficult to discover what had happened. Wels’s staff were standing in the corridor talking in loud voices. Some of the women were sobbing. They told how another group of sailors had entered the building by a side door, found their way upstairs, and demanded the Christmas-bonus money from Wels. Wels was heard to say they’d get no money until he had the key.

Which of the sailors was the first to strike Wels makes no difference, for soon he was beaten and frog-marched back to the Imperial Palace, which the sailors obviously had no intention of leaving. According to a message that Alex received later that day from a paid informer, Wels was beaten with rifle butts and thrown into a rat-infested cellar.

That afternoon a large party of the sailors went back to the Chancellery. They were in a bitter frame of mind. They pushed their way into the lobby, posted armed guards at every exit, and took control of the Chancellery telephone exchange. No one – not even the Chancellor – would be permitted to enter or leave the building. They had Wels as a hostage and they wanted their money.

Pauli had listened to Alex Horner’s long story with intermittent attention. He’d studied the other people in the bar, with particular interest in the younger women. He’d had so little free time since the war began – so little time amongst civilians that he’d still not got accustomed to the shorter skirts and the display of female ankles. Women had worn full-length skirts since ancient Greece; surely there was something apocalyptic about the new fashion. If not apocalyptic, certainly provocative, especially when some of the younger ones wore these flesh-coloured stockings!

Between them they’d finished one bottle of wine and were nearly at the bottom of a second one. Now Pauli realized that Alex had reached a stage in his story when some contribution from Pauli was expected. ‘What did you mean about the sailors’ finding out something tomorrow?’

Alex glanced back over his shoulder to be sure he wasn’t overheard. Next door the gypsy band was playing sad Hungarian ballads. ‘The Chancellor used the secret telephone link to summon help from the army. Groener is sending troops. We’ll crush those Red swine once and for all.’

‘Sending them here? To the Royal Palace?’

‘The government is a prisoner, Pauli. They are being held hostage by those people. Groener has ordered several squadrons of the Imperial Horse Guards from the Potsdam barracks to march. They’ll be here by midnight.’

‘Will the troops fire on the sailors?’

‘The Imperial Horse Guards have remained loyal to their officers. There are a few other reliable men coming. Artillery, too. They’ll blast their way into the palace.’

‘The sailors won’t stand much chance against artillery.’

‘They’ve brought it on themselves. I’ve no sympathy for those gangsters.’

‘That fellow Esser you mentioned. I know him.’

‘The petty officer?’ Alex’s blasé mask dropped and he registered surprise. ‘How the devil did you come to know a fellow like that? From the Punishment Battalion?’

Pauli laughed. ‘No, the real rogues don’t end up in the Punishment Battalions, Alex. The real ones end up as generals. We both know that.’

Such remarks made Alex nervous. He looked round again to make sure they weren’t overheard; even so he disassociated himself from such sentiments. ‘I’m not sure about that, Pauli,’ he mumbled.

‘I’d like to try and get Esser out of there,’ said Pauli.

‘Get him out?’

‘He’s a good sort.’

‘There are no “good sorts” there, Pauli. They are all scum.’

‘I can’t leave him to be killed,’ said Pauli. ‘He was my friend. He’s the son of a villager from where my grandparents lived.’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ said Alex.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Pauli. ‘No one’s going to harm me simply for going along to the palace to have a word with Esser.’

‘You’re in uniform.’

‘A private’s uniform.’

‘These people are mutineers, Pauli. One look at you and they’ll know you’re a member of the Officer Corps. And the Freikorps is the avowed enemy of the revolution.’

‘I’ll have to go. Was it midnight you said the soldiers will arrive?’

‘On your honour, you mustn’t warn them,’ said Alex.

Pauli smiled. ‘You must be joking, Alex. No secrets remain secret in this town for more than half an hour.’

‘Then I shall come with you. Perhaps I can persuade them to release Wels.’

‘That would be a feather in your cap, Alex.’

Alex nodded seriously and swigged the last of his Riesling. ‘The more I come to think of it, the more amusing it sounds. Let’s go, Pauli.’

It was only a short walk down Unter den Linden from the Adlon Hotel to the Imperial Palace. As they came out of the hotel, the street was illuminated by the lights of the British Embassy. The Armistice Commission were said to be using it, but there was no sign of British soldiers there. From the far side of the Pariser Platz, close to the Brandenburg Gate, they heard a brass band playing energetically: a Christmas carol. It sounded like a military band, but there was no way to be sure. Beyond the gate, the Tiergarten was being used as a military camp, but no one knew the allegiance of the soldiers. Probably the men were just remaining close to the army soup kitchens that had been set up there. Half a metre of snow had fallen upon Berlin, and the sounds of the city were muffled under the white blanket, so that even the music of the band was distant and muted. They plodded on, icy impacted snow under their feet.

‘You’ve changed, Pauli. You’ve changed a lot.’

‘We’ve grown older,’ said Pauli, dismissing the idea. His father was always talking about the way Pauli had changed. Hadn’t Peter changed? Hadn’t Mama changed? And hadn’t Harald Winter changed most of all?

‘It’s more complicated than that,’ persisted Alex. ‘Was it the Punishment Battalion?’ They’d been together many times since Pauli had served his sentence, but until now the Punishment Battalion had been a taboo subject.

‘Changed in what way?’

‘You’re tougher, more determined. In the old days you wouldn’t have come looking for trouble. You’d have let a fellow such as Esser fend for himself.’

‘The Punishment Battalion was nothing. It was a relief to get away from that pig Brand. Sometimes I pitied you for still having to endure the brute.’

‘But they sent you into all the hardest fighting.’

‘It wasn’t so bad. It made a man of me. I learned how to survive – survive when all the odds were against survival, survive when all around me were dying.’

‘And after that you went to serve in a Sturmbataillon. Tell me about that. Was it like the Punishment Battalion?’

‘It was like nothing you’ve ever seen. With more such units we would have won, Alex.’

‘It wasn’t the lack of storm battalions, Pauli. It was these damned civilians who stabbed us in the back. As an officer I remain loyal to the government, but it’s hard to forget that these politicians we take orders from are the cowards and socialists who railed against the army all through the war….’ He stopped; even now his officer training inhibited him against such outbursts, ‘But tell me about the storm battalion.’

‘No rifles: carbines, and lightweight machine pistols, and small flame throwers. Everything was designed for lightness and fast movement. Even the other ranks got pistols. Special uniforms, leather pads on elbows and knees. No cartridge pouches – we stuffed rounds into our pockets. Round our necks we carried bags of grenades. We were unstoppable …and ruthless.’

‘They took you as a Stosstruppführer.’

‘They didn’t care that I’d been in a Punishment Battalion, if that’s what you mean. Yes, they made me a Stosstruppführer. There were plenty of vacancies: officers always had to lead their men into the attack. Only young, unmarried men were accepted, and the physical was the strictest I’ve ever had.’

‘I envy you the experience, Pauli. The storm battalions have become a legend. But you were lucky to survive.’

‘You mustn’t believe all the stories you hear, Alex. Storm troops were kept in the rear until they were needed for some special task; even then they took us most of the way by truck. And we had lots of leave, and the food was always the very best available.’

‘You sound nostalgic, Pauli.’

‘Let me explain something to you, Alex. You grew up wanting to be an army officer. But I never wanted to go to cadet school. It was my father’s idea. I loved my father – I still do – but my father has no respect for me; he thinks I’m brainless, and he doesn’t care about anything except brains, especially the sort of brains that know how to make money. My elder brother doesn’t give a damn about Father, but he’s the one my father loves. I realized that I didn’t have the brains that my brother Peter has, so I went to the cadet school the way Papa wanted. Now soldiering is the only trade I know.’

‘Well, now the workers’ and soldiers’ committees are taking over all your father’s factories, it’s ended up making little difference to you.’

‘Papa will find a way; he always does.’

‘But you seemed happy enough at Lichterfelde.’

‘Yes, I came to like it. I’ve always been adaptable: younger brothers have to adapt to what everyone else wants. And I liked the respect that an officer’s uniform got for me. Do you remember, Alex? Members of the Officer Corps were gods. I loved all that, Alex, the bowing and scraping that I got from civilians. I loved being saluted, and the way that people stood aside to let me pass in the street and let me be served first in shops.’

‘I suppose we all did. And yet here we are: me skulking in civilian clothes and you masquerading as a private soldier.’ Pauli looked at his friend. Alex was wearing a grey bowler hat and an old-fashioned Inverness – a loose-fitting grey overcoat with attached shoulder cape. It wasn’t a particularly odd costume amid the curiously garbed people to be seen on the city’s streets, but it was hardly appropriate for a Prussian officer.

Pauli nodded. ‘And I even loved the Kaiser. I loved the idea that someone knew what was best for Germany and what was best for the army and the Officers Corps and what was best for me. And when the war went on and all sorts of riffraff like Brand managed to get commissions, I still didn’t care, because those people weren’t real officers: the Prussian Officer Corps was still a small elite that outsiders couldn’t enter.’ They walked in silence for a few moments while Pauli collected and ordered his thoughts. ‘And then came the Sturmbataillon. It was a world I’d never known. It let me be myself. I wish you’d been with me, Alex.’

‘You said that in one of your letters.’

‘We spoke using “du”, officers and men alike. I called my men by their first names, and often we’d be sitting around talking together with no rank deferentials. Arguing politics, or talking about what kind of Germany we’d have after the war.’

‘And did any of you guess it would be like this?’ Alex whipped his walking stick through the heaped snow.

Pauli snorted. ‘Who could have guessed it would end like this? No one! Who would have guessed that the Kaiser would run away so that Fritz Esser and his friend Liebknecht would be sitting in the Imperial Palace? Who’d guess that a collection of half-baked intellectuals and socialist draft dodgers would be running Germany as a ramshackle republic, and that the Imperial Horse Guards would be answering their call for help?’

‘I thought you were about to tell me that your time with the common man had provided you with a new understanding of the socialists, Pauli.’

‘Socialists are dreamers. The time for dreaming is long past. Our Fatherland is dying, and no one goes to help.’ He kicked the top from a mountain of snow, so that it shattered into a white cloud.

When they got to Friedrichstrasse they had to wait for the traffic before they could cross the road. It was astounding how life went on, seemingly unaffected by the fact that the city was in the throes of revolution. Even while shooting could be heard, the Christmas shoppers crowded the pavements and the motor buses kept going. There was the smoky smell of roasted chestnuts and the sound of American jazz music from one of the nearby clubs. A shop assistant and a chauffeur were loading dozens of coloured parcels into a large car while a fur-coated matron counted them. It was hard to believe that the dull thuds heard earlier that day had been mortar shells exploding, and that right now artillery was on its way to assault the Imperial Palace.

‘Civilians have their own affairs to attend to,’ commented Alex as they crossed the road, dodging a taxicab.

‘Making money, do you mean?’ said Pauli scornfully.

‘You can’t live without it.’

‘There are other, more important things than money, Alex. That’s what I learned with the storm troops, and that’s what many of our Freikorps volunteers believe.’

‘Are they men from your old storm troops?’

‘In my battalion a dozen or so are old comrades. That’s what made me join. If recruiting continues as at present, I’ll have my own company next month.’

Alex Horner chuckled. ‘And all this time I’ve been thinking that you’d become old and cynical, Pauli, While really you are the same fervent optimist and dreamer that I’ve always known.’

‘You can mock me, but…’

‘I’m not mocking you, Pauli. We all feel the same way. Everyone I know and respects feels more or less the way that you do. They all feel frustrated watching this damned government being treated with contempt by every rascal at home, and spat upon by Paris, London and Washington.’

‘But you remain aloof? Or are you just fatalistic?’

‘If the mob wants to be ruled by the Spartacists, then so be it. I’m a professional soldier; I’ll obey lawful commands from the army, just as the Russian army do under Lenin.’

Pauli shook his head. ‘You are too naïve, Alex. Do you really think that Lenin represents the Russian worker? Lenin’s party is a tiny, noisy, violent group that seized power and then slaughtered all the opposition. Now, here in Germany, Ebert’s socialists are in the majority but the Spartacists are already trying some of Lenin’s tricks to get power in Germany. And then heaven help Liebknecht’s opponents. They’ll be put against the wall and shot without trial.’

Behind them they heard the sound of marching men coming down the Linden from the direction of the Tiergarten. In the darkness the soldier’s hobnailed boots were striking sparks from the paving. They were Uhlan Guards. The two young officers watched approvingly as the soldiers wheeled into the entrance to the university. There were few such trained and disciplined units left in the whole of Germany.

As the two men got closer to the Imperial Palace, Unter den Linden became more crowded. There were the usual streetcorner groups of men in makeshift uniforms. Most of them had their rifles slung over the shoulder muzzle-down in what had become the style of all the revolutionaries. But these armed men were outnumbered by sightseers who’d arrived in response to the rumours that were now being spread across the city. They wanted to see how the army was going to tackle the bellicose sailors. Or, as another rumour had it, they wanted to watch the army’s monarchists staging a counter-revolution.

When Alex and Pauli reached the main entrance of the palace, three sentries were there, pale-faced youngsters with soft, sailor hats, and bandoliers crossing their chest. They were warming their hands at a bonfire on the pavement. In the fire could be seen bits of antique furniture, its polish and gilt bubbling and blistering in the flames. They asked the guards for Esser. It took a long time to find him. Alex and Pauli stood by the fire and tried to see into the courtyard. Even from their limited view of the interior it was clear that the sailors were excited and frightened by the prospect of a pitched battle with the army units that were marching from Potsdam.

After about fifteen minutes an armed sailor took them inside and upstairs. Esser, typically, had bivouacked in the Empress’s private apartments, and that is where they were taken. Although the whole place had been ransacked, many of the personal possessions of the royal occupants were in evidence. Lace jackets and long ball dresses were still hanging in the Empress’s dressing rooms. Her writing desk had been broken into, and sheets of stationery and envelopes were scattered round, presumably by those people who’d been hawking examples of the royal correspondence round the streets. On the floor were powder boxes, some hairbrushes, combs and silver frames from which photos had been wrenched.

And yet the overall impression of this sanctum was of charmless vulgarity, an ostentatious collection of frivolous knick-knacks that might be expected in the house of some nouveau-riche tradesman.

‘The chairman of the sailors’ and workers’ emergency committee will come in five minutes,’ announced a bearded sailor.

‘Is that Fritz Esser?’ Pauli asked.

‘Yes, Comrade Esser,’ said the sailor. ‘You are not permitted to touch anything or to leave the room on pain of death; do you understand?’

‘Yes, we understand,’ said Leutnant Horner. He had by now grown used to the extravagant rhetoric of the revolution.

For ‘Chairman’ Fritz Esser of the People’s Naval Division it had been an eventful day, even when compared with the other crowded days of the past few weeks. But, as had happened so often since those early days of November 1918, he’d been outguessed and out-manoeuvred and eventually shouted down.

The trouble was that Esser never properly evaluated his opposition. It had been like that right from the time the naval mutinies began. Fritz Esser was usually the first to spot an opportunity, but he lacked the skill and cynicism to follow through his advantage.

For instance, the Spartacists and the left-wing radicals of the Independents had always expected that the revolution, about which they’d talked for years, would begin amongst the tired, frightened and exhausted front-line soldiers, rather than amongst sailors or civilians. It was Fritz Esser who’d persisted with his secret meetings and inflammatory leaflets directed at the crews of the battleships and battle cruisers of the High Seas Fleet, which had spent almost the entire war anchored in the Northern ports.

It was Esser – in a secret report to one of Liebknecht’s acolytes – who’d told them that fighting men would be the last ones to mutiny. That was evident here in the seaports, where there was little interest in Karl Marx amongst the U-boat crews or the men who’d chosen dangerous duty with the torpedo boats and destroyers that regularly sailed out to fight the enemy. The men who came to his meetings were the crews of the big ships: conscripts from the cities, bored, discontented men who chafed at the restrictions of military life and had nothing to do but parade, chip rust and paint their towering steel prisons. These men, who had never heard a shot fired in anger, were the ones who listened to Esser’s dreams of tomorrow.

Even the previous summer, after Esser had encouraged men of the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold to walk ashore at Wilhelmshaven in defiance of orders – a crime for which two of Esser’s fellow believers faced an army firing squad – the Spartacists did not believe that the High Seas Fleet was a fertile ground in which their agitators could scatter the seeds of revolution. Esser’s reports were ignored. In September a Spartacist leader told Esser that the Naval High Command’s reforms – ‘food committees’, elected by the sailors, were henceforward to distribute the rations – had removed the promise of further revolt.

It was only when, posted to Kiel, Esser had got the real mutinies going there that the Spartacist leadership started to take notice. But even then they were lukewarm and pointed out that the mutiny was only a reaction to being ordered to sea for a final suicide battle with the British navy. The Spartacists’ political committee in Berlin seemed offended by the fact that the sailors lacked political motivation. They insisted that this mutiny would never become the workers’ revolution they wanted.

Esser and his friends ignored the dicta from Berlin. It was one of Esser’s young disciples whose speeches prompted the stokers on the battleship Helgoland to draw their slicers through the coals, bring them out on the floor plates, and damp the fires with the hoses. Without heat enough to make steam Admiral von Hipper’s order to put to sea could not be obeyed.

And when the U–135 threatened to torpedo the Thüringen unless its mutineers surrendered, it was one of Esser’s converts who persuaded the Helgoland’s gunners to level their sights at the submarine. That Esser wasn’t present for this fiasco, which ended with the mutineers in prison, did not change his proud claim to have started the revolution. For within a few days not only Kiel but dozens of other towns and cities as well were under the control of workers’ and sailors’ councils. The army did nothing to put down the revolt: it was too widespread.

And so, when Esser got to Berlin with the vanguard of the mutinying sailors who now called themselves the Volksmarine or People’s Naval Division, he expected to be greeted with praise and thanks by the Spartacist hierarchy. But Esser was brushed aside as the politicians took control of the revolution in which they had shown so little belief. Esser became no more than a minor party functionary, a chairman for a committee that until today was asked to do nothing more important than arrange duty rosters for the cleaning of the billets and settle disputes between the numerous drunks, thieves and petty criminals who soon attached themselves to the sailors.

The important decisions about Spartacist policy – or lack of any – were being made by the same people who’d given Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg such bad advice in the past. Self-serving men with hard eyes, dark suits and sharp city accents dismissed Esser and his like as country bumpkins without the sort of political sophistication that was needed to steer the forthcoming revolution, which would sweep the temporary socialist government from power and replace it with uncompromising authoritarian rule.

And yet the men and women who could hear only Esser’s country accent would have done well to study his conclusions, for Esser was shrewd and perceptive. Esser’s report on the irregular army formations – Freiwillige Landesjägerkorps or Freikorps – now springing up all over Germany was something that Spartacist leaders would have done well to read. Esser had become an expert on discontent, and he was able to distinguish the discontent of the sailors he’d helped to bring to a state of mutiny and the sort of discontent that was furnishing the Freikorps with more men than they could properly clothe and arm.

Few sailors of the Naval Division had seen any action in the war. Typically they were unmarried ex-factory workers with no fixed addresses. Some of them went on regular forays of looting and housebreaking and even demanding money from well-dressed people in the streets, always disguising their crimes with neat political labels. The sailors remained in the Imperial Palace because they were being provided with payments by the government – who were frightened of them – and because it was warmer and more comfortable than the street to which they would otherwise be relegated. As long as Liebknecht and Luxemburg encouraged them, they would cheer the Spartacists’ speeches.

The men of the Freikorps were a totally different proposition, as Esser pointed out. The Freikorps recruits came largely from front-line soldiers. For these men the world was divided into ‘the front’ and ‘the rear’. The rear were the civilians who’d made so much money in the war factories and the bosses who owned them. The rear were the bankers and the financiers, the pacifists who’d made speeches against the war, and the ‘November criminals’ who’d signed the armistice. Although officers were excluded from the People’s Naval Division, the Freikorps soldiers readily included their battle-hardened officers as part of their exclusive fraternity.

Perhaps it was while compiling his neglected report that Fritz Esser began to discover something about himself. Esser had never been in battle. His naval service had been spent in the comparative comfort and the indisputable safety of Imperial Naval barracks. And although he’d never admitted it, Esser felt uneasy about his passive role in this great ‘war to end wars’, for Esser – despite his revolutionary declarations – had the inborn respect for the warrior that so burdens the German soul.

Endless bickering, inarticulate committees meeting long into the night without reaching any conclusions, had wearied and disillusioned him. And on this Monday evening, the 23rd day of December, 1918, Esser had reached the end of his patience. The prospect of the Imperial Palace coming under attack by loyal units of the army frightened him, and he made no secret of his fear. Even the light artillery that informers said were being readied at Potsdam would be enough to blow the main doors in, and the effect of shrapnel fire in these confined spaces would not bear thinking about.

And yet trying to get this simple fact understood by his committee had proved far beyond his power. Not that any of the committee members offered a sensible alternative to his suggestion that they open talks with Ebert and release their hostages – Otto Wels in particular – as a gesture of good faith. He was shouted down by cries of ‘Traitor!’ and ‘No surrender!’ rather than defeated in rational discussion. Finally Esser exploded with rage. He yelled obscenities at these pompous pen-pushers – Bonsen, he called them – and stormed out of the meeting. It was then that the messenger came to say that two army plenipotentiaries were waiting for him downstairs. This was the beginning of the end. He felt frightened. Now what was he supposed to do? Temporize, yes, but how?

‘I am Esser, committee chairman. What is it?’ Esser fixed them with his dark, piercing eyes. Pauli immediately recognized his friend, who’d grown into a barrel-chested giant, pea jacket open, red neckerchief at his throat and sailor cap on the back of his close-cropped head.

‘Fritz! Remember me, Pauli Winter? Travemünde.’

Esser didn’t recognize Pauli. His eyes went to Alex Horner. He recognized Horner from the meeting in the Chancellery; he was some sort of military side to Otto Wels. It was to be expected that the army would send him to parley about the release of Berlin’s military governor. Esser had opposed the idea of holding the socialist politician here as hostage: it was nothing better than kidnapping and extortion. Such tactics would not endear the People’s Naval Division to the working class. Esser knew the working class: they were moralists.

‘Come away from the palace, Fritz. I want to talk to you.’

Esser went to the window. It was dark outside, but he could see the crowds. He thought he could see the lights from the cathedral shining on steel helmets. But steel helmets didn’t mean that the army had arrived; half the population of Berlin seemed to be wearing steel helmets and carrying guns. He turned back to look at the two men. The fellow from Wels’s office was unmistakably a Prussian officer, despite the bowler hat, walking stick and long overcoat. The other was dressed in a battered army greatcoat and a steel helmet with a swastika painted on the front. They shouldn’t have let him in here with that pistol strapped to his belt, but it was too late now.

‘Fritz!’ said Pauli once more.

He recognized him now. The kid from the big house at Travemünde: Paul Winter. Perhaps it was going to be all right. He grabbed the young man’s outstretched hand. ‘What the devil are you doing here? Did the army send you?’

‘The army? No.’

‘Good God, Pauli, the guards only brought you in here because they thought you were sent by the army to negotiate with us.’

‘Come and have a beer, Fritz.’

Esser turned to Alex Horner. ‘You haven’t come here to ask for the release of Otto Wels?’

Alex was on the point of saying, to the devil with Wels. Instead he told Esser, ‘Herr Winter is my friend.’

‘Then let’s go and drink beer!’ said Fritz Esser loudly. He smiled to show his crooked teeth. ‘I’ll buy you more beer than you can drink, young Winter.’

‘That might be a lot of beer, Fritz.’

‘It’s not a trick?’ said Esser, his face suddenly darkening.

‘You have my word,’ said Alex Horner formally. He clicked his heels.

‘My friend is a Prussian stuffed-shirt,’ Pauli told Esser, ‘but under that shirt there is a goodhearted fellow.’

‘I’ll trust you,’ said Esser. It seemed a long time since he’d trusted anyone very much, but now he wanted to shed the worries of the day and forget, forget, forget. Let those know-it-alls of the committee continue their arguments without him. ‘Where shall we drink?’ Just to be on the safe side, he strapped a belt and pistol around his waist. He ran his hand over his bristly hair and felt his scalp damp with sweat, then plonked his cap back on his head.

Pauli had his answer ready: ‘There’s a Kneipe behind the Spittelmarkt: Guggenheimer’s place. Know it?’

The choice of venue reassured Fritz Esser. Guggenheimer was a Jew with half a dozen children, all of whom attended the university, with varying degrees of success. His bar was a student hangout with cheap food and strong beer. All sorts of odd people went there. It was the sort of place that a sailor, a Freikorps man and a smartly dressed civilian might be able to drink together without getting unwelcome attention.

Alex stole a glance at his friend. Had it all been planned by Pauli? He could be devious and cunning: it was a part of his nature that few people knew. And yet Pauli was sincere, too; that was what so beguiled Esser.

‘The pay is not important,’ said Pauli Winter after several tankards of Guggenheimer’s best dark beer had been consumed. ‘It’s the comradeship: men you can trust with your life. Good fellows, every one of them. But the money is good, too. Every volunteer has a daily basic pay of forty marks, and now the government are adding another five. Then there’s the food: two hundred grams of meat and seventy-five grams of butter and a quarter-litre of wine. Plenty of beer and cigarettes, too.’ He held up his beer. ‘In our canteen this would cost us almost nothing. But a lot of the men join because Freikorps service counts towards their pension. Take you, Fritz,’ he added, as if taking an example entirely at random. ‘You’d be taken into the Freikorps at your present naval rank and pay – in fact, you’d become my sergeant major, because I’m getting my own company next month – and your Freikorps service counts towards your pension. Plus the regular family allowance will immediately start again for your parents. How are they, by the way?’

‘My father is not well,’ said Fritz Esser absent-mindedly.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Pauli. It was a part of Pauli’s charm that he could express his genuine sorrow that the ‘pig man’ was unwell, then immediately continue his description of life in the Freikorps, without seeming uncaring. ‘People who can handle the administration side are difficult to find. The storm battalions were not noted for their paperwork. But now we can only get pay, allowances, food and all the other supplies we need if the office work is properly done. These socialists are all bureaucrats, you see; we have to play their game.’

‘Why do we have to play their game?’ Esser inquired. ‘I don’t trust this government.’

Alex nodded agreement and leaned forward to hear Pauli’s reply.

‘For the time being,’ said Pauli. ‘When the right time comes, Germany will have proper leadership.’

‘An emperor?’ asked Alex Horner.

‘Perhaps,’ said Pauli. ‘But somehow I think we’ve seen the end of the House of Hohenzollern. His Highness lacked the qualities of a true Prussian soldier-king, and no one who’s seen the Crown Prince at close quarters would hope he’d be any better.’

‘Heartily agreed,’ said Alex Horner, and belched. Esser took off his old patched jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. His bare arms were covered with tattoos: serpents, girls’ names and expressions of fidelity in elaborate scrollwork.

‘Get more beer,’ said Pauli.

‘It’s my turn,’ said Fritz Esser. He was the oldest of the three men and determined to pay his way. He got up and walked to the counter with only the slightest unsteadiness.

With Esser out of earshot, Alex Horner whispered, ‘You’ll never recruit this wretch to your damned Freikorps Graf.’ Alex didn’t like Captain Graf, the diminutive homosexual who ran his private army like some medieval war-lord, but he was cautious about voicing such thoughts to Pauli who’d become something of an apologist for this strange man.

‘There’s not one there who could take on the job of a sergeant major,’ said Pauli.

‘Not one where?’

‘In the company that I’ll take over next month. Good soldiers, good fighters, good comrades, but no skewer upon which I can fix them.’

‘You’ll never do it, Pauli. The fellow’s a Spartacist.’

‘He’ll see reason,’ said Pauli complacently. ‘Fritz is a sensible fellow.’

‘You mad fool. Did you have this in mind right from the start?’

Before Pauli answered, Esser was back with three foaming steins of beer. He slammed them on the table. ‘Drink, drink, drink,’ he urged. He looked round to see who was seated nearby. ‘And then there are a couple of things you must tell me about this Freikorps business.’

Fortified with several litres of Guggenheimer’s beer, the trio went down Leipziger Strasse, visiting various bars, until they turned north along Friedrichstrasse, where the nightlife was even more raucous: male and female prostitutes mingling with beggars, drunks, and pickpockets, and from every side the frantic sounds of recently arrived American jazz.

Fritz Esser never went back to the Imperial Palace. When, early on that Christmas Eve morning, the army’s artillery opened fire on the palace, Esser didn’t even hear the gunfire, for he was in an upstairs room over a club behind the Schiffbauerdamm Theatre, asleep in the arms of a half-undressed nightclub hostess.

As 1918 tottered to a close, Fritz Esser was enrolled in the Freikorps. On the other side of the city, Liebknecht joined his Spartakusbund to the Independent Socialists and the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, called his new political entity the Communist Party of Germany, and began arming his supporters.

Everywhere in Berlin the madness continued: lines of hungry people formed outside the bakers’ shops, and butchers’, too, and stared into expensive restaurants, where war profiteers and their gloriously attired women gobbled champagne and caviar. On the Western Front the Allies had stopped fighting but their naval blockade continued, and thousands of Germans died of malnutrition. Throughout Europe the influenza virus decimated the tired and hungry population; it brought death to seventeen hundred Berliners in a single day.

Whatever reservations Fritz Esser had had about serving under the command of his young friend they soon evaporated as Pauli Winter led his company across the rooftops of Wilhelmstrasse despite Spartacist snipers across the street. Soon Pauli had repaid any debt he owed Esser for hauling him from the sea so long ago. More than once Pauli saved his sergeant major from death or injury. Once his strong arms saved Esser from sliding off the rain-swept slates into the street below. Esser had followed Graf and the others along the ridge of a saddleback roof. It required balance, daring and speed, and Fritz Esser, burdened with rifle, bandoliers, and a heavy bag of grenades, had none of these in adequate amounts. He slipped on the icy ridge tiles, and his rifle went across the slates and down into the street far below. As Esser started to fall, Pauli grabbed him by the greatcoat collar and held him spread-eagled across the steep roof, while men on the roof on the far side of Wilhelmstrasse fired at him. Only with great difficulty was the unfortunately heavyweight Esser dragged to safety. Pauli laughed about it. Under fire the clumsy Pauli became another man: not just commander of ‘Winter Company’, he was also the most audacious and skilled fighting man in that very formidable unit, Freikorps Graf.

Once, during the heavy fighting in the centre of the city, the two men met briefly with Leutnant Alex Horner. It was during the violent fighting of January 11, 1919, when Freikorps units battled their way into the Police Headquarters on Alexanderplatz, where Spartacist resistance was fierce. It was something of a massacre. The defenders’ morale was weakening as they realized that Liebknecht’s communists were not going to win power by force. Pauli and Esser were amongst the first inside the Police Headquarters courtyard. Esser lobbed a stick grenade through a downstairs window, and both men scrambled into the smoke-filled wreckage; the others followed without hesitation. Now the defenders fell back, room by room, floor by floor, but the merciless Freikorpskämpfer slaughtered everyone they found.

Alex Horner protested at the slaughter. He took his formal objections to Captain Graf. But the Freikorps men were in no mood to listen to technicalities from the regular army. They left no one alive.

The regular army, too, had men who gave no quarter. A few days later an informer reported the presence of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht in a middle-class apartment in Wilmersdorf. The captive pair were taken to the Eden Hotel, near the Memorial Church, which the Horse Guards were using as their head quarters. After a brutal interrogation they were murdered, and with their deaths ‘Spartacus week’ ended.

During this respite the Freikorps reformed and refitted, and Lieutenant Pauli Winter lost his sergeant major. Fritz Esser had, in his brief service with his company, shown only moderate aptitude for infantry tactics, and unless Pauli was at his side he didn’t have the combat experience or the reckless bravery that most of the others showed. But there had been time to recognize the administrative skills he’d learned during his naval service. Fritz Esser was promoted to be an assistant to the battalion adjutant. Then, just two weeks later, after the adjutant was hospitalized, Esser was made battalion adjutant.

Whatever extravagant claims are made for the democratic style of the Freikorps units, there was strong opposition to making Esser an officer. So he became adjutant with that strange compromise rank that the German army invented for such social dilemmas. He was made a Feldwebel-Leutnant, so that he could do an officer’s job with officer’s badges and shoulder straps and officer’s pay without being the social equal of his peers. It was an arrangement that made all concerned very satisfied.

The man that Fritz Esser now worked alongside was Captain Georg Graf, and he was not an easy man to get along with. Despite first appearances, the little Munich-born career officer with big ears, red nose, and unconcealed homosexual preferences wasn’t a figure of fun to anyone who’d fought alongside him, anywhere from Verdun to Alexanderplatz. He was mercurial, violent and unforgiving.

Fritz Esser and Captain Graf – both men difficult and argumentative by nature – worked amicably together. Pauli Winter teased Esser that Graf had fallen in love with him, because that idea made the unmistakably heterosexual Esser nervous. Esser stoically replied that he admired Graf for his physical bravery under fire and appreciated the very real concern he showed for the men under his command. But, whatever the exact nature of the relationship, the mutual regard Esser and Graf showed for each other was genuine and lasting. And that was just as well, for Feldwebel-Leutnant Esser became Graf’s de facto second in command. When Graf was not available, Esser was always consulted. ‘What would Captain Graf probably want…?’ The question was always phrased in such a way that Esser gave an opinion rather than an order, but his underlying authority was undisputed, and Graf supported his adjutant’s decisions, whatever his true feelings may have been.

Feldwebel-Leutnant Esser’s assignment to Headquarters did not mean there was any change in the relationship between him and Pauli Winter. They were very close. Esser was grateful to Pauli for bringing him into the battalion, and though Esser could never replace his brother, Peter, in the role of mentor and protector, or Alex Horner as conscience and example, Fritz Esser was the most priceless of companions. Fritz could be outrageously funny, and he had a sharp eye for the sort of cant and humbug that the new socialist government plentifully supplied every day. Fritz was not a committed socialist; nor was he a communist or a Marxist. And whatever was the political creed that bound the Freikorps men together, Fritz Esser had no heartfelt devotion to that, either. Fritz Esser was an anarchist by both conviction and nature, and Pauli found his anarchistic attitude towards life not only amusing but illuminating and instructive, too.

When Freikorps Graf moved out of Berlin, first to Halle and then to Munich, Esser’s role as quartermaster, mother superior, slave-master and general factotum earned the respect of the entire battalion. En route there was always a hot evening meal ready, a dry place to sleep, and some sort of breakfast, too. Every soldier in the battalion had well-repaired boots and fifty rounds of ammunition in a bandolier in case there was trouble with the local populations, who sometimes preferred their communist committees to the freebooting warriors. And if sometimes they had to march too far, then that was because not even the amazing Fritz could keep all the ancient trucks in good enough repair to transport a battalion of men. Besides, soldiers marched – everyone knew that. Freikorpstruppen liked to march and shoot and sleep rough; that was why they were in the Freikorps. People who didn’t like such hardships and the comradeship that went with them remained civilians, and all good Freikorpskämpfer despised civilians of every political creed.

1922

‘Berlin is so far away and I miss you so much’

The Austrian countryside was bleak and cold, and by five o’clock in the afternoon the darkening sky was streaked with the red light of the setting sun. Martha Somló and Harald Winter had skated round and round long after all the other skaters – villagers mostly; the Viennese did not come this far to find ice – had gone.

She loved the hiss of the blades cutting into the ice, and the way her face tingled in the cold wind. She loved the harmony with which they moved together, and she enjoyed Harry’s arm firmly around her waist as they raced across the ice at reckless speed.

The dinner they were served in the private rooms upstairs at the White Horse was simple country food, but there was nothing better than a veal stew on a cold winter evening. They had their warm apple strudel, and tiny glasses of powerful Schwarzbeer schnapps from the nearby farm, while sitting in front of a roaring log fire. The logs were trimmings from the orchard, the smoke smelled of the fruit, and the sap still inside the wood made the fire crack and bang and throw sparks.

‘Must you go back tomorrow?’ she asked. They had been in bed. Now she was sitting on the floor by his feet, naked except for an ornate gypsy-style shawl that she’d wrapped herself into. He’d made her scrub off all the powder, cream, and lipstick. He cared nothing about the new fashions: in Harald Winter’s world only whores and chorus girls painted their faces.

‘I shouldn’t have stayed so long,’ said Harald Winter.

‘Why are you selling the bank?’ Every time she passed the bank in Ringstrasse she felt proud of knowing Harry.

‘Only my share of the bank.’ He stared into the fire as if hoping to see a bright future there.

‘Why?’

‘It will make no difference to us, little one. I will still come to Vienna.’ He touched her hair gently, and she closed her eyes as he stroked her head.

‘But not so often.’

‘I am not rich any more,’ said Winter. He was rich, of course, very rich by the standards that most people employ to measure wealth. But he could not provide Martha with the luxuries – the carriage and servants – that she’d once enjoyed, and he felt humiliated by his economies.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. She turned to look at him by the light of the flames. He looked tired and ill, but she knew now that Harald Winter’s business setbacks affected him in the way that other men are affected by infirmities or disease. ‘I’ll always be here waiting.’

‘I’m setting up a trust fund for you in Switzerland,’ he said. ‘It will be enough to live comfortably whatever happens.’

‘You are a wonderful man, Harry. What would I do without you?’

‘Many people say things will get even worse. Some of the banks might crash. It’s better to sell.’

‘Berlin is so far away, Harry, and I miss you so much.’ He leaned forward and bent over to kiss her. If only it could be like this forever, he thought. But, just as quickly, the thought was gone. Harald Winter would find life like this unendurable after a week or so, and he was sensible enough to know that.

1924

‘Who are those dreadful men?’

The birthday party that Harald and Veronica Winter put on for their younger son, Pauli’s twenty-fourth birthday was the first real birthday party he’d had since he was a child. Although unsaid, it was his parent’s celebration of Pauli Winter’s first term at university, his return to civilian life. The lovely old house was ablaze with lights and noisy with the excited chatter of more than fifty guests and a ten-piece dance band. In a grim sort of joke that was typically berlinerisch, the invitations were overprinted upon billion-mark banknotes. Back before the war, an unskilled worker in one of Harald Winter’s factories earned twenty-five marks a week, but the staggering inflation of the previous year had seen the value of Germany’s paper money plunge to a point where one U.S. dollar bought over two and a half billion marks. Foreigners came across the border from Holland and Czechoslovakia and bought land and mansions with handfuls of hard currency. Then finally the madness ended. The Reichsbank issued its new Rentenmarks, one of which was worth one billion in the old currency. As if in celebration, Aschingers, the famous restaurant near the Friedrichstrasse railway station, offered one main dish, a glass of beer, a dessert, and as many rolls as you cared to eat for just one new mark. Inflation had stopped.

As the smoke cleared, it was apparent that the middle classes had suffered most: in the final few terrible weeks most people’s life savings totalled not enough to buy a postage stamp. But some Germans had not suffered. Harald Winter had almost doubled his fortune. Like many industrialists, he was allowed to borrow from the Reichsbank, which, in the manner of most government departments, reacted very slowly to the events of the day. Thus, even when the Reichsbank was charging its top rate of interest, Harald Winter could continue borrowing and repaying at rates far, far below that of inflation. And by 1924 the five-million-Reichsmark debt due to his father-in-law was nothing like enough to buy a meal in Aschingers. It could be renegotiated to almost anything Harald Winter decided.

But not everyone present at Pauli’s birthday party this evening had been as fortunate and as astute as Winter. Many of them had had at least a part of their money in government securities, and now they were talking about the law of December 8, 1923. The socialist government had decided that their own debts were to be advantageously revalued – for instance, the reparations due to France – but the millions of holders of now worthless government securities would not be compensated.

‘By God!’ said Frau Wisliceny, who’d come with her daughters and, to Peter Winter’s indignation, brought her son-in-law Erich Hennig. ‘I’m beginning to believe that ruffian Hitler is right about the rogues who govern us.’ Frau Wisliceny had not mellowed with age – a big, handsome, matronly woman in an elaborate but decidedly unfashionable Paris gown that she’d had since before the war. Frau Wisliceny eachewed the new fashions for the sake of which women sacrificed their long hair and exposed their legs. Her voice was firm and decisive, and she prided herself that she was as well informed as anyone in Berlin and happy to argue about art, music, or politics with any man present.

‘Surely you would not wish to be ruled by such a rascal?’ said Richard Fischer. Foxy Fischer’s son, now forty-three years old and running the family’s steel empire, had left his ageing father in order to flirt with Inge until Frau Wisliceny moved into the group. Not that Frau Wisliceny would oppose a marriage between the two of them or object to Richard’s flirting. Richard Fischer was the most eligible of bachelors, and her eldest daughter was getting to an age when to be unmarried was noticeable. But Inge had not given up hope of marrying Peter Winter, and as long as he remained single she had eyes for no one else.

‘You’d better lower your voice,’ Erich Hennig advised. ‘That little Captain Graf over there is one of Hitler’s most notorious strongarm men, and the big brute with him is his so-called adjutant.’

‘I’m not frightened to speak my mind,’ said Fischer. He, too, was a big fellow, and his full beard, the confident manner that his riches provided, made him a formidable adversary in any sort of conflict.

‘Hitler will go to prison anyway,’ said Frau Wisliceny, in an attempt to avoid any friction that might arise between her son-in-law and Fischer. ‘Even the Bavarians won’t let him get away with an armed putsch against their legally elected government.’

‘I’m not sure he will,’ said Peter Winter. He was tall and slim, with a pale complexion that had come from long hours studying his law books. In his well-fitting evening suit he was as handsome as any man in the room. He’d let his dark hair grow unfashionably long, so that it touched the top of his ears. Inge eyed him adoringly. Peter was not the sort of man every girl would want: some said he was an unbending snob, too old-fashioned for the fast-moving permissiveness of Berlin in the twenties. But Inge had decided that there could be no other man for her, and now that her sister Lisl was married…‘My class in law school went to Munich last week. We spent some time with the prosecution people, and they let us see the evidence.’

‘But there is nothing to prove,’ said Lisl. ‘Hitler’s guilty. It was an attempt to seize power by armed force. It’s simply a matter of sentencing him.’

Peter looked at her before replying. Marriage to the awful Hennig obviously agreed with her. She looked well and happy and was even more self-confident than he remembered. Most of her friends had predicted that she’d be crushed by the opinionated, dogmatic, domineering Hennig, but the opposite had happened: it was Lisl who made all the decisions, and when it came to political opinions Hennig deferred to his beautiful young wife.

Peter said, ‘You only need half an hour in Munich to realize that this is no criminal trial, it’s more like an election. What jury will send a war hero such as General Ludendorff to prison?’

Lisl replied, ‘We’re not talking about Ludendorff, who everyone knows is only half dotty. We’re talking about Hitler, a madman.’

‘I don’t know how carefully you follow Hitler’s speeches,’ Peter told her with the dispassionate moderation that he’d learned from his law professor. ‘But I read through some of his speeches. Hitler is being described as “the new Messiah” and he cultivates this. He condemns moral decay, corruption, and vice and is able to rally round him people with very differing views: that is his skill.’

‘I’ve heard all that tosh,’ said Fischer. ‘But if you listen to Hitler, you’d think that all the vice and corruption in the world are here in Berlin.’ He stroked his beard and looked to Inge for approval. She smiled at him but then turned back to look at Peter.

‘He does,’ agreed Peter mildly. ‘But that appeals to the Bavarians. Those damn southerners. They like to see Berlin as the base of centralism, the home of the Prussian military – which they fear and despise – and Protestant Berliners as the greatest obstacle to their aim of restoring a Bavarian kingdom, complete with Catholic monarchy. Hilter skilfully panders to all these feelings.’

Fischer said, ‘And those Bavarians see Berlin as a place controlled by Jewish capitalists. It suits their anti-Semitic nature.’

The band started playing a Lehár waltz. ‘It’s a crime not to be dancing,’ said Frau Wisliceny. ‘Inge, is this dance booked?’

‘No, Mama.’

Frau Wisliceny looked pointedly at Richard Fischer, who immediately asked Inge to dance.

Peter would have asked her sister Lisl to dance, if only as a way to annoy Hennig, but Hennig was too quick for him and whirled his wife away onto the dance floor with no more than a curt nod to them.

Someone invited Frau Wisliceny to dance and, left alone, Peter Winter turned to watch two soldiers who were standing near the bar. One of them was Fritz Esser, of course. There was no way of avoiding recognition of the debt he owed him, but he didn’t have to approve of the fellow’s activities or of the horrid little homosexual who’d come here with him. And Peter thought it appalling that the two men should have arrived in their comic-opera uniforms. Captain Graf was wearing the modified uniform of an army captain. Esser wore a new sort of uniform: brown shirt, breeches, boots, and Sam-Browne-style leather belt and shoulder strap. Both men were members of the uniformed ‘army’ that the notorious Captain Ernst Röhm commanded – under ever-changing titles – as a military arm for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. ‘Storm troopers’, they called themselves.

Peter Winter hated the Nazis almost as much as he hated the communists. He distrusted their cavalier use of words such as ‘freedom’, ‘honour’, ‘bread’ and ‘security’. He believed that only stupid people could define the failings and opportunities of this complex world by means of trite catchall mottos.

Deep down he had always hoped that by some miracle he’d wake up and find himself back in a well-ordered world run from the Imperial Palace by that autocrat Kaiser Wilhelm, who cared nothing for what the Reichstag decreed. But, gradually and grudgingly, he’d come to believe that the new postwar constitution provided a truly democratic framework by means of which Germany would again become the greatest nation in the world.

Despite his distaste for socialism, Peter Winter was that evening one of the very few people in the Winter house – or, indeed, in the whole city – who supported Ebert, the socialist president. Germany must be run by the law; that was why he was studying to be a lawyer. The organized violence of communists and Nazis was a threat to the law, to the stability of German middle-class society, and therefore to everything that Peter held dear.

So Peter Winter found it difficult to conceal his hostility as he walked over to where Captain Graf was talking to Fritz Esser. He hated these men not only for what they were but because of their continuing association with Pauli. He had a sense of foreboding that made him want to protect his younger brother from these unpleasant rascals. At least he’d been able to persuade Pauli to leave Graf’s wretched Freikorps. Had he remained in Munich with them much longer, there was little doubt that Pauli would have become a Nazi stormtrooper and been here tonight in one of these ridiculous uniforms.

‘Not dancing, gentlemen?’ said Peter provocatively. He signalled to the waiter for more champagne for his guests. They knew who he was, of course, Graf had met him before, and Esser had known him from the time he’d pulled him out of the sea off Travemünde.

‘We are talking business,’ said Graf. He had a notebook in his hand, and he was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles to read from it.

‘Come along! This is a celebration. Drink! Dance! Have fun!’

Neither of the two men could decide how to respond to Peter’s friendly words, but both knew they were being mocked. As he turned his head, Graf’s spectacle lenses flashed with the reflections of the grand chandeliers, and his fierce eyes showed anger.

When the servant had poured wine for both men, Esser lifted his glass in salute. ‘Prosit!’ he said and grinned broadly. Peter bowed and took his leave of them.

‘The place is full of Jews,’ Graf told Esser once Peter Winter had gone. ‘And the Winter family have grown rich and fat feasting on the corpses of our comrades.’

‘Our time will come,’ said Esser. He put a thumb into his belt and stood surveying the dancers like a lion tamer.

Captain Graf was looking at the far end of the room, where four young girls in scanty sequined two-piece outfits had suddenly started their dance. Captain Graf didn’t share Esser’s appreciation for half-naked girls, and he turned away with a scowl on his face. ‘Jewish, capitalist filth!’ said Graf.

Esser grunted and continued to watch the floor show. The girls were Pauli Winter’s idea; they’d been specially brought over to the house from a Revue-Bar. Esser recognized the dancers, and the girls knew him. His face was known at every drinking place in Berlin, from the Kempi on Leipziger Strasse to the sleazy little bars on Invalidenstrasse where pimps plied their trade. Esser, unlike Graf, liked girls. He drank his champagne. He had long ago learned that everything of which Captain Graf disapproved was ‘Jewish, capitalist filth’, and until now he had never dared to contradict his boss. But the past year had seen a change in Esser’s loyalties. He’d been close enough to the Nazi Party leadership to know that Graf’s hero – and immediate commander – Röhm was not blindly loyal to Hitler. Soon there must come a confrontation between Röhm’s uniformed SA – Sturmabteilung – and the grey-faced civilians of the Nazi Party leadership, and Esser had decided that, whether Hitler got a prison sentence or not, his future was with ‘Der Chef’. ‘They are damned good dancers,’ said Esser defiantly and applauded the Revue-Bar girls. Captain Graf snorted angrily, stuffed his notebook back in his breast pocket, and strutted off towards the upstairs smoking room and bar.

Pauli Winter saw Graf’s tiff with Esser from the dance floor. Pauli was transformed. No longer in the haircut that he’d had since entering cadet school, which had made his skull into a furry pink billiards ball, his blond hair was long enough to fall forward across his eyes. His new evening suit – from his father’s tailor – fitted close upon his stocky, muscular figure, and many female eyes watched him with interest as he waltzed with one of the Guggenheimer daughters. His student life had revealed a new aspect of Pauli, for he was a sociable young man who enjoyed parties, girls, drinks, and dancing more than lectures and books. On this account his first exam results had been so poor that he’d not yet told his father about them. Sometimes he wondered why he’d let his parents persuade him to go to university, but they had been determined to get him out of the Freikorps. They were hypocrites. They applauded the way the Freikorps fought the communists but deplored Graf and the men who did the fighting.

It was not easy to adapt to the schoolroom again after the violent rough-and-tumble of the Freikorps. But Peter was at the law school, too, and Peter sorted out all the problems in that rather imperious way that he did everything. But even Peter couldn’t help Pauli get better marks. Company Law was not something that interested Pauli very much but, as usual, Pauli wanted to please his parents. He wanted to please everyone: he knew it was a foolish weakness, but he too often agreed to whatever was required of him rather than be subjected to long arguments.

When the dance ended, Pauli applauded the band and thanked Hetti Guggenheimer. She was a pretty girl – dark hair and large brown eyes with lashes that she too readily fluttered at young men. Hetti Guggenheimer was one of Pauli’s fellow first-year students. She was studying medicine and always got top marks. Hetti’s next dance was booked with someone else, but she went through the motions of referring to her card before excusing herself to Pauli. Pauli didn’t mind too much. There were lots of pretty girls here, and he was popular with the girls. Although he’d never grown as tall as his brother, Pauli had the American good looks of the Rensselaer family. His cheekbones set high in a bony skull, large intense eyes, and wide smile had made him look like the sort of actor that Hollywood casts as a cowboy. And, like the archetypal cowboy, he was soft-spoken, easy-tempered, and uncomplaining. Now, taking his leave of Hetti, he went back to where he’d left his beer and looked round the room. He saw Esser and Graf having what was obviously some sort of argument and watched Graf go strutting upstairs angrily. Pauli smoothed his disarrayed hair, tucked in his rumpled shirt, and went over to Esser. ‘Is everything all right, Fritz?’

‘Everything is just fine.’

‘I saw Captain Graf come past me. He looked angry.’

‘You know what he’s like, Pauli. His anger passes.’

‘You usually get along so well with him.’

Esser drunk champagne and Pauli realized that he was thinking about his reply. Finally he said, ‘Things have changed since the old days, Pauli. After you left us to go to school, the battalion became different.’ It was nearly a year since Pauli had left them to start the cramming course he’d taken before the entrance exam. Ten months of living with his parents. It seemed much longer. Much, much longer.

‘Different how?’

‘Too many youngsters. Spiteful kids who never went to the war and want to show how tough they are. And I miss Berlin.’

‘And Graf?’

‘He’s become too pally with Röhm, and I don’t get along with Röhm. He’s too damned ambitious to be a soldier. He plays politics.’ Esser looked round to be sure he wasn’t overheard. ‘I went to the Führer and told him what was happening.’

‘The Führer? Hitler?’

‘I told him that Röhm is looking for an opportunity to take over. With the Führer in prison, Röhm could take control of everything.’

‘Perhaps Röhm will be sentenced to a long prison term, too.’

‘It’s possible. But Röhm has remarkable friends and supporters: in the army, in the Bavarian government, and in the judiciary, too. They all know that sooner or later the Nazis will come to power.’

‘So you believe the Nazis will get into power,’ said Pauli. The idea of that small, cranky organization forming a government seemed unlikely.

‘Good men will be needed then, Pauli. Reliable men like you. When you’ve finished at law school, there will be a good job waiting for you.’

‘With the Nazis?’

‘All the top men are lawyers. I’m even thinking of studying law myself.’

Pauli slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You could do it, Fritz. I would help you.’

He laughed self-consciously. ‘I’d need coaching. I left school when I was fourteen.’

‘We’ll talk about all that next week, when we have lunch. So you are a Nazi?’

‘Yes, I am a secret member. That cunning bastard Röhm tries to keep us brownshirts separated from the Party. Röhm still has dreams of ditching Hitler and restoring the monarchy, but the Führer knows what he’s doing.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Fritz,’ said Pauli. He was flattered that Esser had taken him into his confidence, for these were days when any small disloyalty was enough to get a man murdered.

‘I have a nose for what’s what. I’m not really a soldier; I’m a political person. I always have been,’ said Esser.

‘What will happen next? Your Hitler is certain to get a long prison sentence, isn’t he?’

‘We’ll bide our time,’ said Esser. ‘Adolf Hitler is the man Germany needs; we must wait for him, however long.’

‘For God’s sake, be careful, Fritz. You said Röhm is a ruthless bastard. If he finds out that you’re betraying him…’

‘I know how to handle him. He’s a homosexual, like Graf. There are too many homosexuals around Röhm; that’s one of the things I don’t like about the situation in Munich. I treat them all like spoiled brats. One day the Führer will deal with them. Until then those pansies need me. Röhm is hiding guns for the army – secret dumps all over the country. More than twenty thousand rifles, machine guns … even artillery.’ He grinned. ‘Without my office files they’d never know where anything is to be found.’

‘Alex Horner is here tonight. You should talk to him. One day he’ll end up as chief of the General Staff. There might be a time when an influential friend in the Reichswehr would be useful to you.’ Pauli wanted his friends to be friends with one another. It was something of an obsession with him.

Fritz Esser downed his drink. ‘Thanks, Pauli. But don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing. Sometime we’ll go out and get drunk and I’ll tell you some stories about the Munich putsch that will make your hair curl. It nearly came off! I marched alongside the Führer. I was in Odeonsplatz when the police opened fire. The Führer was no more than thirty paces from me. He was still wearing his evening suit, with a trenchcoat over it. The man next to him was shot dead; he pulled the Führer down with him. Captain Göring was wounded. Only Ludendorff ignored the gunfire and marched on through the police cordon. It was a wonderful experience, Pauli.’

‘It was a fiasco,’ said Pauli, not unkindly.

‘One day you’ll regret you were not with us. We made history.’

‘Have another drink, Fritz. And then let’s see if we can find Alex. I want to get the two of you together.’

At that moment Pauli’s old friend Leutnant Alex Horner was smoking a cigar in Harald Winter’s study and being quizzed by Winter and old ‘Foxy’ Fischer. The study had never been refurnished since the Winters first moved in. The walls were lined with more or less the same books, and the floor covered with the same richly coloured oriental carpet. The same inlaid mahogany desk occupied one corner, and the only light came from the green-shaded desk lamp. Everything was clean and well cared for, but the footstools, like the polished leather wing armchairs, were scuffed and scarred by carelessly held cigars and the marks from drink glasses. The study, more than any other room in the house, had escaped unchanged over these eventful years, and Harald liked it all just the way it was; even the engraved portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm remained on the wall.

This evening the air here was blue with cigar smoke from the three men. The deferential attention the young man was receiving was flattering for him, but he was not surprised by it. For Leutnant Horner had recently been able to see for himself what was Germany’s most closely guarded secret: the newly established German military installations in Soviet Russia. Now the two men wanted a first-hand account of this astounding political development.

‘Did you visit all the factories?’ asked Fischer. He was seventy-two years old, totally bald and frail, but he would not give up cigars and brandy.

‘I really don’t know, but I went to some of the most important ones.’ Alex’s face had become hard and set into the inscrutable expression that the German army expected of its elite Prussian Officer Corps. His nose was wider, and the duelling scar that had been on his cheek so long had become more livid with age.

‘The Junkers airplane factories, near Moscow and Kharkov,’ supplied Harald Winter, to show he was already well informed. He looked especially sleek. He’d spent the earlier part of the evening dancing. Harry enjoyed dancing, and tonight he’d made sure of partnering most of the attractive young women here. At fifty-four he was still a better dancer than any of the younger men, and he was only too pleased to demonstrate it.

Alex Horner nodded. ‘There were twenty-three of us. We travelled separately. I didn’t, for instance, visit the poison-gas factory – it’s in a remote part of Samara Oblast – or any of the plants where artillery shells are manufactured. Ordnance specialists were sent there, and aviators reported on the flying schools. My assignment was to visit the tank training schools that we run in cooperation with the Red Army.’

Fischer crushed his cigar into the ashtray with unnecessary force. ‘I don’t like it, I’ll tell you. The idea of showing Bolshevik murderers how to use tanks and planes is madness. Those swine will attack us the first chance they get.’

‘Your fears are unfounded, Foxy,’ said Harald Winter, and smiled at the strongly expressed views. ‘The Versailles Diktat forbids us to have planes and tanks. The Soviets have not signed the Versailles treaty, and their cooperation is exactly what we need. The Russians want our expertise and we have to have secret testing grounds.’ The neatness of the deception pleased him.

‘You are being carried away by the prospects,’ Fischer told Winter. ‘I, too, want to get my factories fully working again, but I can’t keep a tank production line secret.’

Winter hesitated and a nerve in his cheek twitched. Then he admitted, ‘I have already supplied the army with modern planes. All-metal airframes. Aluminium alloys, monocoque construction, far advanced over the flimsy old wooden contraptions that were used in the war. I’d desperately like to hear how they are faring in field conditions in Russia. The army won’t let me send my technical experts there.’ He looked at Horner, half hoping that he would offer to arrange for this, but Horner looked away.

‘Perhaps I’m getting too old,’ said Fischer. ‘My son Richard thinks as you do: he’s obsessed with the designing of all these wretched tanks, to the point of neglecting our other clients. I tell him these Bolsheviks are treacherous and he laughs at me.’

‘We have a mutual enemy,’ said Horner. He blew a smoke ring and admired it. The drink and the conspiratory atmosphere had gone to his head.

‘Us and the Russians? The Poles, you mean?’ said Fischer. ‘I have never believed that Poland was a serious threat to us.’

There was a light tap at the door, and when Winter called ‘Come in’ his wife entered. Time had been kind to Veronica Winter. She had lost little of the beauty that had turned men’s heads when Winter had first met her. She was thinner now than she’d been then, and her face, throat and arms, revealed by the striped brown-and-yellow silk-voile evening dress she wore, were paler. But the serenity that made her desirable, and the smile that was so often on her lips had gone. Veronica was perturbed.

‘Harald!’ she said, having indicated that the other two men should not stand up for her. ‘Who are those dreadful men?’

‘Dreadful men?’ said Winter. ‘Which men?’ He flicked ash from his cigar. It was a sign of his irritation at being interrupted.

In an attempt to calm her Fischer chuckled and said, ‘There are so many dreadful men in your house tonight, Veronica, that even your husband can’t keep track of them.’

‘How can you say such a thing, Herr Fischer?’ she replied, feigning offence. To her husband she said, ‘Two men in some sort of uniform.’

Harald Winter said, ‘One of them is a fellow who calls himself “Captain” Graf, one of the ruffians who took his private army down to Munich to fight the communists.’

‘Pauli’s commander?’ said Veronica.

‘Yes, until our Pauli had enough sense to stay here and go to school.’

‘And the other?’ said Veronica.

‘Is there another?’ said Harald. He looked at Fischer, who shrugged, and then to Alex Horner.

Horner answered her. ‘His name is Fritz Esser. He’s a friend of Pauli’s, Mrs Winter. An old friend.’

‘The name is familiar,’ she said doubtfully.

Alex added, ‘Back before the war he lived at Travemünde. Pauli recruited him into his Freikorps and he stayed with them.’

‘The Essers,’ said Harald Winter. ‘Yes, I remember the family. They lived in the village, near Mother. It’s the little fellow who saved the children from drowning. Why do you want to know, darling?’

‘People are asking me who they are, Harald. They hardly look like friends of ours. And now this Captain Graf person has gone up to the servants’ rooms.’

Winter got to his feet. ‘Whatever for?’ he asked, but he guessed the answer before it came. There were two youngsters working in the house, and Captain Graf’s homosexual activities had been given considerable publicity. Some said that threats of police prosecution on this account were the reason he’d taken his battalion from Berlin.

Veronica blushed. ‘I’d rather not say, Harald.’

‘I’ll have the blackguard thrown out!’

Now the other two men were standing. Fischer put a hand out to touch Winter’s arm. ‘Let someone else go, Harry. Graf is a dangerous fellow.’

‘Please allow me to attend to it,’ said Alex Horner with studied casualness. ‘Graf is, I regret to say, a member of the Officer Corps. His behaviour directly concerns me.’

Harald Winter didn’t answer, nor did his wife. It was Fischer who replied to Horner’s offer. ‘Yes, Leutnant Horner. That would be the best way.’

There was a certain grim inevitability to the unfortunate business at Pauli’s birthday party. Inviting Captain Graf to such a party was undoubtedly a mistake, but no one had expected him to accept the invitation. It was only because Esser was coming that Captain Graf came, too.

Once inside the house, Captain Graf drank his first glass of champagne far too quickly. It was French champagne. Where Harald Winter had got it no one knew, but once Graf had downed one he had another and then another. Then Esser found the cognac. Captain Graf’s storm company had captured a French distillery during the 1918 offensives, and the bouquet brought happy memories of those exciting days so long ago. And Graf was a man as easily affected by memories as by alcohol. By the time he spotted the young under-footman and followed him upstairs, he was tight enough to miss his footing on the steps more than once.

Captain Graf afterwards maintained that he’d only been looking for a bedroom in which he could rest for an hour, but when Hauser – Harald Winter’s longtime valet and general factotum – stopped Graf from entering a servant’s room on the second floor, Captain Graf stabbed Hauser in the chest with a folding knife.

Hauser – in his mid-forties and gassed in the war – shouted and collapsed, bleeding profusely. One of the chambermaids heard the scuffle and found Hauser unconscious in a pool of blood. She screamed after Captain Graf, who was by then running down the back staircase with the bloody knife still in his hand.

It was Leutnant Alex Horner who intercepted Graf. He knew the house from his many visits there, and guessed Graf’s route of escape.

‘Captain Graf? I believe –’ Graf lunged at Horner with the knife, and Horner avoided the blade so narrowly that its tip slashed the front of his dinner jacket.

But Alex Horner was not the dressmaker’s dummy that Graf mistook him for. His years at the front with Pauli and the vicious trench raids that Leutnant Brand had repeatedly assigned him to had produced reactions that were as instinctive as they were effective.

Horner swung aside and, as Graf completed his unsuccessful knife thrust aimed a powerful blow at the captain’s head. It sent him reeling, but Graf was a fighter, too. He recovered his balance and lunged again, so that Alex had to retreat up the narrow servants’ corridor to avoid the slashes aimed at him. Graf grinned, but it was a drunken grin, and it encouraged Alex to take a chance. He kicked hard and high, knocking the knife aside. Horner grabbed the knife, and now it was Graf’s turn to flee.

Graf found his way down the servants’ stairs, through the pantry, and to the tradesmen’s entrance at the rear, and slammed the heavy door behind him. The wooden frame had swollen with the damp of winter, and by the time Alex had wrenched it open, run through the yard, and reached the street, there was no sign of Graf except some footprints in the newly fallen snow.

Alex Horner stopped and caught his breath. He knew enough about fighting to know when to stop. He looked up the moonlit street; there were coaches waiting to collect guests, their coachmen huddled against the cold night, faces lit by glowing cigarettes, the breath of the horses making clouds of white vapour. It was very cold, as only Berlin can be, with a few snowflakes drifting in the wind and a film of ice on everything. The city was silent, and yet it was not the empty stillness of the countryside; it was the brooding quiet of a crowded, sleeping city. From somewhere nearby came the sound of a powerful motorcar engine starting, and the squeal of tyres. That would be Graf; the fellow was often to be seen in his big motorcar.

Alex reached into his pocket for a cigarette and stood there on the street smoking as he thought about what had happened. Thank God, Graf had had plenty to drink – he’d have been a formidable adversary sober. Better to forget the whole business, he decided. Graf and his ilk had friends in high places and in the Bendlerblock the army bureaucrats were now referring to Röhm’s storm troops as the ‘Black Reichswehr’, treating them as a secret army reserve. Testifying against Graf might well mar his career prospects. Any last delusion that the army kept out of politics had long since gone. Getting promoted in this curious postwar army was like walking through a minefield.

By the time Alex Horner had finished his cigarette and returned to the party, it was almost as if nothing untoward had occurred. Hauser was in bed and being attended by a doctor, the bloodstains had been scrubbed from the carpet, the band was playing, and the guests were dancing as if nothing had happened. In fact, many of the guests were not aware of the murderous scuffie on the back stairs.

Peter Winter was dancing with a glorious girl in a decorative evening dress of a quality that was seldom seen in Germany in these austere times. The girl had brazenly approached Peter and asked him to dance. ‘I hear you’re a good dancer, Herr Winter. How would you like to prove it to me?’

Her German was not good. The grammar was adequate, but the accent was outlandish. Not the hard consonantal growl of the Hungarian or the Czech, this was a strange, flat drawling accent of a sort he couldn’t for a moment distinguish.

‘Are you Austrian?’ Peter asked.

She laughed in a way that was almost unladylike. ‘You flatterer! I heard you were a ladies’ man, Peter Winter, and now I declare it’s true. You know my German is not good enough for me to be Austrian. Is that what you say to any girl you encounter with a weird accent you don’t recognize?’

Peter blushed. It was exactly what he said to any girl whose accent he couldn’t place. ‘Of course not,’ he muttered.

‘I’m from California, U.S.A.,’ she said. ‘We’re almost family. Your mother was at school with my aunt.’

‘That’s not family,’ said Peter.

She laughed. ‘You Germans all have such a wonderful sense of humour.’ But Peter was not amused to be the butt of her joke. ‘Well,’ she said, stretching her long, pale arm towards him, ‘aren’t you going to ask me to dance?’

Peter clicked his heels and bowed formally. She laughed again. Peter felt confused, almost panic-stricken, and this was a strange, new experience for him. He wanted to flee but he couldn’t. He was afraid of this girl, afraid that she would think him a fool. He wanted her to like him and respect him, and that, of course, is how love first strikes the unwary.

‘Yes, you dance quite well,’ she said as they stepped out onto the dance floor to the smooth romantic chords of ‘Poor Butterfly’. Her name was Lottie Danziger and her father owned two hotels, three movie theatres, and some orange groves in California. She wore the most attention-getting evening dress of anyone there. It had a tubelike shape that deprived her of breasts and bottom. It was short and sleeveless, and its bodice was embroidered with bugle beads and imitation baroque pearls in the sort of Egyptian motif that had been all the rage since Howard Carter’s amazing discoveries in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The trouble was that the beadwork was so heavy that it made Lottie want to sit down, and so fragile that she was frightened of doing so.

Lottie was like no other woman that Peter Winter had ever met. She was not like the German girls he’d known, or even like any of the Rensselaer family. She was beautiful, with pale skin and naturally wavy jet-black hair, cut very short in a style that was new to Berlin, not like the short hairstyles that were necessary to get the close-fitting cloche hats on, but bobbed almost like a man’s. She had dark, wicked eyes and a mouth that was perhaps a little too big, and very white, even teeth that flashed when she smiled. And she smiled a lot. Not the polite, tight-lipped smiles that well-bred German girls were taught, but big open-mouthed laughs that were infectious: Peter found himself laughing, too. But above all Lottie was intense; she was a fountain of energy, so that everything she did, from dancing to telling jokes about the young men she’d encountered on the ocean liner, was uniquely wonderful, and Peter was beguiled by every movement she made.

‘But I have a chaperon, darling. We couldn’t possibly go without her.’ It was her crazy transatlantic style to call Peter ‘darling’ right from the first moment, but her flippant use of the word made it no less tantalizing. Every suggestion he made for seeing her again was met with some wretched rule about her chaperon. She was playing with him: they both knew that she could meet with him alone if she really wanted to, and it was this that put an extra edge on their exchanges. She was so desirable that his need for her pushed all other thoughts and aspirations out of his head.

‘But you don’t look like a Rensselaer,’ she said, having for a moment silenced his attempts to arrange another meeting. She swung her head back to see him better and cocked it on one side, so that her dark, wavy hair shone in the lights. ‘No, you don’t look like a Rensselaer at all.’

She was teasing him, of course, but he readily joined her game. ‘And what do the Rensselaers look like?’

‘Gorgeous. You have only to look at your mother to know that. The Rensselaers are the most beautiful family in the whole of New York. Why, when your uncle Glenn came back from the war he must have been getting on for forty years old, and yet there wasn’t a girl in the city who didn’t dream of capturing him. The groans and gnashing of teeth when he married were to be heard from Hoboken to Hollywood. Your uncle Glenn came here just after the war, didn’t he?’

‘He was an Air Corps major attached to the Armistice Commission. He wanted Mother to go back to New York, but Father was against it.’

‘Why?’

‘He said it would look bad. All through the war he’d been saying that Mother was at heart a German. That was how he prevented her from being interned. How would it look, he said, if when the Allies won she went running back to America?’

‘Her parents are too old to travel, and they’d give anything to see her again.’

‘Papa was adamant.’

‘Do all German families obey Father so readily?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Peter.

‘In America your father would find life more difficult. You should have heard what my father said when I first told them I was coming to Europe.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He cut me off without a penny, darling,’ she said with a laugh. ‘But eventually he came around.’ She hummed the melody: ‘“Poor Butterfly”, it’s such a beautiful tune, isn’t it? I never hear it but I think of the war: all those poor butterflies that never came back.’

‘Yes,’ he said without being sure that he understood. Until now he’d not liked Americans, not the Rensselaers, not President Wilson, not any of them. They were not easy to understand. But this one – with her hair bobbed almost like a man’s, and the fringe that came down to her eyebrows – was captivating. As he swung her past a huge arrangement of fresh-cut flowers, she extended her hand so that the fingertips brushed the blooms. It was a schoolgirl’s gesture – she had to show the world how happy she was. Perhaps all Americans were like that: they were not good at secrecy, they had to demonstrate their emotions.

They danced on until they passed Inge Wisliceny dancing with Richard Fischer. Inge looked especially beautiful tonight. Long dresses and deep necklines were becoming on her. Lottie let go of Peter’s hand to wave to her. Inge smiled sadly as they whirled past and disappeared. ‘And where is your uncle Glenn now?’ she asked.

‘Heaven knows. Somewhere in Europe. Every few weeks we get a postcard from him. He visits now and again and he’s always sending gifts of food. He thinks we’re starving.’

‘Many Germans are starving,’ Lottie reminded him. ‘But Glenn was always generous. He was my favourite man. I was eighteen when he got married. I cried to think I’d lost him. I went to the East Coast just to be a bridesmaid. Handsome, clever and brave.’

‘And rich, too,’ said Peter sardonically. He was getting rather fed up with this eulogy to Glenn Rensselaer.

‘Not your uncle Glenn. He cares nothing for money, but his father is rich, of course.’

‘My grandfather, you mean; yes, he got rich from the war,’ said Peter. ‘They say that one out of every ten trucks the American army used came from a Rensselaer factory.’

‘You’re not going to be one of those boring people who want to blame the war on war profiteers.’

‘So many people died,’ said Peter. ‘It’s obscene to think that the fighting made anyone rich.’

‘So what would you prefer?’ she said. ‘That the government own everything, make everything, and decide how much money each and every citizen deserves?’

‘It might be better.’

‘You’d better stay away from politics, Peter Winter. No one will believe that you could be so dumm as to want to deliver yourself to the politicians.’

‘Yes. Long, long ago my brother, Pauli, told me more or less the same thing.’

There was something touching about Peter Winter when he admitted to his shortcomings. ‘You’re adorable,’ she said and brushed her lips across his cheek. He caught a whiff of her perfume. ‘Why are you staring at me?’ he asked.

‘I know you so well from your photographs. Your grandmother has pictures of you everywhere in their house in New York. And in the room where I practised piano there is a photo of you at the keyboard. You must have been about ten or twelve. They told me you practised three hours every day. Is it true?’

‘I’ve given up the piano. I haven’t touched a piano for years.’

‘But why?’

‘My hand was injured.’

‘Where? Show me.’ She pulled his hand round into view. ‘That? Why that’s nothing. How can that make any difference to a real musician?’

‘I can’t play Bach with a fingertip missing.’ For the first time she heard real anger in his voice, and she was sorry for him.

‘Don’t be so arrogant. Perhaps it will prevent your becoming a professional pianist, but how can you not play? You must love music. Or don’t you?’

‘I love music.’

‘Of course you do. Now, tomorrow you will visit me and I will play some records for you. Do you like jazz music?’

‘It’s all right.’

‘If you think it’s only all right, then you haven’t heard any. Tomorrow you’ll hear some of the best jazz music on records. I brought them from New York with me. You’ll come? I’m staying with the Wislicenys.’

‘I know. Yes, I’d be honoured.’ Listening to jazz music was a small price to pay for being alone in her room with this wonderful girl.

‘The really great jazz is not on records. You should hear it in Harlem. Although you have to go to the black people’s brothels in Memphis or New Orleans to hear the real thing.’

Peter Winter turned his head away so that she didn’t see his embarrassment. Even in this degenerate, wide-open city of Berlin one didn’t expect well-brought-up young ladies to know what a brothel was, let alone to mention it in conversation with a man.

‘Are you looking for someone?’ she asked.

‘My brother.’ It was not true, but it would do.

‘Your father sent for him. I was there. Is something wrong?’

‘Pauli invited some strange people.’

‘Sure, but it’s his show.’

‘His birthday? Yes, but sometimes one’s friends do not mix well with family.’

‘Will he get told off?’

‘He’ll get round it. Pauli can charm his way out of anything,’ said Peter.

‘Do I hear a note of envy?’

‘No.’ Peter smiled. How could he ever envy Pauli, except sometimes for the way that his parents indulged him? ‘He’s always getting into the sort of scrapes that test his charm to the very limit. Goodness knows how he’ll ever pass his law finals.’

‘I can’t imagine your brother, Pauli, as a lawyer.’

‘And what about me?’

‘Easily…a trial lawyer, perhaps. You have the style for that.’

‘And Pauli doesn’t?’

She was cautious. Peter’s readiness to defend his brother against any sort of criticism was something of which the Wisliceny girls had already told her. ‘Is there any need for him to do anything? Isn’t it enough that he’ll inherit half the Winter fortune and keep this fine old house going while you run the business?’

Peter smiled grimly. ‘Father would have something to say about that. Father is a man of the Kaiserzeit…. So, I suppose, am I.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘And you don’t object to us formal, humourless Teutons?’

‘Object? Goodness, what could I object to? I’m not going to marry and settle down here. I’m just a tourist.’

He hastily thought of something to say. ‘Pauli’s not a fool. He’s clever, and as brave as a lion.’

‘Poor butterfly…’ she sang softly as they danced. She knew the words, and her soft, low, murmuring voice was bewitching.

‘Keep your money’

Pauli loved and feared his father, but now the time had come for him to speak up for himself or be crushed by his father’s personality. He looked at the picture of the Kaiser that hung on the wall, and then he caught his breath and turned on his father. ‘You pretend it’s a party for me, but who are invited to your grand house? Your rich friends and the people you want to impress, that’s who. Do you know what I think about your friends and your party…?’ He stopped. His mother’s face had turned pale, and there was a look of such anguish there that he could not bear to hurt her more. Through the door he could hear the band playing ‘Poor Butterfly’. It took him back to the first day of the 1918 offensive – the captured British battery, the tinny gramophone.

‘Go on,’ said Harald Winter calmly. Deeply hurt by his son’s outburst, he couldn’t repress a secret feeling of satisfaction that Veronica was present to see his predictions come true. For Harald more than once had said that Pauli was an ungrateful wretch. It was his terrible experiences in the war, of course. Harald Winter had always been quick to explain the faults of those around him. Pauli had been through all sorts of hell, and that had affected him. Otherwise the boy would have been pleased to have such a lavish celebration held in his honour. As for Pauli’s complaint that most of the people there were friends of his parents rather than his own friends, he should have the sense to understand that this was his chance to get reacquainted with people who matter. And, anyway, a formal dinner of this scale was not something that his Freikorps rowdies, or his noisy, loose-living student friends, would appreciate. Judging by what Winter heard at his club, the whole party would have become an orgy inside ten minutes.

Harald Winter told his son, ‘Captain Graf was invited at your insistence, as I understand it. How do you explain his disgraceful criminal conduct?’

‘I fought alongside Graf, and many others like him. They fought the communists, and are still fighting them, to keep Germany safe for you and others like you. Who are you to sit in judgement on him? What did you do in the war except make money?’

‘I haven’t noticed that you decline the chance to spend a portion of it. You have a generous allowance, a motorcycle … your college fees, books, you run up bills at my tailor.’ Harald stopped, choked with indignation and anger.

‘Keep your money….’

‘No, Pauli, no. Say nothing that you’ll regret tomorrow,’ his mother pleaded.

‘What loyalty do you show to your friends?’ persisted Pauli. ‘Tonight you’ve invited all your aristocratic Russian refugee friends: princes, dukes and duchesses, and even that old fool who claims to be a nephew of the Tsar. Do they know that aircraft built in your factories are helping to train the Red Army that kicked them off their grand estates?’

‘The army don’t ask my advice about where to use their aircraft,’ said Harald Winter calmly.

‘I can’t continue living in this house,’ said Pauli. ‘I should never have moved back here. It’s stifling, constricting, like a prison, like a museum.’ To his mother he said softly, ‘It’s better that I go, Mama: We live in such different worlds. You hate my friends and I have grown to hate your values.’

‘Decency and respect? What values are you talking about?’ said Harald Winter. ‘Poor Hauser was stabbed by that madman Graf. Your friend Esser has drunk so much that he vomited on the morning-room carpet and knocked over a caseful of chinaware. How dare you tell me that you hate my friends and my values?’

Pauli shrugged. It was always like this when he was dragged into a row; he found himself arguing to support issues in which he didn’t believe. He loved Hauser and despised Graf, but that didn’t change the fact that his father’s world was an ancient, alien place from which he must escape. ‘I’m sorry, Papa. Forgive me, but it’s better that I leave. I will go to Hamburg or Munich or somewhere I can start again. I would never have got through my finals anyway. I am too stupid to study the law. But Peter will fulfil your hopes and expectations.’

‘Pauli…’ said his mother.

‘Let him go,’ said Harald Winter. ‘He’ll be back when the money runs out. I’ve heard it all before. Let him discover what it’s like to be a penniless beggar in these terrible times. He’ll be back knocking at the door before the month is out.’

Veronica said nothing. She did not believe that Pauli would come back begging for his father’s help. And, in fact, neither did his father.

In the event, Pauli did move his effects from the house, but he didn’t go to Hamburg or Munich. He moved into a room in the nearby district of Wedding in a boardinghouse run by a war widow, an intimate friend of Fritz Esser. Pauli declined to take any more payments from his father, but he did not give up his law studies.

It was Peter who spent hours pleading his brother’s case. It was Peter who reminded his father of the terrible time Pauli had had in the war, and Peter who conspired with his mother so that the approaches were made when Harald was in a good mood.

Although Pauli took no more money from his father, his brother, Peter, transferred money to his bank account each month. Pauli’s parents accepted this covert financial arrangement, and honour was satisfied. Pauli was happy to feel that he wasn’t accepting money from his father, while his father was happy to know that in fact he was. And, as Harald Winter remarked to his wife, he didn’t want Pauli to be driven to such a state of penury that he sold that house on the Obersalzberg.

Most important, Pauli got permission from the university to switch, starting the following term, from company law to criminal law. It was a study that Pauli found immediately interesting and relevant. To everyone’s surprise, not least to Pauli’s, he caught up quickly with his fellow students and came fifth from the top in his exams.

Coaching Fritz Esser in this subject was less successful, although with a great deal of effort Fritz got through his interim exams before abandoning his studies. One day, he promised, he’d go back and get his law degree. But meanwhile he’d become a full-time paid official of the Nazi Party and wholly occupied with politics.

Soon after Pauli left home, his uncle Glenn Rensselaer found his shabby lodging. Glenn was working for some American office-machinery company that had its main agency in Leipzig. He came often to Berlin and always brought Pauli presents. Pauli liked Glenn; he liked the way he came up to the top-floor garret room and did not stare around at the cracked lino, the newspaper pasted on the broken windowpanes to provide a modicum of privacy, the chamberpot under the bed, or the unshaded light bulb. Glenn seemed perfectly at home in the rat-infested tenement. The occasion of his arrival was usually marked by Glenn’s presenting the landlady and certain other tenants with bottles of schnapps. Glenn said he got them cheap, but Pauli knew he paid full price at the shop round the corner. Glenn was like that.

When Pauli passed his final exams, it was Glenn who persuaded Harald to attend the ceremony, and Glenn who arranged dinner for twenty-four people at Medvedj, a smart restaurant on Bayreuther Strasse, and footed the bill for blinis and caviar, borscht and kulibiaki, a gypsy trio, and all the trimmings in this fashionable restaurant where Berlin’s Russian exiles liked to go when they could afford it. And when Glenn asked so casually what Pauli would do next, and Pauli gave a long, involved explanation about a company that had offered to provide him with an office and secretarial help on condition that he do some legal work for them, Glenn’s congratulations sounded warm and sincere. But Glenn Rensselaer was no fool, and he guessed just as quickly as did Peter and Harald Winter that the ‘company’ that was to play fairy godmother was the Nazi Party, and that Pauli was going to be defending some of the worst thugs involved in the streetfighting, assaults, and murders that had become a regular part of the German political scene.

When, the following October, Peter talked about becoming engaged to Lottie Danziger, Glenn Rensselaer gave Lottie a jade brooch bearing Peter’s initials on the gold setting and gave Peter a watch engraved with the date of their intended engagement party. ‘Now,’ Glenn Rensselaer told them both, ‘you’ll have to go ahead.’ And they did. It was another big party, this time at the Wisliceny house. Lottie’s parents did not come. They had long before decided that Lottie was going to marry the eldest son of a West Coast oil tycoon, and they were angry to think of Lottie’s marrying Peter Winter, a German. ‘Not so angry as I am,’ said Harald Winter to his wife the night he first heard the news: and many many times afterwards. ‘I don’t know what appals me more,’ he said, ‘the thought of him married to an American or to a Jew.’

His wife did not take this insult personally. During the war she had grown used to hearing her countrymen denigrated and insulted. Calmly she said, ‘How can you say that, when the Fischers are such close friends?’

‘The Fischers are different.’

‘And Peter and Lottie plan to live in Germany. Think of her poor parents – six thousand miles away – they are losing her forever.’ It was an expression of Veronica’s guilt. Now, as her father grew old, she thought about him more and more.

Harald Winter grunted. He felt not at all grateful to fate or to the girl. Of course they would remain in Germany. Peter hadn’t taken complete leave of his senses, thank God.

1925

‘You don’t have to be a mathematician’

‘Explain?’ said Glenn Rensselaer. ‘I can’t explain it any better than I have there in the written report.’ The bald-headed young American behind the desk looked at him blankly. Glenn Rensselaer went on: ‘I guess you mean describe it in terms of its U.S. equivalents. Well, I can’t do that, either. These Freikorps groups are just bands of armed men in makeshift uniforms. Usually their commanders are captains or majors, sometimes a colonel, and, rarely, a sergeant. They take their orders from whoever pays them, and sometimes they don’t even obey their paymasters. Some of the officers behave like gangsters; some of the rankers are professional criminals. But some of these men are patriots and idealists. It’s impossible to generalize about the Freikorps except to say – thank God – there is nothing in the U.S. that I can compare them to.’

The man behind the desk still said nothing. Glenn Rensselaer looked round the gloomy little upstairs room on Washington’s K Street. Ancient floral wallpaper, an old desk, some dented filing cabinets, a worn carpet, and in the corner a large brass spitoon, brightly polished. So this was the U.S. State Department’s idea of a suitable office for its ‘research and intelligence subsection’. Was it secrecy, parsimony, or neglect?

‘On the other hand,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, more to break the silence than because he felt the man behind the desk was interested, ‘for a lot of people Germany right now is where everything is happening. The movies, legitimate theatre, the opera, popular music, light opera, orchestral music, science – from atomic physics to psychology – architecture, industrial design, painting … every damn thing.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and added, ‘Is all this boring you? I have the feeling that there are other things you’d rather be doing.’

‘Not at all,’ said the bald young official. ‘I find everything you tell me fascinating. But I’m likely to be the only person in the whole State Department who will read your report all through.’

‘Is that so?’

‘The U.S. has lost interest in Europe, except to count how many battleships the British are building under the terms of the new treaty.’

‘You’re talking in riddles.’

‘Forgive me: I don’t mean to. What I should have said is that right now no one wants to talk about anything but Japanese naval strength. You must be familiar with the terms of the 1922 conference – a ratio of five British capital ships and three Japanese capital ships for five of ours. You don’t have to be a mathematician to see that under the terms of that treaty the combined naval strength of the Japs and the Brits would gun us off both oceans.’

‘You don’t have to be a mathematician,’ agreed Glenn Rensselaer. ‘You just have to be nuts.’

Again came the inscrutable look. No reply. Perhaps Glenn should not have come here wearing his old jacket and flannels with his brightly patterned bow tie and knitted pullover. The man behind the desk was in a tight-fitting suit with a stiff collar. Glen had forgotten what it was like in Washington, D.C.

Glenn persisted. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that we’re likely to get into a fight against the British, are you?’

‘It’s our job to take into account even the most unlikely eventuality, Mr Rensselaer.’

‘You guys are out of your minds. If we tangled with the Japs, the British would be alongside us.’ He got to his feet and the man got up, too.

‘I’m sure you’re right, Mr Rensselaer,’ said the man in a voice that betrayed nothing of his thoughts. ‘Anyway, it was good of you to come. We don’t get much first-hand news these days.’

Glenn Rensselaer was glad to get back to his parents’ house in New York. It was home to him, for his travels abroad made it convenient and convivial for his wife to share his father’s large mansion. She got along well with Cy Rensselaer’s second wife, Dot, and now that Dot’s three sons had grown up and left home, she was company for the older woman.

When he returned from his trip to Washington, his father asked him about it, but Glenn was unforthcoming. Had he explained his reception at the bureaucrats’ ‘secret’ office, his father would probably have taken exception to the description. The Republican Party firmly controlled House and Senate. Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. The old man preferred to believe that the men in Washington knew what they were doing. It was a point of view difficult to sustain after a trip to the capital, which was perhaps why his father never went there.

So Glenn talked to his father about Germany. ‘Since the war you see on the streets this large rootless proletariat,’ Glenn told his father. ‘Mostly from the East: Poles, Czechs, Russians, Hungarians, Rumanians, gypsies, dispossessed smallholders and peasants, factory workers, and God knows who. In order to blame these badly dressed, incoherent outsiders for every misfortune from petty crime to factory closures and job losses, a name was required. So the Germans have decided to call them “Jews”.’

‘Don’t make jokes about Jews, son. I can’t abide it, never could.’

‘I’m not joking. Anti-Semitism is everywhere; you smell it in the air.’

‘That’s not just in Europe, Glenn.’

‘No, but in France and England and here in the U.S. anti-Semitism is a form of envy. It’s mostly directed at the rich, clever and successful. The anti-Semite depicts the Jew as a man with a diamond tie pin, in a big automobile, smoking a cigar, and coming to collect the profits from his factory. In Germany they have that anti-Semitic envy, too. And it’s especially strong there because the Jew plays a vital part in the cultural life of Germany. The movies, the theatre, publishing and the art world are conspicuously dominated by Jews. But there’s this other sort of anti-Semitism, too.’

‘Does it really matter?’

His father felt uncomfortable, but Glenn continued: ‘It’s a downward-looking anti-Semitism. I’m talking about the fear of any strange-looking, penniless itinerant. Now, add that to the envy and you’ve got an explosive mixture. That’s why Germany is unique. This double anti-Semitism comes from Germany’s geographical position; that’s why it’s different from anything you find in other countries. And let me tell you that there are a hell of a lot of German politicians who know exactly how to stir up that mixture.’

‘Is it the Nazis you’re talking about? Only last week there were pictures in one of the weeklies.’

‘There are others, but the Nazis are the most dedicated and the most dangerous. This fellow Hitler has renewed strength since being in prison. Politically it’s the best thing that could have happened to him. He’s a sort of romantic, and he understands that blend of sentimentality and cruelty that is uniquely German. He knows how to appeal to a lot of different Bavarian malcontents. Want to restore the monarchy? Hitler’s your man. Feel the nice Bavarian Catholics are ill-treated by nasty Prussian Protestants? Hitler. Want to hear that the bureaucrats in Berlin are the cause of Bavaria’s troubles? Want to hear that the General Staff – Protestant every one – lost the war? Lost your job? A Jew took it from you. Your factory went out of business? A Jewish boss did it and made a profit on the deal. Socialists organizing a strike you don’t like? Communists fighting in the street? Everyone knows Moscow is run by Jews. You don’t agree? Then either you are being duped or you are a Jew and a part of the conspiracy.’

‘That might sound good to voters in Bavaria, but it won’t get Mister Hitler very far if he wants to get into the national government. The way I hear it, Hitler is virtually unknown outside of Bavaria, and my guess is he’ll stay that way.’

‘You don’t know this guy. Don’t imagine he has any kind of written manifesto that you can challenge him on. He’s all things to all men. He trades on emotions, not facts. When he goes for the Reichstag he’ll have a fresh set of answers ready. This guy is dynamite. We had an office in Munich. I’ve heard him speaking at his meetings. He holds people spellbound. He’s full of spite, brimful of hatred and contempt. There is nothing constructive in what he says: just threats of what he’ll do to the sort of people he blames for all the troubles.’

‘All politicians are negative,’ said his father. ‘A promise to punish the fortunate and soak the rich is always good for a few votes.’

‘But in Germany too many people are ready to believe in the quick and easy solution.’

‘It will all pass,’ said his father. There was a note of weariness detectable in his voice. His father was still so energetic that it was difficult to believe he was seventy-four years old, except when now and again the mask slipped. ‘It’s the legacy of war – defeat, disappointment, hunger. It will pass.’

‘I wish I could believe you, Dad. But the fact is that this poison is more prevalent among students than among any other sector of the population. Students – university students for the most part – fellows who were too young to go to the war, are more bitter about the defeat than the soldiers who were in the fighting. Veterans know in their hearts that the Germans were licked on the battlefield; the kids who weren’t there like to believe all that “stab-in-the-back” stuff. And the kids are the ones who get violent. They are full of energy and full of hate. They are looking for a cause, and Hitler will provide it for them.’

‘For God’s sake, don’t tell the Danzigers any of this, Glenn. Lottie’s father is worried sick at the idea of her remaining in Berlin. He always calls me up when he comes into town, and we usually lunch at the club. Some idiot friend of his sent him clippings from German newspapers. He had his office translate the stuff. I don’t know what it said, but he’s darned worried. So don’t tell him, huh?’

‘The club? Is Mr Danziger now a member of the club?’

His father looked flustered. ‘Well, no. They still have that stupid rule about members … but taking a Jew in as a guest is okay.’

Glenn could think of nothing to say. They sat in silence for a few moments. Outside there was the continual sound of motorcars, it was hard to believe that when he was a child the house had been so quiet.

‘He’s letting some little film company build movie lots and stages on his orange groves.’

‘Danziger?’ said Glenn.

‘Just a handful of cash and twenty-five per cent of the movie company.’

‘Is it a good deal?’

‘He’s gone soft in the head, if you ask me. Twenty-five per cent of nothing is nothing. Just like ninety-nine per cent of nothing is nothing. And what’s a movie company got in assets except its real estate?’

‘Did you tell Danziger that?’

‘Contracts, he says. Contracts with actors. Can you imagine how that would show on the auditors’ books?’

‘Movies are doing okay, aren’t they?’

‘Do you know how long it will take him to get real quality fruit growing there again?’

‘Danziger can afford a few mistakes,’ said Glenn Rensselaer.

‘I’m not sure he can,’ said his father. ‘The Danzigers are not rich.’

Glenn smiled.

‘I’m serious.’

‘I know you are, Dad, but I remember you telling me that his assets would total some five million dollars. How can you say he’s not rich?’

The old man did not reply for a moment. He didn’t think it was funny. But Glenn Rensselaer had noticed that this obsession with money, the raw measure of power that money represented, was one of the few ways in which his father’s old age showed. ‘To tell you frankly, I wasn’t happy to think of his eldest daughter marrying into the family. Lottie is a nice enough girl, of course, but not right for little Peter.’

‘Your “little Peter” is now a qualified lawyer and a junior partner in Winter’s holding company.’

His father seemed not to have heard. ‘I couldn’t say that to Danziger, of course.’

‘No, of course,’ said Glenn. In fact, old Cyrus Rensselaer’s opinion of Lottie Danziger’s suitability had not been sought by Harald Winter, by Veronica Winter, or by Peter Winter. And the old man had been hurt by that.

‘I miss her,’ said his father suddenly.

‘Veronica? But that’s half a lifetime ago.’

‘I should never have agreed to her going to Europe. I had a strange premonition about it.’

‘Really?’

‘But she was determined to go, and I wanted her to be happy.’ There was a passion in the old man that he’d not heard before. The loss of his beloved daughter was an agony that had tormented him all this time.

‘But that was more than thirty years ago, Dad.’

‘Wait till your children leave home; you’ll find out what it’s like.’

‘And me? Did you miss me?’

‘Sure I did. But I worried about Veronica. She was such a sweet child. So helpless, so trusting …I hate that bastard. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Harry?’

‘I’ll pay him back.’ For the first time his father smiled. It was the crafty smile that only the old know. ‘He’ll suffer as I’ve suffered. Then he’ll know what he did to me.’

‘You mustn’t blame Harry. He was an attractive man: powerful and ruthless in a way that Veronica found attractive…’ Glenn stopped.

‘Attractive in me? Is that what you were going to say?’

Reluctantly Glenn admitted it. ‘Yes, Harry is ruthless in that same way.’

‘And you didn’t admire it?’

‘It’s not my style, Dad. And that was just as well – we would have fought.’

‘You’re right, Glenn. You never fought me. You’ve been a good son. Did I never tell you that?’

‘You never did, Dad.’

‘Loyal. And I love loyalty. Just as I repay treachery. Want to know what I’ve done about Harry?’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

‘I’ve fixed it so that Peter is offered the job of a lifetime. And Harald adores Peter, the eldest.’

‘A job?’

‘A bank in Los Angeles. I recently bought a stake in it. They’ll offer Peter Winter a vice-presidency. He’ll come and live in America.’

‘A bank in Los Angeles?’

‘I fixed jobs for two of Dot’s boys in the bank there, and they are doing fine.’ Glenn nodded. He’d heard that the old man had gone to a lot of trouble for his stepsons. They, in return, had taken the name Rensselaer. ‘And Peter will do fine, too.’

‘I’d forget about it, Dad. You don’t want to come between father and son.’

‘What about father and daughter?’ the old man said shrilly. ‘That’s what he did, that Harald Winter, the swine.’

‘That was natural. He fell in love. He didn’t do it to give you a bad time, Dad.’

‘He fell in love with the Rensselaer money, that’s what he fell in love with; everyone knows that.’

‘He was doing all right without it.’

‘He was on the verge of bankruptcy. I bailed that tinhorn out, not once but twice, and then he had the nerve to pay me back in confetti.’

‘Let him be, Dad. Veronica loves you; she’ll visit you. Be patient.’

‘It’s too late now. He’ll find out what it’s like. He’ll find out and I’ll have the laugh on him.’

‘Take it easy, Dad.’

‘He’ll find out what it’s like to lose your favourite child.’

Glenn Rensselaer nodded but didn’t answer. He’d always known that he wasn’t his father’s favourite, but hearing him say it hurt, hurt like hell.

‘It’s nothing to cry about’

Veronica Winter knew before her husband, and it was Lottie Winter who told her. The two women had become very close since Lottie’s marriage to Peter. At first it had been no more than the comfort of an American voice, but over the months the relationship had become more like that of mother and daughter. Harald Winter didn’t like it, of course – he’d never liked Lottie enough to welcome her as a daughter-in-law – but he was shrewd enough to know, right from the start, that he could do nothing to influence the relationship. So Veronica and her daughter-in-law had tea together regularly. It was an event to which both women always looked forward with great pleasure.

It was two weeks before Christmas when Lottie brought the exciting news about the job. An Italian-born vice-president of the bank had made a special journey from Milan, Italy, where he was consolidating a big loan and visiting some members of his family, just to put the matter to Peter in person.

‘But it will be wonderful, Lottie. You’ll be with your family again.’

‘Yes, it will be.’

‘Why so down-in-the-mouth?’ said Veronica. She’d never seen her daughter-in-law like this before.

‘I feel so at home here now. It has been so marvellous putting the home together for Peter that I can’t face the thought of losing it all and starting again.’

‘But think of the sunshine and your family.’

‘I know, I keep telling myself that. But here I’m a person, a someone. At home my folks treat me like a child.’

‘Not now you’re married, they won’t, Lottie darling. Your mother will be transported to have you there with her.’

‘She’s not my real mother. My real mother died in a railroad accident in Chicago when I was five.’

‘I’m sorry, Lottie; I forgot that.’

‘And my stepmother won’t be so crazy about having to share Dad.’

‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ said Veronica.

‘No, I know her too well. She loves me and I love her, but every letter she writes says how pleased she is that I’m settling down here.’

‘What about your father?’

‘I’d like to go and see Dad, but a visit would be enough. A visit over January, February and March, when the weather is so terrible here.’

‘And what about Peter?’

‘I don’t want to influence him one way or the other. It’s his life: his career. And all the more difficult when a family business is involved.’

‘His father wouldn’t disinherit him, Lottie.’

‘Now, don’t get me wrong, Mrs Winter. Money doesn’t enter into it, but I reckon that a wife, if she’s smart, doesn’t give her husband advice about his career. Because if things go wrong she is likely to get all the blame. Men are like that; at least I figure they are.’

‘I’m afraid men are like that, Lottie.’

The maid came in. Veronica had recently changed all the servants’ uniforms so that they were no longer in ankle-length skirts. This parlourmaid had a fashionably short black dress with a superb lace apron and cap. Lottie decided that her servants should be similarly modernized.

It was the complete silver tea service. Even though the two women knew that neither of their husbands would join them, plates, teacups and cutlery were set for four, as always. As well as the traditional German plum tart there were brownies. Ever since the first tea they’d had together Veronica always tried to arrange to have some American cookies or pastries prepared for Lottie. It had become a treat that they both looked forward to, a calculated touch of nostalgia.

When the parlourmaid had poured tea, offered the neatly cut thin bread and butter, and departed with a curtsy, Veronica turned to her guest and said, ‘What is it, Lottie? I feel there’s something else bothering you. Is there something wrong between you and Peter? Would it help you to talk about it?’

‘Oh, Mrs Winter!’

‘I do wish you’d call me Veronica.’

‘Oh, Veronica,’ she said. Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘You’ve been so wonderful.’

‘Lottie, darling, what is it?’

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘I’m certain.’

‘Have you told Peter?’

‘You’re the first person I’ve told.’

‘It’s nothing to cry about, Lottie darling. It’s something to celebrate.’ Lottie continued to cry; the tears rolled down her face, and she didn’t even try to dab them away. Veronica searched for something else to say: ‘And Peter will be overjoyed. He certainly won’t take the job in California at a time like this. It would be too much for you … unless they’ll wait a year.’

‘They won’t wait,’ said Lottie, drying her eyes with a tiny lace handkerchief. ‘The position has to be filled by the end of January; they specially stipulated that.’

‘Peter wouldn’t go there alone. He wouldn’t leave you. I know he wouldn’t, and I’d forbid it anyway.’

Lottie sobbed more until she was gasping for breath. Veronica put her arms round the young woman to comfort her. ‘Lottie darling, you must pull yourself together. Sit back. Blow your nose, and have some tea.’

‘He’ll turn down the job,’ said Lottie after she’d had a few moments to recover. ‘Peter will turn down the job, on account of the baby. Then he’ll blame me forever afterwards.’

‘You silly child. Of course he won’t. He’ll be the happiest man in the world.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Of course he will. And he’ll be a marvellous father. You must tell him your news as soon as he arrives – I’ll leave you together for a few moments – and we must get a cable off to your father and to my father, too. Everyone is going to be so excited at the news.’

1927

‘That’s all they ask in return’

It was late May, a time when all Berlin is filled with the smell of linden flowers. The sun came spasmodically from behind ragged grey clouds, but it was not warm. Pauli sat outside to drink his tea and spend a few minutes watching the world pass by.

Pauli’s face was known in all the most fashionable cafés in Berlin: the Monopol, the Josty, the Schiller, the Café des Westens. But the one he liked best was opposite the Memorial Church: the Romanische Café. Some said this was the most famous café in the whole of Germany; others said it was the most famous in the whole world. Yet there was always room to sit down, for it could hold over a thousand people. It was open day and night and always busy: a place where intellectuals came to discuss philosophy, couples came to talk about love, others came to argue about politics, write letters or memoirs, review new plays or write poems. There were famous faces to be seen here. Up in the balcony, where the chessplayers liked to sit, one could often see Emanuel Lasker, who’d been world champion for thirty-three years.

Some of the clients were outrageous; at least they would have been had there been anyone left in Berlin who could feel outrage at the sight of shaved skulls, dyed hair, or flamboyant costumes. Outside in the street it was easier to be outraged by the sight of crippled ex-servicemen begging in their ragged uniforms, the painted faces of the homosexuals, or the pinched white faces of the child prostitutes.

Inside the café there were always pedlars going from table to table: shoelaces, matches, Literarische Welt, Die Rote Fahne, a copy of the Times from London four days old. An angry-looking young man offered crayon drawings. The drawings, too, were angry: jagged and spiky deformed servicemen, lewd matrons in suspender belts and black stockings, and bemedalled officers with porcine faces and no trousers. He stopped to show the drawings to two well-dressed Swedish tourists. They went through his wares solemnly and thoroughly but they did not buy. Tourists rarely did. Perhaps they didn’t want to take such things through the customs inspections. The young man offered the drawings at a cheaper price. The Swedish man shook his head, the woman laughed; the drawings were gathered up. Some said the young man merely sold the drawings; others said he was the artist. But no one knew the truth about it, just as no one knew the truth about anything in Berlin. It was better not to know.

There were newspapers hanging on sticks near the door. Pauli didn’t take the Nationalist Socialist paper – from its pristine condition he guessed that no one else had read it, either. He selected the Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, an undemanding tabloid, and sat down. His usual waitress brought a glass of lemon tea and schnapps. He always came here for tea after the lunch of sandwiches that he ate at his desk. He usually sat here for thirty minutes before returning to his office. It was the only way he got a break from work. All day long at his office people put their heads round the door: ‘I don’t want to interrupt you, Pauli, but…’

And the office had not got any better since the Nazis’ new Gauleiter, Josef Goebbels, had taken over Berlin. He was too damned enthusiastic, and the rank and file didn’t like the levy of three marks a month that he demanded from them. There were fewer than a thousand Nazi Party members in Berlin; it wasn’t the way to get recruits, and Goebbels’s Rhineland accent – which sounds funny to the ears of Berliners – hadn’t helped him. Strasser, the Regional Chief, opposed almost everything Goebbels suggested, and SA Leader Kurt Daluege – with his army of brownshirts – wouldn’t cooperate with either of them. With three bosses trying to run the Berlin office, very little got completed, but there was no way that any of them would listen to Pauli Winter’s suggestions. Especially when – as Goebbels reminded him – he’d not even bothered to join the party.

At one time Pauli had allocated half a day to his private clients and the morning to work for the party, but it was now over a month since he’d done any private work at all. Many clients didn’t like the proximity to the party office or the way that uniformed SA men came banging in and out of his office without so much as a by-your-leave. And those who didn’t care about his political affiliations grew tired of being so obviously a low priority on Pauli’s work roster. It wasn’t that Pauli was lazy: twice last month he’d actually fallen asleep in court, but he took on too much. Nor did his long hours of work bring much financial reward. The Nazi Party retainer didn’t go far, and on individual payments they always argued about his bills.

‘You’re Herr Paul Winter, aren’t you?’ He looked up to see a woman of about sixty, perhaps older. She was wearing a good but ancient coat with an astrakhan collar. Her huge black hat, with a mauve veil wrapped round it, was secured by means of large ornamental hairpins. It was all out of style by many years: the sort of outfit his grandmother had worn at Travemünde before the war.

‘Yes,’ he said. Awkwardly he put his newspaper down and got to his feet.

‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’

He knew exactly who she was, and at one time he would have said so, but that was not the way lawyers did it. ‘I don’t think I do.’

‘I am Frau Guggenheimer.’

‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘I mustn’t keep you,’ she said, but she put down her parcel, a large brown paper one tied neatly with lots of string, and sat down on the chair he pulled out for her. She was the wife of Guggenheimer the owner of a bar that students frequented. Hetti Guggenheimer, a girlfriend of long ago, was Mrs Guggenheimer’s daughter.

He waited for her to tell him what she wanted, but now that she’d summoned up the courage to approach him she seemed tongue-tied. He said, ‘How is your husband?’

She welcomed the chance to speak on the subject. ‘The student trade is not enough; it never was. And that side of town is not so lively now that the Royal Palace is empty. Even Friedrichstrasse is not what it used to be. The centre of town has shifted. All the life is over here in Ku-damm nowadays.’

‘That’s true. I’m sorry.’

‘And the Nazis don’t want to give us any trade, of course, with us being Jewish.’

‘Perhaps he should sell up. Retire.’

‘He’s got no money, Herr Winter. We lost all our savings in the big inflation. We don’t even own the bar. We live well enough, I suppose, but we live from hand to mouth.’

‘Is there something you want, Frau Guggenheimer?’

‘Nazis used to come into the bar and fight. Terrible fighting. They’d come in on those evenings when we were crowded and shout horrible things about Karl Marx or Lenin. There was always someone there who’d fight them. Some of these young fellows like to fight no matter how badly hurt they get. They’d smash the furniture and hit out with a chair leg or with a broken bottle….’

‘You say they used to do that? They stopped?’

‘Now my husband pays them money every week, a contribution to Nazi Party funds. But we can’t afford it, Herr Winter. They ask too much, and business is not good at this time of year.’

‘I know such things happen.’

‘You’re with the Nazis, Herr Winter. Couldn’t you say something to one of the top men there? We really can’t afford it, and my husband worries. He’s awake at nights thinking about what to do. We’re getting into debt, and we’ve never been in debt before, ever.’

‘It’s not really anything to do with me, Frau Guggenheimer. I’m just a lawyer they pay to advise them.’

‘Frau Weiss, who has the flower stall, said you helped her when those young communist boys were grabbing money from her cashbox.’

‘I wish she hadn’t told you,’ said Pauli earnestly.

‘She said you sent some of your Nazis to beat them up.’

‘That wasn’t anything that I did, I assure you.’

‘And she’s never had any more trouble from that day to this.’

‘Does your husband know you came to see me?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then please don’t say anything to him. In fact, don’t say anything to anyone. Will you promise me that?’

‘I’ll do anything, Herr Winter.’

‘I can’t promise. I’ll try.’

She got up. ‘I remember you when you first came back from the war, and that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?’

‘A very long time ago.’

‘My Hetti went to your birthday party a few years back. She said it was wonderful.’

‘How is Hetti?’ he asked politely.

‘She’s well.’

‘Good.’

‘It can’t go on like this, can it, Herr Winter – all this fighting and hurting people and the prices of everything?’

‘No, it can’t go on, Frau Guggenheimer; something will happen.’

He finished his tea and his schnapps and went back to the office. It was crowded, as usual. Unemployed party members sat in the anteroom reading, smoking and telling the same stories over and over again. He went up to the Regional Chief’s office. Strasser was out, but Fritz Esser was there. ‘Ah! Good. Fritz. Just the man I was looking for. Where are those two gorillas who were arrested at the Pharus Hall battle?’

Fritz Esser looked up from the plate of sliced sausage and rye bread that he had every day. ‘They’re waiting downstairs,’ he said through a mouthful of food.

‘Send them up now, Fritz.’

The Pharus Hall was a large squalid room in Müllerstrasse in Berlin-Wedding. It was rented for meetings. There was no district of Berlin more solidly communist than Wedding, and no meeting place more regularly used by the communists than the Pharus Hall. That’s why the new Gauleiter had chosen it for a well-publicized speech. The communists were of course waiting there for the Nazis to arrive, and the ensuing fighting was prolonged and bloody. Josef Goebbels had announced his intention of getting more publicity for his tiny Berlin Nazi Party, and he’d succeeded. Only the presence of a large contingent of Berlin police had restored order and prevented a massacre. Now it had become fashionable to call it the ‘battle of Pharus Hall’, and these two roughnecks – arrested for kicking a policeman until he was unconscious – were still waiting to have their cases heard in court.

Although very different, they were both typical of the men who’d joined the SA. One was in his late thirties, an ex-serviceman with a grey lined face, dark, deep-set eyes, and a grey moustache. His brown uniform shirt was clean and pressed with a neat darn on the collar. His army record was exemplary. Wounded twice and severely gassed during three years of front-line infantry service on the Western Front. Nearly a year in military hospitals. It was all in his file. Pauli would need such details for the courts if he was to keep the fellow out of prison. Usually the courts were more sympathetic to the right-wing political factions than to the communists, but when a policeman was the victim such fine distinctions counted for nothing.

The other one was scarcely a man: a pale, spotty-faced nineteen-year-old, nearly twenty, a huge hulk of a body but without the foundation of strength that proper nutrition provides. He’d left school when fourteen years old and had never had a proper job. His hair was dirty and his face not properly washed. His uniform was stained and rumpled. He was probably sleeping on the floor somewhere, or even in the street. His face too easily relaxed into the insolent smile that is the mask worn by the insecure and uneducated. Pauli noted it: one leering smile like that and the case would be lost immediately.

‘Now, I don’t know who’s been going to Guggenheimer’s bar and squeezing money from them. And if I ask around I don’t suppose I’ll get anyone to tell me.’ The two men exchanged brief grins. ‘But you’re going to go to the Guggenheimers and tell them it’s all been a mistake. You are going to tell them they are not to pay any brownshirt, or party member, any more. And you’re going to make sure that whoever has been engaging in this bit of private capitalism crosses the Guggenheimers off his list. Got it?’

‘It’s official policy now that all Jewish…’

‘Shut up and listen to me. I don’t want to know any of the details. The only thing that interests us in this room is what happens to you two when you go to court. Right?’

‘Yes, Herr Doktor. Right,’ said the elder man.

‘And if the Guggenheimers are pestered any more, you two are going to suddenly find yourself without adequate legal defence.’

‘That sounds like a threat,’ said the younger one.

‘Oh, does it?’ said Pauli. ‘Good, because that’s exactly what it was.’

The man with the grey moustache was subtler. He said, ‘It might be a bit difficult explaining why these bloody Jews are not to make a contribution to our funds.’

Pauli stood up, leaned across his desk, and poked the man in the chest. ‘Well, my friend, you tell anyone who asks you that “difficult” question that it was because I said so. You pass the word around!’

‘Yes, Herr Doktor.’ He was an ex-army man: he liked taking orders. These SA men were all like that; that’s why they liked dressing up in their brown shirts and peaked caps and big boots. They wanted someone to take over their lives and give them orders.

‘Now get out. I’ll get an adjournment for a few weeks. Come back on the first day of next month.’

‘Heil Hitler!’ said both men in unison.

‘That’s right,’ said Pauli. ‘Heil Hitler.’

‘Your brother’s a decent sort of fellow,’ said Fritz Esser to Pauli, having obviously come to this conclusion only recently. He tapped his cigar to put ash into an ashtray, but it went onto the tablecloth. Fritz was drunk.

‘He’s a stuffy sort of man, but he never lets anyone down,’ said Pauli. He was self-conscious about his affection for his brother. He didn’t want people to think he depended on Peter in any way.

The room – lit only by the greenish light of two hissing and popping gas jets – was panelled in a dark wood, its botanical origin obscured by half a century of tobacco smoke and old varnish. On the wall were framed photos of a cycling club posing in groups with their machines after the races at Friedenauer Volkspark each year. The two men were sitting at a long dining table; the dinner was finished and all the guests had departed. The table was littered with ashtrays, plates, glasses and bottles, and wine was spilled on the cream-coloured linen cloth.

‘What made the bloody fool marry a Jew?’

‘They’re very happy together,’ said Pauli.

‘Oh sure. She’s beautiful and clever and witty and rich, but she’s a Jew. Jews should marry Jews.’

Pauli looked at him. ‘You sound like one of Góebbels’s speech-writers. You don’t believe all that stuff, do you?’

Fritz took him by the sleeve. ‘You saved me, Pauli. I don’t mean saved my life during that damned streetfighting in 1919, although I’ll be eternally grateful for that, too. But if you hadn’t come to the Imperial Palace and saved me that night, I would have ended up selling matches in the gutter where I often see some of those stupid bastards from the People’s Naval Division. But after you I owe everything to the party. They have given me everything. I had no education, no money, no influential friends or family, no nothing. But the party took me and gave me everything I’ve got. And all they ask in return is that I hate Jews. Is that something I have to question?’ He let go of Pauli’s sleeve and drank some schnapps.

‘I didn’t marry her; my brother did.’

‘So you saved his life?’ said Esser. He spilled some drink down his shirt, drank the rest, and poured more. ‘I didn’t know that on that day I fished you out of the sea. So you’d jumped in to help him?’

‘I don’t know what happened,’ said Pauli. He was embarrassed, just as he’d been embarrassed earlier in the evening when Peter had raised a glass and proposed the health of the brother who’d saved his life at the risk of his own. ‘Neither does he. We were only children, weren’t we? But he insists that it all happened his way, so I go along with it.’

Fritz half closed his eyes against the curling cigar smoke and smiled. He was a tough customer and something of a loner. Even for tonight’s celebration he brought no partner. Despite his sly little sexy jokes and stories, he was seldom seen with women. Fritz said that was because all his lovers were married to other men, but sometimes Pauli wondered if that was true. The dinner had been held to celebrate Fritz Esser’s departure to Munich. No one knew exactly what his new job was to be, but there was no doubt that it was a promotion. By now it seemed that Esser, like Captain Graf and certain other rising stars, was marked for a good job in the Nazi Party organization.

Pauli had organized the farewell party. It took place in a private dining room in Leipziger Strasse. The food and drink were all supplied by the Guggenheimers, not so far away. It amused Pauli to think that all these ardent Nazis had been eating Frau Guggenheimer’s delicious food. Some of the dishes were traditional Jewish ones, but the people present couldn’t distinguish between traditional German and Jewish dishes. Not many Germans could.

Pauli knew that having the Guggenheimers do the catering would be enough to persuade Peter and his Jewish wife, Lottie, to attend, and that was his chief motive in arranging it. Dr Josef Goebbels had remarked on the food and stayed long enough to deliver a short speech of congratulation from which all trace of his Rhineland accent had been eliminated. It was this polished performance – and the fact that he was the only one of the top Nazis with a quick-witted sense of humour – that earned him a round of applause from all present. Fritz said afterwards to Pauli that a man who could change his hometown accent could change anything or anybody.

Now it was two o’clock in the morning and all the guests had departed. Only Pauli and Fritz remained, and they were both very drunk. Fritz reached for a bottle of good apple brandy from the crate that was far from empty. He cracked the wax from the top and used the corkscrew to open it and pour more for both of them.

All the male guests, including Pauli, had managed to find evening dress. Some – such as Peter Winter and Dr Goebbels – even had fine suits, cut to the latest fashion, with padded shoulders and wide trousers. Only Fritz came in a lounge suit, soft shirt, and coloured tie. Was it indifference, or a studied declaration of his egalitarian views? Pauli could not decide. ‘I wouldn’t have Goebbels’s job, not for anything,’ said Fritz Esser. ‘He’s been sent here on a make-or-break assignment.’

‘It looks like that,’ agreed Pauli. He offered a cigarette and Fritz took one.

‘Thanks. Yes, Strasser is getting too big for his boots – all that stuff about government ownership of everything, and alliances with the Russian proletariat – and he’s not doing so well: in Berlin the membership of the party is disappointing. On the other hand, “Dummi-dummi” Daluege is doing well: the SA is growing by leaps and bounds. No one knows the exact figures, but my guess is that the SA outnumber the party memberships. If that can happen in Berlin, it can happen everywhere. If it happens all over Germany, Hitler will be displaced by Röhm, and the brownshirts will take control.’

‘And the tail will wag the dog,’ said Pauli. Fritz had long ago thrown his lot in with Hitler and the party. If Röhm and the brownshirts gained the ascendancy, all Fritz’s calculations would come to nothing. ‘But that won’t happen,’ said Pauli.

‘Why won’t it?’ Fritz wanted to be reassured.

‘The party won’t come to power by means of a putsch. Even Hitler must realize that by now.’

‘So how?’

‘He’ll have to win votes, and that means the party will always keep control. It also means that the party will soon have to move everything to Berlin.’

‘You think so?’

‘Suppose his putsch in Munich had worked. Do you imagine that he would have been allowed to form a Nazi power base in Bavaria by means of an armed overthrow? Of course he wouldn’t – the government here in Berlin would have told the army to move against him, and they would have done so. He wouldn’t have lasted a month.’

Fritz got to his feet unsteadily and turned the gas taps. The mantle glowed greenish white. It was as if he thought the extra light would illuminate his thoughts. ‘But if the Berlin government had done nothing?’

‘The army would have moved against him anyway. And if no one had acted, the French would have used Hitler’s putsch as an excuse to occupy the whole of Bavaria, like they occupied the Rhineland.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Fritz with a sigh. In some ways he preferred the idea of an armed overthrow. It was simpler and quicker and easier than persuading the voters, and it was much more in line with his own sort of thinking. ‘I suppose he’s sent Goebbels here because Berlin is so important.’

‘What’s he got in store for you, Fritz?’

‘One day I’ll get a top job, Pauli, and you’ll be with me.’

‘You should try to get the party to put you up as a candidate for the Reichstag.’

‘I’d like that. Think what my father would say.’ He thought about it and nodded. ‘The Führer rewards the faithful, and I’ve made myself important to him.’

‘Don’t stay away from Berlin too long, Fritz. Munich will become a backwater.’

‘We’ve known each other a long time. Right?’ His words were slurred but he was sincere enough. ‘You’re my best friend, do you know that?’ He put an arm round Pauli’s shoulder.

‘Sure, sure,’ said Pauli, although the idea was a complete surprise to him. Fritz Esser had so many friends, and the higher he rose in the party organization, the more friends he made.

‘Bastards, most of them,’ said Fritz, as if reading his friend’s mind. ‘You’re the only one who’s never asked me for a favour. Do you know that?’

‘No.’

Fritz looked at him. Pauli never tried to outshine him, never tried to take him over or push him aside. Pauli was the only man he knew who got genuine pleasure from his friends’ advancement. ‘And you need a few friends, you old bastard.’ He clapped Pauli on the back so that he almost choked on his drink. ‘Only the other day I was asked why you had intervened to stop the Guggenheimers paying their money.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And the party needs funds. Badly needs funds.’

‘So what did you say?’

A cough and a laugh. ‘What did I say? I said that you were protecting an informant.’

‘“Protecting an informant”. I’m glad you told me what I was doing.’

‘I learned that one from you, you cunning little swine. I learned everything I know from you.’

Pauli smiled. Fritz said, ‘What else do you know that I don’t know?’ He poured more apple brandy.

‘Get close to Captain Göring,’ said Pauli. ‘If Hitler comes to power it will be through Göring’s efforts. Göring is acceptable to the middle class. For all sorts of reasons, Göring will be the centre of power. Hitler needs Göring. All the others will be satellites.’

‘You know who was chasing the Guggenheimer business, don’t you?’

‘No,’ said Pauli, although he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach simply because he did guess who it was.

‘Your friend Brand. He’s just become a Sturmbannführer, under Victor Lutze, in Elberfeld. He’s going places, your old comrade Brand.’

‘I heard he was in the Ruhr SA.’

‘And he hates you, Pauli. He really hates you. What did you do to him?’

‘Nothing,’ said Pauli. ‘He’s just overendowed with hatred.’

‘Watch out for him, Pauli. If anything ever happens I’ll do what I can. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Sure, Fritz. Thanks.’

‘He’s out to get you.’ Fritz swigged the last of his apple brandy and then threw the empty glass at the wall. It was a thick, crudely made glass of the sort specially made for the hotel trade, but so violent was Fritz that it smashed into tiny fragments.

When Fritz tried to get up, he staggered and knocked his chair over. Pauli laughed. Fritz was very drunk, or he wouldn’t have been saying these things.

‘You’re not frightened, are you?’ said Fritz in his usual brutally direct way.

‘Frightened of what?’ said Pauli. He helped Fritz keep his balance, although he was equally drunk.

‘That’s right,’ said Fritz. But they both knew that Pauli was frightened. He’d miss having Fritz in the Berlin party office to protect him against the enmities and jealousy, petty spites and chronic vendettas that had become the way the Nazi Party worked. The top leadership believed that the law of the jungle provided the party with natural strength.

How would Pauli survive? Without Fritz he’d have no one to protect his back.

1929

‘There is nothing safer than a zeppelin’

There wasn’t very much upholstery remaining; that’s why the sound of the piano echoed from the dirt-encrusted gilded angels in the domed ceiling, and down through the derelict space at the back of the dress circle where once had stood a beautiful oak counter and an elaborate mirrored bar.

Once it had been a big theatre. Now it wasn’t really a theatre at all in the sense that that word is used in London, Paris, or New York. It had suffered at the hands of rioters and thieves. Back in 1920 a Freikorps had used it as their barracks, and after that the Reichswehr had stored here ammunition that the generals had wanted to hide from the Allied Armistice Commission. One of the most talented and avant-garde of the new producer-directors had leased it for a year and, when the rent was due, ripped out and sold off fixtures, fittings and floor coverings to get out of debt. So now it was a cold, draughty, uncomfortable shell. And it smelled of the cats that ran wild in the cellars. But even now, in the winter of 1929, the coldest winter in memory, people would still pay to come here if the show was good enough.

It was almost midnight; the runthrough and some last-moment auditions had finished. Almost everyone had gone home. The stage and auditorium were totally dark except for one dim electric bulb hanging very low on one side of the stage to illuminate the piano. The theatre was empty but for the piano player and the woman leaning over him to see the scrawled script and manuscript notes from which he was playing.

‘I adore it,’ said Lottie, starting to hum, following the melody her husband was playing on the piano.

‘Yes, it’s a wonderful melody.’ Peter was dressed in a dark grey lounge suit with a bowler hat perched on the back of his head. It was not the way he’d ordinarily have worn his hat, but Peter had seen one of the Americans like that, and he now sometimes imitated it.

‘And there are words, aren’t there?’ She was wearing a gigantic golden-coloured fur coat. It was too cold here to take it off.

‘You know Brecht: the words always come first, then Kurt writes the music.’ Peter sang; his voice was tuneful but soft and unsure: ‘Oh, the shark has lovely teeth, dear, and they cut you like a knife….’

‘Oh, stop. Why does he always write such stupid lyrics?’

‘He’s a poet.’

‘You all kowtow to him too much.’

‘I don’t think so. You should see him directing actors, Lottie. Silly little girls become like stars when he talks to them.’

‘I love to watch you playing piano; you are so happy.’

‘It was your idea, Lottie. I’d given up all ideas of ever playing again. But now I sometimes think I’d like to leave Father and go into show business.’ He inserted silly, skilful cadenzas into the music.

‘I hope you’re not serious, Peter darling. These people are paupers. And you’ve got a wife and daughter to look after.’

‘I know, Lottie. I wasn’t serious. If I worked in the theatre full-time, maybe I wouldn’t find it so interesting and exciting. But it’s a privilege to work with the great names: Piscator, Brecht, Kurt and all the rest of them: Reinhardt, Jannings, Peter Lorre….’He changed to play a few bars from ‘Moon of Alabama’ and made it into something foolishly grand. Then he stopped suddenly. ‘I could never have taken that job in California and left all this behind; you know that, don’t you?’

‘I know it now, but at the time I didn’t know working with Brecht mattered so much to you. You’re getting quite famous.’

‘No, I’m not getting famous, except as the piano player with a half-finger missing.’ He rearranged the pages in front of him, took off his glasses, looked up at her, and smiled. She hadn’t yet got used to seeing him in his horn-rimmed reading glasses. Peter hadn’t got used to them, either, and now he briefly rubbed the little red marks they’d left on each side of his nose. ‘They use me because I’m cheap: in fact, free.’

‘That’s not true, darling. The way you sight-read from all those scribbled notes and make a piano sound like a full band is a miracle.’

‘It’s good enough for auditions and first rehearsals, and that’s the exciting bit. Once the show is put on, I’m less interested in it.’

‘But how do you remain so good-tempered about all this communist propaganda? I remember a time when you would have walked out on songs like the ones in Mahagonny. They’re not only communist but anti-American, too.’

‘Does that annoy you?’ He was genuinely concerned, and she was touched by it.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘sometimes it does. Brecht is a pig, and his ignorance about America is phenomenal. Why does he always write about things he doesn’t know about?’

‘He’s not a politician, darling. He’s a poet. I don’t think much about the content of the songs, and I don’t think the audiences do, either. People come to be entertained. They come to escape the misery for a couple of hours of fantasy. Brecht makes “Amerika” a place for his fantasies.’

‘You’re too nice, Peter.’ She pulled the collar of the fur coat closer about her neck.

‘Being married suits me. This damned piano is already going out of tune again. Look at that….’ He tapped a dead note.

‘I love you.’

He looked up, pursed his lips to show her he loved her, too, and continued playing.

She went to get his coat, gloves and cane from the chair where he’d carefully set them. She knew he’d sit here playing the piano for another hour or so if she didn’t drag him away.

Peter Winter could easily have been playing his own piano in his own comfortable home – Lottie had bought him a fine Bechstein grand for his thirty-third birthday – but he seemed to get some special sort of pleasure from playing this neglected old instrument, just because it was on the stage in this famous old theatre. Peter would have denied it strenuously had she said so, but he was unmistakably ‘stage struck’. She’d seen it happen before. Her stepmother had wasted years dancing, desperate to get into show business. The house in California was still filled with photos of her in her stage costume. Lottie had always suspected that it was her stepmother who’d bullied her father into letting the movie people build hideous studios on their beautiful orange groves.

She put Peter’s hat level on his head and draped his overcoat across his shoulders. ‘Come along, darling, or I’ll start to think you don’t like to be at home.’

He kissed her. ‘It’s a wonderful home, and there is nowhere else I’d rather be than at home with you and little Helena. And soon your parents will be here to see what a wonderful wife and mother you are.’

‘I wish they weren’t coming on that wretched airship. I have nightmares about it.’

‘Don’t be silly, darling. There is nothing safer than a zeppelin. They’ve been flying for twenty-nine years off and on, and not one passenger has ever been hurt. You can’t say that about trains, cars, or ocean liners.’

‘What about all the people killed in the war? What about you and your injured hand?’

He frowned. ‘That was different. They weren’t passengers: they were soldiers and sailors, and there were guns firing at them. No one is going to be firing at the Graf Zeppelin.’

‘Suppose they’re ill? Mother can’t even handle a sea voyage comfortably.’

‘This flight around the world will make the Zeppelin company front-page news everywhere. Already the flight to Palestine was in the English and American newspapers; think what they’ll say about it, going completely round the world, stopping only at Tokyo, Los Angeles and Lakehurst, New Jersey.’

‘They’re not young any more, Peter.’

‘They’ll go from Los Angeles to Friedrichshafen in one week, having had a weekend in New York. It’s a miracle, Lottie. There will only be about twenty passengers; my father had the devil of a job getting two tickets for them. Most of them are reserved for important government officials or journalists.’

‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, darling. It was a wonderful idea, and Daddy is terribly pleased about it. He says it’s made him the most celebrated man in California.’

‘Invest this five dollars with me’

The Graf Zeppelin gleamed in the sunshine. This astounding flying machine was almost one year old. The airship first took to the air in September 1928, and since then it had attracted the attention of the whole world. But none of its previous flights had been more dramatic than this one. This was the final leg of a journey that had taken the great airship fully round the world. It had sailed almost silently across a thousand miles of Russia’s wastelands, the angry Pacific Ocean, the pale American prairies, and the grey Atlantic waters. In the crowded streets of New York and Tokyo, just as in the quiet tundra and swampland, people had craned their necks and cheered the big silver fish as it floated along at a steady eighty-five miles per hour, awesome and unstoppable. Now, before dark, the airship would be back home again.

The breakfast things had been cleared away, and there was nothing to do but look down at the German countryside and work up an appetite for the lunch. The chef had been chosen from among all the Hamburg-Amerika Line’s cooks, and the wines were suited to the excellent food that came from the small but well-equipped electric kitchen.

The Graf Zeppelin cruised at fifteen hundred feet, its shadow darting across forest and farmland. It was late summer; the sky was blue and the air was clear, so that below them the trees, farm buildings, and animals looked like toys.

‘I just don’t want the flight to end,’ said Mrs Danziger as their airship crossed Germany, heading towards the Bodensee and the Zeppelin company’s base at Friedrichshafen.

Her husband chuckled. ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ Mr Simon Danziger was a white-haired, rotund, somewhat cherubic little man in a pale-peach-coloured suit that was unmistakably Californian.

‘If anyone had told me it would be so smooth…’ The sentence tailed away, as many of her sentences and ideas did. ‘And the engines, so quiet.’

As the shiny silver airship had neared its destination, she had begun to worry about her hair. Back home she went to the hairdresser three times a week. She hated the idea of greeting her daughter and her son-in-law – and perhaps other members of his family – with her hair not properly permed by someone she could rely on.

She looked round the cabin. This room was no larger than the big reception room at their home – or what they preferred to call ‘the ranch house’ – in Ventura County. But it had accommodated twenty passengers for the whole flight. Here they’d been served their three meals a day, and this had been the only place to sit apart from the very cramped two berth cabins. Of course she’d taken the tour of the airship from stem to stern – all of them had done that, just to vary the monotony of staring down at the green-grey ocean for hour after hour. But one tour of the zeppelin was enough for her. After that she’d spent most of the time sitting here in the large cabin, talking to the other passengers or to the airship’s officers.

It had been a wonderful surprise to find that one of the passengers who joined the airship at Lakehurst, New Jersey, was the son of an old friend as well as being the uncle of Lottie’s husband: Major Glenn Rensselaer. He didn’t normally use the army rank, but it proved useful when pulling strings to get a ticket for this record-breaking flight. As he’d explained modestly, and without describing the dangers and skills of his work with the British fliers, most of his wartime service had been spent as a civilian. But in the final few months of 1918 he’d been officially gazetted to the U.S. Army so that his knowledge of the German aviation industry could be available to the Armistice Commission. Nowadays he remained on the Reserve.

Glenn Rensselaer was a brawny man who, despite his approaching fiftieth birthday, was as childishly excited by the flight as anyone aboard. He still had lots of hair, and the blue ‘Rensselaer eyes’ were large and sincere. In many ways he was like his father, Cyrus, except that no one would mistake Glenn for a successful painter, as people had his father when he was fifty. Glenn had the leathery look of the outdoors. And, quite apart from not looking like an artist, Glenn didn’t even look successful: his clothes were neither of top quality nor well fitting. He wore a dark-grey-striped suit that yielded nothing to the well-established fashion of boxy shoulders and ‘Oxford-bag’ trousers. It was the sort of outfit that could be bought in a department store, such as Wertheims in Berlin, which is where he’d bought it.

Glenn Rensselaer was a sociable man, and he’d conversed at length with every passenger on the airship by the last day of the flight. Most of the people aboard had some special interest in aviation, whether as serving officers, government employees, or journalists, and Glenn was interested to hear their opinions of the zeppelin. The Danzigers were almost the only people aboard who were not professionally interested in the workings of the airship, and with them Glenn’s conversation was about the family into which their daughter Lottie had married, and about the granddaughter they were so anxious to see. Glenn Rensselaer’s son, Cyrus, was eight years old, a beautiful, happy child, and the table was littered with snapshots.

But Glenn spent a great deal of the time twiddling his thumbs, drinking strong coffee and fidgeting with tableware. Like many of the other passengers, he found the total ban against smoking irksome. But with a few million cubic metres of highly flammable hydrogen close above their heads, he had no quarrel with this regulation.

‘My husband, Simon, feels it the way you do,’ explained Mrs Danziger. ‘He smokes cigars. Ever since we first met he’s been in the habit of lighting up one of his big Havanas after lunch, and again after dinner. I never remember him skipping one except when he’s been sick – not until now, that is.’

‘Nita,’ Mr Danziger told his wife, ‘you’ll have to have all our mail ready within the hour, or else it won’t be accepted by the airship post office.’

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ his wife said to Glenn Rensselaer. ‘When Simon heard that you could mail letters aboard, he had his office address envelopes for all our friends and Simon’s business associates. Over one hundred letters.’

‘Two for each,’ said Mr Danziger proudly. ‘One letter mailed on each sector. Mail sent on the Los Angeles–to–Lakehurst sector got different postmarks from the mail posted on the transatlantic leg. I’d say a lot of those folks will treasure a souvenir like that. Who knows, in time maybe it will become valuable.’

‘Simon collects German stamps,’ said Mrs Danziger. ‘The mail sent on those first trips of the airship last year is already valuable.’

‘Not really valuable,’ protested Simon Danziger.

‘Doubled in price,’ insisted his wife. ‘I’d like to see the rest of our investments do as well.’

‘Well, you’d be surprised to know, honey, that we have quite a few investments that look like they’ll do much better than that before this year is through. The New York stock market is running wild lately.’

‘Simon takes care of that kind of thing,’ said Mrs Danziger vaguely. ‘I’ve got no head for figures.’ She laughed. ‘Never did have.’

Glenn Rensselaer said, ‘Some folks are getting a little worried about the market. Many stock prices are rocketing way past what they are worth in earnings: that’s a dangerous sign.’

‘I don’t get you,’ said Danziger.

Glenn hesitated. Talking about money was not something he enjoyed. He said, ‘I use a rough rule of thumb that a stock should be valued at about ten times its earnings. Now I’m watching folks pay fifty times the annual earnings! Radio Corporation of America went from eighty-five to four hundred and twenty points – and RCA never paid a dividend at all!’

Danziger smiled. ‘Isn’t it enough that the share prices keep going up?’

‘Not if the stock is not really worth the price.’

‘Stocks are worth whatever they will fetch,’ said Mr Danziger authoritatively. ‘The government stick to a cheap money policy because it’s good for business. Well, darn it, it is good for business, and people are buying stocks as fast as they can. That’s the American way; that’s what I believe in.’

‘I don’t have much in the way of savings,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, ‘but a couple of months back my father told me to put everything into government bonds, and I did just that.’

‘Your father is an old friend of mine, as you know. I never go to New York without we have lunch together. And Nita will tell you how much I admire his savvy as a businessman,’ said Danziger. ‘But businessmen get cautious. I’d say your father has become too cautious, Glenn. You take my advice, my friend. Take what money you’ve got and make a little cash while the chance is there. Any time at all, the government will decide to let interest rates go up, but meanwhile Wall Street is the place to put your money, not government bonds.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Glenn and smiled. He was obviously unconvinced.

Glenn’s manner provoked Danziger to elaborate. He asked Glenn for a five-dollar bill and put it on the table to smooth it with the side of his hand. ‘Now, I want you to invest this five dollars with me – I did the same thing with my nephew last Christmas; it’s an object lesson – and in six months I’ll return it to you plus what it’s made on the market.’

‘That’s mighty nice of you, but…’

Simon Danziger was enjoying himself. He chuckled to admit that it was a somewhat childish game. ‘Write your name right there on the bill, and some address where I can reach you in six months, and date it…You’ll see your profit and it will surprise you.’

‘Well, okay, Mr Danziger.’ Glenn recognized in Simon Danziger the zeal of the newly converted.

Mrs Danziger was more perceptive: she saw Glenn’s embarrassment. ‘I’ll get our mail together,’ she said, ‘and leave you men to talk business.’ She stood up. ‘Do you have any mail for the postal clerk, Mr Rensselaer?’

‘No, I don’t have any mail. I’m not much good at writing letters, I’m afraid. I never got the hang of it.’

‘You know the Winter family well, Mr Rensselaer,’ said Simon Danziger once the two men were left alone. ‘I must admit that I find the prospect of meeting them for the first time very daunting. Have you got any tips for me?’ He tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was no mistaking the serious note in his voice.

‘I’m sure you’ll like your son-in-law, Mr Danziger. Peter Winter is a very sincere young man.’

‘And from the photos we’ve seen, a handsome man, too.’ He carefully placed Glenn’s five-dollar bill in his wallet.

‘Yes, that’s true. And his mother is a truly wonderful woman.’

‘No doubt about that,’ said Danziger, ‘every letter my daughter writes is singing your sister’s praises. I’d say that without your sister Lottie would have found it much more difficult to settle down over there in Berlin.’

Glenn was cautious: it was a two-edged compliment. ‘I guess your wife would have preferred her to come home.’

‘Sure. We both would. But a wife has to arrange her life around her husband’s business affairs. Nita knows that: everyone knows it. No, Nita appreciates the way your sister went out of her way to be so nice to our Lottie. It was a comfort to us both.’

‘The Winters are a swell family. Of course, Harald – Peter’s father – is well known throughout Germany.’

‘A self-made man, so I hear. Started out with just a handful of cash and parlayed it into a fortune.’

‘Some of the stories are exaggerated,’ said Glenn. ‘Harald Winter wasn’t a pauper when he started out…’

‘…and he’s not sitting on a fortune now,’ Danziger finished the sentence. ‘Is that what you were going to say?’

‘German industry has gone through tough times,’ said Glenn, choosing his words carefully. ‘Winter’s corporations made a mint of money in the war, but when Germany lost, a lot of debts went unpaid. There were two factories in Alsace, so when Alsace became a part of France, those assets were lost. After the war, strikes, riots and revolution turned Germany upside down, and he’s only lately got himself back on his feet.’

‘The way I heard it, Harald Winter made a killing in the great inflation of 1923.’

‘That’s correct, but in 1924, after the new money was introduced, the government demanded repayments from businesses that had profited too well on government loans. Harald Winter had to pay out on some of those old deals.’

‘You don’t say? We’ve never heard anything about that.’

‘Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr Danziger. Harald Winter is a very rich and successful businessman, but he has his ups and downs. Lately he’s been facing a lot of criticism from his codirectors. He could be ousted. I’m telling you all this so you realize that he needs his son Peter to handle some of the problems he’s up against.’

‘That’s real nice of you, Mr Rensselaer. Maybe you know that a few years back Peter was offered a vice-presidency with a Los Angeles bank. My wife and I were mighty disappointed that they didn’t come and live in California.’

‘I’m sure you were.’

‘But now for the first time I see the refusal in another light. The boy was being loyal to his father, and I respect him all the more for that.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But my daughter wrote and told me that you’d advised him against taking that job.’

Glenn was flustered. He fingered one of the snapshots of his eight-year-old son and laid it upon another, like a man playing patience. He hadn’t reckoned that Peter would tell his wife, and that she would tell her parents. ‘Well…they were expecting the baby.’

‘As I understand it, you had confidential information about that bank, and you made a special trip to tell Peter that a job with them could prove disappointing.’

Glenn bit his lip. This was a new aspect of Simon Danziger: he could be tough. ‘That’s correct. My advice was to stay with his father.’

‘And he took your advice, but the bank is flourishing, the way I hear it.’

‘You are right. I was being overcautious, I guess.’

‘Just like with your treasury bonds?’ Danziger turned his head to watch the countryside unrolling beneath them. It was rich, fertile land, green and lush in a way the California landscape never was. Yet this German earth was regimented in small rectangular parcels that varied little in size or shape.

‘Just like that,’ said Glenn.

‘I guess caution runs in the Rensselaer blood,’ said Danziger.

Glenn smiled and said nothing. He just couldn’t decide how much of it was hostility. Maybe none. Maybe Danziger should just be taken at face value, like a T-bill.

‘You can’t just make them disappear’

Mr Simon Danziger was variously described as a man of infinite sense and good judgement and as a cunning, parasitic loafer. This disagreement came from the way that Simon Danziger lived solely on profits and interest from his investments. At one time he’d tried to take personal control of the companies in which he invested, but found it both confusing and dull. From time to time he’d even bought small businesses, including three hotels, so that he could occupy himself with the decisions of management. Although this was more interesting for him, he’d seldom been able to contribute any ideas that bore fruit in prestige or profits. Now he let other people earn the money and didn’t interfere with them.

Yet time never passed slowly for Simon Danziger: he was seldom if ever bored. He enjoyed long country walks; carefully planned dinner parties and the conversation around his table; arranging, and rearranging, ‘writing up’, and adding to the collection of German stamps he’d inherited from his father; tending his small but elaborate garden; writing long letters (many of them to fellow stamp-collectors); and, above all else, reading.

Danziger was a voracious and omnivorous reader. A bookstore owner in Santa Barbara had come to know the Danzigers so well that he chose books and shipped them a dozen or more at a time. Seldom did his selection earn a complaint. Most of the books were, in the broadest sense, either art, biographical, or historical, books that helped the Danzigers ‘stay in touch with culture’ from their home on the far side of the world.

So the Danzigers didn’t come to Europe unprepared. A visit with them to the Greek and Egyptian collections of the New Museum left Peter Winter exhausted: his in-laws moved from room to room at a snail’s pace and discussed each exhibit in wearying detail.

‘I told you not to go!’ Lottie reminded her husband with a laugh as he sank down in an armchair and sighed deeply. They were waiting in the sitting room of her parents’ large, luxurious suite on the fourth floor of the Adlon Hotel. ‘My father has a pathological craving for culture; it’s a disease endemic to certain regions of California.’

‘They never get tired.’

‘Do you know how long it takes on the train from Los Angeles to Chicago? And even then you are only in Chicago. My parents are starved for culture: starved!’ Lottie was standing at the window watching the traffic in Pariser Platz. It had been raining, and the fallen leaves stuck flat and shiny on the road, like newly minted gold coins. She loved this view; it summed up Berlin for her. Across the Platz was the Brandenburg Gate and the long, long avenue that went right through the Tiergarten. ‘I wish we lived on this side of town; don’t you, darling?’

‘Only the other day you were telling your mother that all the smartest restaurants and chic shops were in Ku-damm.’

‘I didn’t say they weren’t, Peter. But this old part of town is the real Berlin. Unter den Linden, the palace, the Reichstag – these are the places that make the city unique.’

Peter rubbed his face. ‘How I’ll stay awake through the concert, I don’t know.’

‘It’s Bruckner, darling – sudden, loud and discordant. Bruckner wrote music for people who might be tempted by sleep.’

‘I wish you’d seen your father when he first caught sight of the Queen Nefertiti bust. I was watching him. His eyes popped wide open. He shouted out loud. “Golly!” he said, just like that: “Golly!”’

‘I felt like saying “golly” myself when I first saw it.’

‘And he knows everything there is to know about Greek vases. Far more than I care to hear about, in fact.’

She laughed. ‘Poor darling.’

‘Furthermore, your father actually corrected me on something I said about the Royal House of Hohenzollern. He knows more about even German history than I do.’

‘Well, you don’t know much about German history…. I don’t know why you are so astonished. I told you what my crazy parents were like long before they came.’

‘Yes, you did, Lottie darling. I just didn’t believe you. And, Lottie, you must remind me to speak with the dining-room manager downstairs before we sit down. I’m the host tonight. It would be an absolute disaster if the cost of the dinner tonight went on your father’s bill. If Uncle Glenn gets back from Hamburg in time there will be eighteen of us, quite a crowd. It’s sure to go on very late, and I must be in the office tomorrow – I’ve missed so many days since your parents arrived, and tomorrow there’s an important board meeting.’ He stopped. It was better not to tell her of the acrimonious disputes in the board room as an energetic group of directors fought to take control of the holding company. It wasn’t the money. Papa had enough shares to give him a comfortable income, but the blow to Harald Winter’s pride would be terrible to see. Peter prayed it wouldn’t happen.

Lottie murmured assent, still looking out the window. ‘I hope Mother will be ready in time. I have to take a bath and change and I have someone coming in to fix my hair.’ Coming across Pariser Platz she saw a group of SA men, in their brownshirt uniforms and high boots, marching behind a swastika flag. She turned away from the window and looked at her watch. ‘Your brother won’t come in his uniform, will he?’

‘Uniform? Pauli? He’s put on too much weight to fit into that these days.’

‘You said he’d become a brownshirt.’

‘No, darling. I said he’d joined the Nazi Party.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

‘No, the SA, with their brownshirt uniforms, are quite separate. They’re a rabble that that dreadful Captain Röhm recruited from Freikorps riffraff and chronic unemployed. They are closely allied to Hitler’s Nazi Party, but there’s a lot of friction between them.’

‘It’s a fine distinction, isn’t it?’

‘No. The Nazi Party is a political party, like the socialists, the communists, the Centre Party, and so on. They don’t wear uniforms, perhaps just a small circular swastika badge in the buttonhole.’

‘I wish your brother wasn’t a member.’

Peter shrugged. ‘You know Pauli by now, Lottie. He’s not exactly a zealot, is he? Pauli has even less interest in politics than I do. He joined the party because nowadays he gets almost his entire income from them. He thought it would look bad if he continued to say he didn’t want to join. As a lawyer, you see, he has to be told many party secrets.’

‘I wish your brother had some other kind of work. He is a nice boy: I like him.’

‘I know. I told my father that we should have him in the family business, but things are difficult right now, and this job with the Nazis has been the making of him. When he got out of law school I wasn’t even sure he’d be able to scratch a living. But now he’s becoming quite influential in Berlin politics.’

‘Pauli is?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean he’ll ever be a politician, but he has the ear of the Berlin party chiefs. Anyone who wants a favour from Goebbels or Strasser or from SA Leader Daluege goes to Pauli Winter. He’s becoming a go-between for the Nazis and many of the top people.’

‘It’s the anti-Jewish propaganda that is so wicked.’

‘I don’t give that any attention.’

‘You won’t forget that your daughter, Helena, is half Jewish, will you, Peter?’

‘It’s just their strategy. Pauli knows these people, and he says that it’s only for vote-catching. Everyone knows that the anti-Jewish nonsense will all be dropped if they get any nearer to a majority in the Reichstag. In the coming year they’ll begin to eliminate it from the programme.’

‘What programme? They haven’t got a programme, except hating the Jews.’

‘Nothing is going to happen to the Jews, Lottie. Don’t get upset on that account. Look around you: the German economy would collapse without the Jews.’

‘But do the Nazis know that?’

Peter looked at his wife with concern. He hadn’t realized how much the Nazi propaganda affected her. It was, of course, the presence in Berlin of her parents. Suddenly she was having to explain to them things she’d previously avoided thinking about. ‘Well, anyway,’ said Peter in an effort to relax her and end these childish fears. ‘How can they get rid of the Jews? They’re Germans; they live here, don’t they? You can’t just make them disappear.’

‘Colonel Horner commanding’

The harvest had been gathered and it was the time of year when, since history began, the warrior had earned his pay. The water in the broad river flowed sluggishly through the rolling landscape, sweeping round the meadow that rose gently towards the tree-clad slopes where the gleaming birches had already shed their leaves. A whistle blew three times, and before the last blast ended three soldiers ran forward, disappearing into the drifting smoke and then reappearing as an unexpected gust of wind clawed the smoke aside to reveal a platoon of engineers at the waterside. From them came the noise of a generator as the soldiers inflated supports of a pontoon bridge to improvise a raft.

A large grey-painted saloon car, its engine warmed and ready, started at the first swing of a starting handle and, still wielding the handle, a helmeted officer clamped a boot onto the running board of the accelerating motor, heaved himself into the passenger seat, and slammed the door.

The car slid on the wet grass before its heavy-duty tyres took a grip. By the time the car reached the water’s edge, the combat engineers had ramps in position. The car rolled onto the raft, the weight of it making water wash right over the inflated rubber supports. At the stern of the raft an engineer manipulated an outboard motor.

By the time the car was on the raft and secured, another grey-painted car was coming across the meadow. And then a third. They’d been concealed behind the cottages near the broken, half-submerged timber jetty where once there had been a ferryboat.

The men in the command post watched every move. ‘The first tank is ready to go,’ said the young Leutnant. His name was Rudolf von Kleindorf, and he was the baby-faced second son of an aristocratic World War I general. Von Kleindorf had not graduated from cadet school in time to serve on active duty, and now he showed an exaggerated respect for men like Horner, who’d fought in the war.

‘Not enough smoke,’ said Oberleutnant Alex Horner, who was, for the purpose of this exercise, a colonel commanding a battalion of tanks. ‘Where are the smoke troops?’

‘That’s all the smoke we have,’ said von Kleindorf, his ‘chief of staff’.

‘Damn!’ said Horner. ‘Set fire to one of those dirty little timber huts. Get fuel from the transport people – plenty of oil. Make black smoke. If the enemy see those rafts they’ll guess this is the Schwerpunkt and that our efforts upstream are a feint.’

‘There are people living in those huts,’ protested the ‘chief of staff’.

‘It can’t be helped: we need the smoke.’

Von Kleindorf energetically turned the handle of the field telephone and spoke into it, ordering the houses fired. But the officer at the other end said it was impossible. All of his motor transport was being used as ‘tanks’. He could send men on bicycles, but it would take time to fill containers with fuel, and they would be difficult to carry by bike.

Alex Horner cursed again when he heard the reply.

‘They are Arbeitakommandos,’ said von Kleindorf to explain the shortcomings of the transport unit. The AK were a secret reserve army formed from the remnants of the Freikorps. Formerly disguised as labour associations and sports societies, they were now dressed in army-style uniforms and under the command of Lieutenant Colonel von Bock, chief of staff of the 3rd Reichswehr Division. Officially the AK were civilian labourers assigned to help the hundred-thousand-man army that the peace treaty permitted, but when there were no prying eyes around they became soldiers.

‘Get the tanks going,’ said Horner. The smoke was thinning still more by now, and through his binoculars he could see the defenders on the other bank. If he could see them from the command post on the hillside, it was a reasonable guess that they could see the rafts. Out of sight, upstream, they’d soon be dragging into position the six wheelbarrows that were their assigned high-velocity antitank guns.

‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ said Horner, who was not given to such displays of emotion.

Within three hours the battle was decided, the river crossing had been repulsed, the defenders had won.

‘It was a good idea,’ said von Kleindorf in an effort to comfort his commander. ‘No one ever thought of making the pontoon-bridge components into rafts before. If the transport company had fired the houses…’

Alex Horner’s face gave no sign of any emotion whatsoever. ‘Who is the commander of the AK down there?’

Von Kleindorf consulted his notebook. ‘Brand. He’s described here as a Sturmbannführer. A Sturmbann is a brownshirt battalion. The equivalent rank is major,’ he added, to warn Horner that the AK officer outranked him.

Horner said nothing.

Brand. It was a common enough name, but the officer who eventually appeared was the same tormentor Alex Horner had known so long ago and never forgotten.

‘You sent for me, Oberleutnant?’ Sturmbannführer Heinrich Brand asked formally. He had not changed much, the same ‘Crazy Heini’, with his plucked eyebrows and the beady, quick-moving little eyes placed too close on each side of his thin nose. Impeccably turned out: Iron Cross first class on his pocket and swagger stick in his hand. The only false notes were the nicotine-stained fingers and, more noticeably, the greying moustache, its lower part dyed yellow by the cigarettes he constantly smoked.

‘Where was the staff transport, Brand?’ asked von Kleindorf. Brand stared at his questioner. Brand was in his mid-forties and a senior SA man, but these two kids – junior officers, neither of them even thirty – treated him like dirt. He recognized Horner, of course, and he knew that Horner recognized him. It was typical of these arrogant Prussian swine that Horner, the so-called commander, should remain aloof and silent, in the manner of some senior general out of the history books.

‘Not available, Leutnant,’ said Brand. He didn’t smile, but he let them see that he did not intent to apologize. ‘Leutnant’ that was the brownshirt style. Not ‘Herr Leutnant’ – that damned nonsense was finished.

‘The commander’s written orders were that one motor vehicle was to be kept for the transport staff.’

‘It was in use.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘I was visiting the bridging unit.’

‘Why?’

‘To inspect them. Most of them are my men.’

‘Are your AK men all brownshirts, Brand?’

‘Yes, Leutnant, and all from Bavaria.’ It wasn’t exactly true – nearly half of them were from the Ruhr – but he knew that the reply would get up the nose of these two Prussians. Brand saw no reason to stand rigidly to attention. As the AK commander, he should be treated with respect. He slapped his leg with the swagger stick. ‘The SA now outnumber the army,’ he told them gratuitously.

Von Kleindorf said nothing. Horner’s face was set like granite.

‘When we come to power,’ Brand told them, ‘the Sturmabteilung will become the nation’s only bearer of arms. We will be a new sort of army.’

‘Will it deliberately disobey orders, as you did today?’ von Kleindorf asked, and immediately wished he hadn’t as he saw the satisfaction in Brand’s face.

Brand gave no reply, and with ill-concealed anger von Kleindorf dismissed him. Brand saluted with a studied care that was insolent. He had no regrets. He didn’t mind if his deliberate flouting of orders had caused the failure of the river crossing. The sun was sinking fast for Prussian stereotypes like Horner and von Kleindorf. A National Socialist order was about to dawn. Brand had the warm glow of the believer, and such men suffer no self-doubts.

It took until nightfall for the battlefield to be restored to the villagers who lived upon it. Not knowing how narrowly their homes had escaped extinction by fire, the residents of the cottages near the disused ferry gave the tired soldiers bits of hard homemade sausage and old dark bread.

Oberleutnant Alex Horner went to report to the ‘divisional commander’ – Captain Niemann, a severe-looking man who’d ended the war as a hussar colonel and had taken the demotion to stay in the peacetime army. Then they began the night march back to barracks. It was a long journey. The men soon settled into that march time that trained infantry can sustain for hour after hour. The crunch of jackboot on loose-surface country road produced a rhythm that lulled the mind, and dulled the aches and pains that more casual walking brings.

The rearmost infantryman carried the oil lantern that regulations prescribed as a necessary precaution against traffic accidents, but the moon provided light enough for Oberleutnant Horner and von Kleindorf to see the whole column as they trudged on through villages where barking dogs greeted them as strangers. Horner and von Kleindorf were mounted on chargers – fine, big beasts that snorted and sneezed and danced and did not know that their role in war was to be confined to the symbolic and ornamental.

‘Did you know that Kerl?’ von Kleindorf asked, dropping, for the first time since the exercise had begun, the role of chief of staff.

‘I was with him in the war,’ replied Alex Horner.

‘He was in your regiment? An officer?’ said von Kleindorf incredulously. Brand’s surly manner and coarse accent were an unlikely asset for the mess of a smart regiment.

‘No, I was in his,’ said Horner.

‘Oh, the Bavarian Reserves you told me about.’

‘That’s it,’ said Horner.

‘Poor you,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘You don’t think those SA ruffians could really become a part of the army, do you?’

‘Not while I’m in it,’ said Horner. All the time he was thinking of the days to come: inquests, post-mortems, reports and conferences. Alex Horner’s failed river crossing was unlikely to come out well.

‘What battalion is this?’ It was the voice of Captain Niemann, out of the darkness. He was moving up to the front of his ‘division’.

‘First Heavy Panzer Battalion,’ said Horner, keeping to the terminology of the exercise. ‘Colonel Horner commanding.’ It was absurd, of course. He looked at his marching column: in manpower it was scarcely a company. With an army of only a hundred thousand men it would be difficult – after finding the support and lines of communication troops – to put together a couple of decent infantry divisions, let alone the panzer units, motorized infantry, and so on that this exercise envisaged. But if Captain Niemann was determined to hold on to his phantom division until the last moment, who could really blame him?

‘Goodnight, Herr General,’ said Horner.

‘Your financial adviser resigns’

Veronica had kept the Winters’ house true to the splendid fin de siècle style. Over the years there had been new furniture, furnishings and carpets, but the style was unchanged. Now, as the 1930s approached, she was conscious of the way that the gloomy drawing room, of which she’d always been so proud, was to her brother’s American eyes like a museum.

The windows were heavily draped in yellow silk with chocolate-brown tassels, so that only limited daylight could fall upon the Oriental carpets. There was scarcely a glimpse of the patterned wallpaper, for the pictures, paintings and carefully posed sepia family-portrait photographs were crowded together with ornamental plates and fans. Small pieces of chinaware, ivory and silver bric-à-brac crowded the huge mirrored mantel-shelf, and were carefully arranged on side tables and in glass-fronted cabinets, so that Glenn Rensselaer was in constant fear of knocking something over.

‘Harald should retire,’ Veronica told her brother.

‘He’s only fifty-nine; he’s not sick, is he?’

‘He’s tired and he’s bored and he’s apprehensive.’

‘About the business?’

‘About the world, about Germany, about the things that are happening here. Go ahead and smoke, Glenn. I can see you’re dying to.’

‘I’m not sure I understand you, sis,’ said Glenn Rensselaer. ‘Yes, I would love to smoke, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’ He reached into the pocket of the suit he’d bought specially for this trip. He wanted to look smart for his sister, and on the shopwindow dummy this Glenurquhart check looked very presentable. But now, on him, it was already baggy and rumpled. He was getting out his pipe and tobacco pouch when there was a tap at the door. A chambermaid, complete with starched cap and apron, came in to attend to the stove. She fed coal into it and deftly swept the coal dust into a pan that she took away with her.

Only when the servant was gone did Veronica answer. ‘Unemployment is on the rise again.’

‘Everyone says Germany is booming.’

‘The boom has ended. Harald is predicting three million unemployed this coming winter, and he’s usually right about such things. He thinks more unemployment will immensely strengthen the communists and the Nazis.’

‘Probably.’

‘And the Nazis are asking Harald for money. He’s resisted so far, but most of the other big companies are making contributions to them.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t be so naïve, Glenn. Because they don’t want the communists to come to power and seize the factories. But for Harald there is a further complication: he has to consider Peter and Lottie.’

‘Well, he won’t be helping Lottie and little Helena by financing the Nazis and bringing them into power, will he?’

‘The Nazis will list Harald’s companies among those with “Jewish management” unless he donates a substantial sum to them. That could mean boycotts and demonstrations …strikes too, perhaps.’

‘Does Peter know?’

‘Peter is urging Harald to resist, but most of the other directors insist upon paying. It could probably be arranged that the payments be tax-deductible, so it wouldn’t cost the company anything.’

‘Poor Harald.’

‘Until now he’s resisted the Nazis, but they are becoming much more powerful every week. A severe winter and more unemployment might change everything for the worse.’

‘Has Harald spoken to Pauli about this?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Glenn. You must promise – Harald would die rather than ask Pauli for any sort of favour. The argument they had that night at Pauli’s birthday party has never really healed.’

‘I’m sure Pauli bears his father no ill will,’ Glenn told her. ‘The other night, at the party for the Danzigers, they seemed to be on good terms.’

‘Pauli forgets the hurtful things he says, but his father doesn’t.’

Glenn puffed away at his pipe. ‘Back home they think that at long last Germans have come to see the advantages of parliamentary democracy.’

‘That will take a long time. The single voice of a strong emperor has always been to the German taste. Germans find the argument and conflict of our sort of politics confusing and disturbing. They don’t like debate: they want decisions.’

‘You should know them by now, sis. You’ve lived here a long time.’

‘Too long, perhaps,’ she said.

‘Is that so?’

‘I’ve been thinking about going home, Glenn.’

‘The folks would be bowled over. Dad’s seventy-eight this year; I think he’s given up all hope of seeing you again.’

‘Tell me about Dad.’

‘Dot looks after him.’

‘What is she like?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think she’s a schemer. She had her three sons take the family name, and Dad put a lot of money into that bank to get partnerships for them. Her eldest son’s little boy stays with us, and Dad seems more interested in him than in my little boy.’ He looked up and smiled at her. It was not like Glenn to express any kind of grievance. ‘Yes, you should go home.’

‘Perhaps I was wrong to wait so long, but at previous times I could see no way….’

‘A visit, you mean?’

‘I don’t know, Glenn. I love Harald and the two boys. And Lottie has become like a daughter to me. I would miss them all so much. And yet….’

‘What is it, sis?’

‘I don’t want to die here, Glenn.’

‘Die? What are you talking about? You are only’ – his brow furrowed as he quickly added five years to his own age to calculate – ‘fifty-four. You have half a lifetime in front of you.’

‘I know. I have no fears of death, or any premonition. It’s just that I’d like to live out my old age in America. Does that sound crazy?’

‘No, sis. Of course I understand. I know many people who feel exactly that way after living overseas. Have you spoken to Harald about this?’

‘He’d be so terribly hurt, Glenn.’

‘But you are unhappy.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Would Harald go, too?’

‘Not for a prolonged stay. In America he’d be like a fish out of water. His English is not very good, and he remains the most German German I’ve ever met.’

It was not the first time that Veronica had discussed with Glenn the idea of returning to America. Each time she did so it was from some new aspect, and each time Glenn started off believing her. But, as in previous discussions of this kind, Glenn ended in doubt. Eventually he decided that she would never go back. She lacked the desire, the energy, that would be needed to sever herself, however briefly, from her life here in Berlin.

But Glenn saw how much his sister needed this curious fantasy about going home, and he was prepared to indulge her, despite the way her conversation went round and round, the deceptions and the self-deceptions and the devious ways she invented to temporize. He resolved that next time they spoke he’d confront her with the contradictions.

But the next conversation that Glenn Rensselaer had with his sister was under very different circumstances. It took place on the afternoon of Friday, October 25. Rensselaer had arrived at the emergency department of the Charité Hospital in response to a telephone call from the manager of the Adlon Hotel. A policeman had come to the hotel to bring news that one of their guests – Herr Simon Danziger – had been injured in a traffic accident.

It was said by people who know about such matters that Potsdamer Platz had become the busiest traffic intersection in the whole of Europe. Cars, delivery vans and heavy trucks entered the Platz from a dozen different directions. Navigating across this mad whirlpool of motors and horse-drawn carts came the clanking streetcars, and everywhere deft cyclists and even more nimble pedestrians dashed through the torrent of traffic.

It was here – at the intersection with the recently named Friedrich Ebert Strasse – that, at eleven-fifty that Friday morning, Herr Simon Danziger was struck by a horse-drawn dray laden with twenty-six barrels of dark beer from the Neukölln brewery.

He was still conscious, and in great pain, while they rushed him to the Charité Hospital in the taxi from which he’d just alighted. He was prepared hurriedly and taken to an operating theatre on the top floor for major surgery.

The complex that is the Charité sprawls across Berlin’s Mitte. These forbidding old buildings make up a grey stone fortress wedged between the slow-moving oily waster of the river Spree and the canal. There was no waiting room, and Glenn Rensselaer spent the first half-hour standing awkwardly amongst the outpatients in a cold and draughty upstairs corridor. From here he enjoyed the view of a cobbled courtyard where two mechanics delved into the entrails of a Magirus ambulance.

Glenn Rensselaer felt conspicuous in his long fur-lined overcoat, homburg, grey gloves, and silver-topped cane. The poorly dressed people on the benches were hunched against the cold and stiff with their aches and pains. They looked at him with detached curiosity, as they looked at the senior medical staff who strode through, or at the sheet-covered trolleys that came clanking past them, dragged by men in soiled white coats and glistening rubber aprons. Only two green-uniformed policemen seemed relaxed and at ease. They stood by the door, smoking cigarettes that they concealed inside half-clenched fists, and blew smoke at the ceiling.

The next person to arrive was his sister, Veronica. She wore a magnificent sable coat that was adorned, as was her hat, with flecks of newly fallen snow. She was escorted by a fluttering little hospital official. He wore a frock coat, carried wads of official-looking papers, called her Frau Doktor Winter, and bowed his head continually to expose a balding patch on the top of his skull.

Veronica called to her brother and he joined them, to be shown into a warm office where there was the privacy and comfort that the fluttery man felt should be provided for the highly esteemed Frau Doktor.

‘Are you family?’ the fluttery man inquired.

‘No, not family,’ said Glenn.

‘No, of course not, of course not!’ said the man, and was especially flustered at the idea of it.

Veronica was seated in the soft visitors’ chair, and Glenn in the swivel chair behind the desk, when he returned to bring them the duty surgeon’s prognosis. After a long description of Danziger’s mortal injuries – a litany that Glenn couldn’t understand and to which Veronica closed her ears – he said that there was no chance that Herr Simon Danziger could survive. He would expire, the man predicted – looking down mournfully at the papers in his hands – within the hour.

‘Poor devil!’ said Glenn Rensselaer when the man had departed.

‘He was so full of life,’ said his sister.

‘I was thinking of the driver of the beer dray.’

‘Yes, for him, too,’ said Veronica doubtfully.

There was a long silence. ‘Danziger went bust,’ said Rensselaer. ‘The first telegrams went out last Saturday night, calling in the margins. Danziger had sunk every last red cent into stocks on the New York exchange. We talked about it on the airship coming over.’

‘The “crash” – I saw it in the papers, but I don’t really understand…’

‘Suckers kept buying: up and up and up and up it went. It had to go bang, and it crashed last weekend.’

‘And they didn’t know it was about to happen?’

‘Everyone on the exchange knew, unless they were plumb stupid. But the market makes money on every deal. The brokers will come out of this disaster richer than ever.’

Veronica said, ‘You’re saying Mr Danziger deliberately stepped in front of … No, Glenn, no. That’s too awful.’

‘I sure won’t say it to Lottie or to Mrs Danziger, but I’d bet a million bucks against an old shirt-stud that that’s the truth of it.’

‘He was bankrupt?’

‘Just about, I’d say. He told me that he’d scraped together every last asset he could find to play the market. Dad sent me a long telegram when the market closed on Monday. Told me what was happening behind the scenes. The time difference meant that I had the telegram soon after midnight.’

‘Did you tell Mr Danziger?’

‘I phoned him at the Adlon and read Dad’s telegram to him, leaving out the names of Wall Street tycoons who’d died by their own hand since the news broke. It was about one o’clock in the morning, Tuesday. I must have woken him up. He just grunted a thanks. I guess he’d already heard from his own broker. It was too late to do anything by then. That was the last time I spoke with him. I said to call me if I could help but he never did.’

‘It’s ghastly,’ said Veronica. ‘How will Mrs Danziger manage?’

‘I don’t know. All she has is some shares in a movie studio, and that’s not an asset easy to dispose of,’ said Glenn. He was thinking of his nephew Peter. If there was no prospect of an inheritance for Lottie, Peter was going to be tied to his father, and the safe, well-paid job there.

‘I wonder if she’ll have enough money to settle her bill at the Adlon. I’d better offer her those two rooms on the third floor. Will she want the funeral here in Berlin, do you think?’

‘I don’t think she has a lot of choice.’

Mrs Danziger would have preferred to take her husband’s body back to America, and Lottie wanted her father buried with appropriate ceremony in the old Jewish cemetery in the Grosse Hamburger Strasse, behind the Rote Rathaus, where the great Moses Mendelssohn was interred, but both ideas proved impracticable. Instead the funeral was held at the big Jewish cemetery at Weissensee.

Some people said that Pauli cared too much for his job with the Nazis to be seen at a Jewish funeral, but they were wrong. Pauli attended the funeral, dressed soberly in the dark suit he wore when attending the criminal courts. What’s more, Pauli took a few moments at the funeral to do his father a favour. He told his father, in strictest confidence, that the Nazis would be more than satisfied with a quarter of the amount of money they were demanding from Winter Metal Alloys.

Mrs Danziger was pleased to accept Veronica’s offer of accommodation, and Glenn Rensselaer settled her bill at the Adlon. She stayed until after Christmas, not wishing to face the California party season alone.

It was a few days before Christmas when Mrs Danziger had a letter from the insurance company that covered her husband’s life policy. It said that they would pay. Glenn Rensselaer breathed a sigh and flushed down the toilet the five-dollar bill that Mr Danziger had sent him just before he died. Had the assessors seen the cryptic note that accompanied it – ‘Dear Glenn, Your financial adviser resigns as of today. Please give my apologies to all concerned with the results. I did the best I could – Simon Danziger’ – they might not have been so willing to categorize his death as accidental.

By the time Mrs Danziger took the train to Bremerhaven to catch the S.S. Albert Ballin for New York, some of Harald Winter’s pessimistic forecasts were coming true. And the effects of the New York crash came rippling into the European countries, so that their already unstable economies were buffeted by the storms.

In the month of January 1930 alone, the number of unemployed Germans rose from one and a half million to almost two and a half. In Berlin the factories were laying off workers at such a rate that in many parts of the city the streets were crowded with unemployed. They stood and stared vacantly about them, not knowing how to cope with their misery. Farms within walking distance of the city, as so many farms still were, had armed men guarding their crops.

The coalition government declared that there was not enough money to pay the normal unemployment benefit without incurring a deficit of about a hundred million dollars. This financial and political crisìs came soon after the tenth anniversary of Germany’s changeover to parliamentary democratic government. It wasn’t easy to argue with those who said that the communists or the Nazis would do better.

Almost three years earlier, in 1927, the hundredth anniversary of the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, Artur Schnabel had created a sensation in Berlin by playing the complete Beethoven piano sonatas. It took seven Sunday-afternoon concerts, and Schnabel performed them in the Volksbühne, a theatre club created by means of trade-union financing and more usually associated with the radical left.

Schnabel’s great success had an effect upon the Berlin musical establishment. It changed Erich Hennig’s life. In February 1930, largely as a result of the continuous prompting of his wife, Lisl, Erich Hennig played Mozart piano sonatas before an invited audience.

In some ways it was a mistake. Erich Hennig did not have the subtle and disciplined lyricism that Mozart requires. Hennig was at his best supplying the more robust demands of Beethoven’s piano concertos. But Hennig’s two concerts were by no means a failure. His mother-in-law sent the invitations, and Frau Wisliceny was still a name to be reckoned with in the bitter and Byzantine power struggle that had always characterized Berlin’s cultural life.

Those who might have dared to condemn Hennig’s interpretation of Mozart were not present at the performances, and any comment they made was condemned as sour grapes. Hennig’s Mozart was competent and charming and provided a turning point in Hennig’s career. Until now he’d worked for a music publisher, but now he was signed by an agent. With three pupils, and the promise of more performance fees, Hennig left his dull office job and became a professional musician.

And as his career changed, so did his political allegiances. Until this time he’d been a left-wing radical, regularly to be seen at Communist Party meetings. But beginning with his Mozart recitals, Hennig’s political activities were less in evidence. The hammer-and-sickle badge was not displayed in the lapel of the black suit he wore when at the keyboard, and the bright-red tie was replaced by a quieter, patterned one chosen by his mother-in-law.

Other, more far-reaching changes dated from Hennig’s Mozart recitals in February 1930. It was Pauli’s presence at the recital hall off Ku-damm that caused Frau Wisliceny to invite him regularly to her house. Not always to her ‘salon’, for Pauli Winter was not, and would never claim to be, an intellectual. ‘Mozart is about as far as I go,’ he told Frau Wisliceny, and anyone else who tried to discuss music with him.

He was welcome in many places nowadays, for Pauli Winter was not the little Pauli who had marched off to war. For one thing, he went everywhere nowadays in a smart black Horch convertible. On weekdays, on official business, the car was driven by a stern-faced young man wearing shiny high boots, breeches and a brown shirt with swastika armband.

Pauli Winter enjoyed going to Frau Wisliceny’s gatherings. She chose her guests carefully, so they were always people who reacted favourably to Pauli’s jokes and chatter. Usually, after tea, Frau Wisliceny would persuade him to do some conjuring tricks. He’d feign reluctance, but she knew he enjoyed doing the tricks, because he always managed to have some new ones prepared. And his tricks were never silent. Four kings inserted into a deck became ‘four Turkish-carpet merchants arriving at their warehouse’. There was always a funny story, and the end of the trick brought not only a gasp of surprise but also a hoot of laughter.

Pauli had the enviable ability to walk into a room filled with strangers confident that he’d make new friends: and he almost invariably did. Pauli could peel layers from a stranger and release some surprising prisoner trapped inside a reputation. No one but Pauli could have persuaded the pompous Erich Hennig to play a silly song like ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas!’ and have got a revered actor like Emil Jannings to sing the nonsensical words.

Pauli’s enemies said that he always wanted easy praise and appreciation. His father, on more than one occasion, warned him with that classic aphorism ‘Applause is the spur of noble minds, and the aim of weak ones,’ but Pauli was undaunted. Pauli was Pauli, and his nature was not so easily changed.

As with most successful entertainers, his disarming casualness concealed the great care with which he watched his audience. He knew which people present gave themselves to his jokes, tricks and stories and which were determined to remain unimpressed. So he knew that Inge enjoyed them more than most.

And Frau Wisliceny appreciated the sight of Inge laughing. If only Lottie had not had her wedding reception at the Wisliceny house. She was their guest and there was no avoiding it, but the preparations for the wedding had turned the knife that was in Inge’s heart. Her mother had wept for her, and began to doubt if Inge would ever be happy again. It was weeks before she would even leave the house, and her mother suffered with her. It was an agony greatly worsened by the unwillingness of either woman to admit that it existed. Sometimes Frau Wisliceny wondered if Peter Winter ever realized the consuming adoration that Inge had for him. Perhaps he did, for he seemed to contrive that he and Inge didn’t meet at dinners or parties or any other gatherings.

So Frau Wisliceny was pleased to see that Pauli enjoyed entertaining Inge and some of his tricks seemed to be prepared for her alone. And when Inge went, several times a week, to the Romanische Café to join Pauli in his frugal lunch, or even when the lunches became less frugal and of longer duration, no one gave it any serious attention. Frau Wisliceny was relieved to see that Inge was once again taking an interest in the outside world. She guessed – rightly – that many of those early conversations were devoted exclusively to discussions about Peter.

It helped, of course. Pauli was a good listener, and it was far easier to explain her love of Peter to him, for he loved his brother, too. Neither of them considered any possible romantic developments of their meetings, even when the talk of Peter had dwindled to almost nothing. They enjoyed each other’s company, and everyone knew that Pauli had lots of girlfriends: noisy, pretty, gregarious girls, none of them like the serious, beautiful and intellectual Inge. She wasn’t Pauli Winter’s sort of girl. And yet Pauli was not blind to Inge’s beauty. Her green, luminous eyes that could look so deep and so lonely, her long neck, long slim arms and pale unblemished skin like porcelain made her someone he was proud to be seen with. And Inge discovered in Pauli someone she’d never known about, a man who was able to make her forget for a moment the ache she felt for Peter.

It was Pauli’s blonde waitress at the Romanische Café who changed everything. She regularly exchanged vulgar jokes with all her male customers. One day she greeted Inge and Pauli with a typical Berlin joke that speculated on what they would be doing that afternoon following their lunch of a dozen oysters each and a bottle of Sekt.

Pauli was embarrassed but to his surprise Inge responded by telling her in Berlin argot just how much she was looking forward to just such an outcome. A new relationship began immediately. The following day they went to Friedländer Brothers, next door to the Hotel Bristol, and chose a ring. And then to the ‘tea dance’ at the roof garden of the Eden Hotel. Pauli could dance well when he wanted to, and now he wanted to. Within two weeks Inge and Pauli were officially engaged, and their marriage followed in May.

There was no opposition from the families. Any reservations that the Wislicenys might have entertained about Pauli’s philistine tastes or political affiliations were entirely removed by Inge’s obvious happiness. And all the Winter family agreed that Inge Wisliceny was a catch beyond any that Pauli could rightfully have expected.

Peter’s wife, Lottie, was determined to remain Inge’s friend, and despite the reservations that Inge at first showed, it was Lottie, far more than Frau Wisliceny, who helped Inge plan the wedding.

It was a spectacular event. Pauli’s friend Alex Horner pulled strings at Bendlerstrasse and arranged for Pauli Winter to be registered as an Oberleutnant of the Reserve so that he could have a military guard of honour at the ceremony. Each young officer was matched with a beautifully dressed bridesmaid, in the traditional German style. The couple came down the steps of the church under a canopy of drawn swords. This was Lottie’s idea: since, as she pointed out, such a ceremony demanded that Pauli wear an army uniform, he could not possibly get married wearing the brown shirt and swastika of the SA, in which he’d recently been given honorary rank. Not even Dr Goebbels, the Berlin party leader, would insist that anything could be more glorious for a German than to be married in army officer’s uniform. And Pauli, with his wonderful blond hair, was the archetypal ‘Aryan’ that Nazi mythology so admired.

Lottie and Inge had worked hard at the guest list to see that the reception was not only for the family but also a reunion of Pauli’s old friends. There were men who’d been cadets at Lichterfelde with him, half a dozen men of his 1918 storm company, as well as close friends like Fritz Esser.

The presents were in keeping with the grandeur of the ceremony and reception. Richard Fischer gave the couple a twenty-place antique Meissen dinner service that had been in his family for several generations. Inge had refused Richard’s marriage proposal, and now she wondered if this was his way of telling her that he’d never marry anyone else.

Harald and Veronica Winter gave them a large Mercedes tourer, as well as having the house on the Obersalzberg extensively extended and redecorated in preparation for their honeymoon there. Until this time it had been little more than a hunting lodge, with heavy rustic furniture and cheap printed fabrics. But now it became a country house, with a large dining room, a huge sitting room and no fewer than five small but comfortable bedrooms. And, wonder upon wonder, Veronica, using the cheque sent by her parents, had insisted upon an example of transatlantic profligacy: each bedroom had its own bathroom! This extraordinary extravagance had made the house one of the wonders of the Obersalzberg. Pauli took great pleasure in showing his house to his bride, and to his great delight and Veronica’s relief, she fell in love with it. She cherished it, and its proximity to the holiday home that Adolf Hitler used, and made Pauli promise to take her there regularly in winter and in summer, too.

1930

A family Christmas

The sound of a motorcycle engine carries for miles amongst the high mountains of the Obersalzberg. Lottie Winter heard it first – her hearing was almost superhuman – and when she went to the window and moved aside the curtain, she saw the motorcyclist’s headlight miles down below them, on the Berchtesgaden road. Inge, Pauli and Peter watched her cupping her hands round her face to see into the darkness.

‘Are you expecting a visitor?’ Lottie asked without turning away from the window.

The question remained unanswered for a moment; then Inge replied. ‘It could be going to the pension, the Türken Hotel, or to one of the farms.’

‘It’s coming here,’ said Lottie. She shuddered. She had a premonition that it was a messenger bringing bad news.

‘I can’t think who it could be,’ said Inge. She, too, was now convinced that the motorcycle was coming to them. She switched out the light and pulled back the red silk curtain. Now through the windows they could see the mountain peaks, the snow lit by the waning moon. In the air there were snowflakes. For most of the year it was like this: the wind blew the snow off the mountains, so that the air was never completely free of whirling crystals.

It was Christmas 1930 when Pauli and Inge brought Lottie and Peter to the Obersalzberg, and this time their most famous neighbour was in residence nearby. Since 1923 Adolf Hitler had been a regular visitor to this small mountainside community in the shadow of the Hohe Göll near Berchtesgaden. He’d fled here after the putsch; upon his release from Landsberg Prison, he’d come here to finish writing Mein Kampf. Now he’d decided to have a residence permanently available here and had rented a modest chalet from his half-sister.

Suddenly Adolf Hitler had become an important political leader. At the elections in September, Hitler had won six and a half million votes. It increased the Nazi Party’s twelve seats in the Reichstag to a staggering 107 seats. After the Social Democrats, the Nazis were the most powerful political force in Germany. Since the election small groups of visitors – having made a special journey here – would sometimes linger at the curve in the road below the Hotel Türken, hoping to catch a glimpse of this fellow who called himself the Führer.

The world press took notice. In Britain, The Times, the Sunday Express, and the Daily Mail immediately published interviews with him. Hitler declared himself a bulwark against Bolshevism and warned the British that they would be militarily endangered by the Soviet Union if Germany fell to the communists.

Since his unsuccessful Munich putsch, Hitler always recognized how much he would need the support of the German army if he was ever to come to power. So, within a few days of the September election, Hitler promised that under a Nazi regime the army would become more powerful and more important and better equipped than ever before. As always, there was something in his promises for everyone except the Jews and the communists.

Pauli and Inge’s mountainside house was higher than the Führer’s Berghof and Inge usually saw him when he took his regular stroll in the deep, crunchy snow each afternoon before tea. Once, feeling rather foolish, she waved to him, but if he saw her he gave no sign of it.

It was Saturday. Peter and Lottie Winter had arrived the previous day. Knowing that Lottie followed the fashions so closely, Inge was wearing the new line: a bias-cut grey chiffon dress that fitted close at bust and hips. By now Inge’s terrible longing for Peter’s love had settled down and become no more than a dull ache. It was an ache she could live with, and she’d been determined to make Peter and Lottie feel at home. That night, after a big dinner of roast kid, potato dumplings, and apple pancakes, the cook and maid had departed, and the four of them were sitting drinking coffee and brandy round the log fire, listening to Peter’s stories about Bertolt Brecht, the playwright who’d become one of Berlin’s most colourful anarchistic characters. In October, Brecht had brought a legal action against the Nero film company, which was making a movie of his Threepenny Opera. The legal proceedings had soon become as entertaining, and far more star-studded, than anything Brecht had ever staged. Actors, actresses, writers, poets and more humdrum types of publicity-seekers made sure they were seen there, and the newspapers followed every move.

‘Brecht is a monster,’ said Peter, who’d directed Brecht through this courtroom drama. ‘An amusing, talented monster, but a monster just the same. When I told him that he couldn’t win and advised him to take the twenty-five thousand marks they offered as settlement, he called me a capitalist lackey, jumped to his feet, and went striding out of court.’

‘But why couldn’t he win?’ Pauli asked as one lawyer to another.

‘The film company brought witnesses to tell the court that Brecht had done almost no work on the film script, and Brecht provided me with nothing I could use to refute it.’

‘Bad luck,’ said Pauli. He knew the problem well: there had been some weeks when all the clients the Nazi Party provided for him were so guilty that nothing could save them. And some clients simply wouldn’t help themselves.

‘Oh, Brecht did all right,’ said Peter. ‘I persuaded the film company to give him sixteen thousand marks for agreeing not to go to the appeals court. I knew they wanted to get the matter conclusively settled quickly, so they could start filming.’

‘Isn’t he a clever man?’ said Lottie, who, sitting alongside her husband on the sofa, now hugged him. Inge smiled.

‘I’ve learned quite a lot about the world of films and theatre in the last few years,’ said Peter.

‘But not earned much money doing it,’ said Pauli.

‘Tell him he should charge them proper fees,’ Lottie told Pauli.

‘It’s more fun than the work I do for Papa,’ said Peter. ‘And when Mahagonny opened in Leipzig, they gave me the best seats in the house.’

‘I wish we hadn’t gone,’ said Lottie. ‘It was terrible. There were hundreds of storm troopers outside, waving protest banners and swastika flags. We pushed through them, but there were more demonstrations inside. There were fistfights in the auditorium, and some people were hurt. The police came: lots and lots of them. It was awful.’

‘You shouldn’t have gone,’ said Pauli. ‘Brecht is a communist. He wants that sort of trouble: it gets him the publicity he likes.’

‘He’s a genius,’ said Peter.

‘Maybe he is a genius,’ said Pauli. ‘But why doesn’t he use his genius to say something good about his own country? If Brecht had his way, he’d hand Germany over to his friends in Moscow.’

‘He’s trying to stir up our thoughts,’ said Peter. ‘He likes to be provocative.’

‘Let him go and be provocative in Russia and see what happens to him,’ said Pauli. ‘Stalin is murdering his opponents by the hundred thousands. Why doesn’t your friend Brecht write a play about that?’

‘Sometimes Brecht goes too far,’ agreed Lottie.

‘Perhaps he does,’ said Peter.

It was at this point that Lottie had heard the sound of the motorcycle and gone to the window. Their visitor was Fritz Esser, arriving unexpectedly, as he always did. Like many of the Nazi Party leaders, he’d leased a country house here in Bavaria, but in order to indulge his lifelong passion for sailing, he’d chosen the Ammersee, southwest of Munich. It took him over an hour on his BMW motorcycle to get to them. And, despite his ankle-length brown leather overcoat and fur-trimmed leather helmet, he would need some time by the fire and several drinks to thaw out properly.

Esser was a bearlike man: big, omnivorous, shaggy-coated and sharp-clawed. Also like a bear, he could be elegant, cuddly, fast-moving and vicious. He looked at them: the two brothers in dinner suits, and their wives in expensive new-fashion dresses. If Esser needed a reminder that his friends were from another world – a remote world with its own language, customs and costumes – this moment provided that reminder.

Pauli introduced Fritz Esser to his sister-in-law. They shook hands warily. ‘A member of the Reichstag,’ repeated Pauli. ‘It’s wonderful, Fritz.’ He poured coffee for Fritz and set the rum bottle out with the cream and sugar. Fritz preferred rum to brandy.

‘Not even the Führer thought it was possible,’ said Esser proudly. ‘I wish my father had lived to see it.’

‘He would have been proud of you,’ said Peter dutifully, but he couldn’t really imagine the ‘pig man’ – a lifelong socialist – being proud of his Nazi son, even if that son was now a member of the Reichstag.

‘Everyone was surprised.’ He looked up from his drink and met Pauli’s eyes. They both knew that Pauli had suggested that Fritz stand for election, and Pauli had done endless behind-the-scenes work to persuade the Nazis to back him. ‘No matter what they said afterwards, everyone was bowled over. Before the election they were hoping for thirty seats … fifty at the very most.’

‘And that’s all you would have got under the American or British system of first-past-the-post,’ said Lottie. ‘It was proportional representation that inflated your gains.’

‘We’re not in America,’ said Pauli sharply, as if to guard Fritz against his sister-in-law’s tongue.

But Deputy Fritz Esser was far too happy to take offence at such remarks. ‘They never thought I’d do it,’ he said. ‘They say Göring helped the Chief assign the seats. They gave me my seat in Schleswig-Holstein, not because I’m from that part of the world, but because they hadn’t the faintest hope that anyone could win it for us. Schleswig-Holstein! Good God, what could have been more hopeless for the party than that? They’ve voted liberal ever since anyone can remember up there. Everyone was astonished when the results came in.’

He looked round at the others and smiled. Despite his old clothes, and his heavy body and darkly menacing eyes, Fritz had an energy and a will power that made him attractive to men and to women. Anyone who’d heard his speeches glimpsed the captivating quality that was apparent to his friends. And yet Fritz never had any lasting relationships with women, as far as could be seen. Often he arrived with some glamorous young girl on his arm, but none lasted. Sometimes Pauli wondered if there was something wrong with Fritz, some flaw in his personality that Fritz could not come to terms with.

‘Why did it happen?’ asked Peter.

‘No one knows: all the centre parties suffered. Votes went to the communists and to us. The unemployed must have been a prime cause, but the Chief says that most of the first-time voters preferred us, and there were a lot of first-time voters in this election.’

‘Will Hitler work within the parliamentary system?’ asked Lottie.

‘Maybe,’ said Esser. He poured a generous amount of rum into his coffee and added sugar and cream, too.

‘The system you’ve vowed to destroy,’ persisted Lottie.

‘We’ll make Germany great again,’ said Esser. He didn’t want to get into an argument with this Jewish American intellectual: she was everything he despised. He was only being polite to her because Pauli was his closest friend, adviser and confidant.

‘Then why those disgraceful demonstrations in the Reichstag?’ said Lottie.

‘Now, that was Pauli’s idea,’ said Esser. He looked at Pauli and grinned.

Pauli flushed. ‘It wasn’t my idea, Fritz,’ he said awkwardly.

‘You’re too modest,’ said Esser. He enjoyed teasing Pauli. ‘On the night the election results came over the radio, I said to Pauli how angry the Führer was that Prussia had banned the wearing of our uniforms. He would have liked to see our deputies taking their seats in proper uniform. The Führer had said as much to me. He thought it was impossible to get round it, but young Pauli here found a way. He always finds a way. Pauli is the smartest fellow we have in the party.’

‘What was Pauli’s idea?’ said Peter.

‘Taking our uniforms in with us and changing in the washrooms.’

‘Would someone explain it to me?’ asked Lottie.

Quietly Peter said, ‘Once inside the building, the delegates enjoy parliamentary immunity. No one could stop them from wearing their Nazi uniforms, whatever the law says about it.’

‘It was a real pantomime,’ said Esser proudly. ‘We shouted and sang the old songs and told them what we thought of them. They tried to get the proceedings going, but there were too many of us, and the sight of our brown shirts drove them to a frenzy.’ He laughed.

‘It sounds stupid,’ said Lottie angrily.

Esser laughed again at her anger, and Pauli laughed too. They were like naughty schoolboys. She found it impossible to argue with them. ‘It’s not funny,’ she said, but the more angry she became the more they laughed.

When they were quiet again and Pauli had replenished everyone’s drinks, Pauli said, ‘Have you come to see the Führer, Fritz?’

‘Tomorrow you will be introduced to him,’ Fritz Esser announced proudly. There was no need to say whom he was talking about: when Fritz spoke of his ‘Chief’ – the Führer – there was a special note of respect in his voice. ‘Pauli and Inge, too. He has asked me to arrange it. He wants to meet all his neighbours, and of course he knows about Pauli’s work in the Berlin Gauleiter’s office.’ He finished his second coffee with rum; this time it was almost entirely rum.

‘Does he?’ said Inge. She had never had any interest in politics, but now that she was married to Pauli she supported the Nazis, for whom he worked. And, like any loyal and devoted wife, she wanted her husband’s virtues to be properly rewarded.

‘We all know what a damned difficult year it’s been,’ said Fritz, rubbing his hands together before warming them again at the fire.

Inge didn’t know. Pauli seldom discussed his work with her. Every night he came home looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

‘First, just after your wedding, when the Führer had his big row with Strasser. We were worried, I can tell you!’

‘What was that about?’ asked Inge. She looked at Fritz with great interest. Inge was a wonderful hostess: she drew people out.

Fritz knew she was pumping him, but he didn’t mind: Inge was pretty and the wife of one of his best friends. And the rum was taking effect. ‘I was there, in the Hotel Sanssouci, when it happened. They nearly came to blows. Strasser wants a programme of nationalization of industry and a whole lot of things that the communists want. The Chief called Strasser a commie and said he wouldn’t nationalize Krupps, because government clerks would bring it to bankruptcy within a few weeks. It was quite a shouting match. Then a couple of days later the Berlin SA went on strike for more wages….’ He shrugged.

‘What will happen about the SA? I’m so glad Pauli didn’t wear brownshirt uniform when we got married. There is always so much trouble with them.’ She looked at Pauli, who smiled but didn’t comment.

‘The trouble’s not over yet. The Führer has asked Ernst Röhm to take command of the SA again.’

‘I thought he went to South America.’

‘Yes, we all thought we’d got rid of the fat swine, but now he’s coming back.’

‘Pauli hates him.’

‘We all hate him; he’s a cunning, deceitful pansy. And now he’ll make sure all his homosexual friends are promoted back into the SA top ranks. He’ll make life difficult for his enemies, and I’m one of his enemies.’

‘Why does the Führer want to use a man like that?’

‘Since the election, people are joining the party and the brownshirts in such numbers that we can hardly cope. With the party that’s no real problem: we write their names and addresses in a book and they start paying us their contributions. But the SA has to be uniformed, trained and organized. Röhm knows all about that, so Röhm is the quickest solution to an urgent problem.’

‘Is Röhm coming here?’

‘I hope to God he’s not. I’ve got to have a few minutes with the Führer tomorrow. I was wondering…’

‘A bed for the night? Of course, Fritz. I’ll have your bags sent up to the corner room, the room with the balcony; you like that one, I know.’

‘Thanks, Inge. Not much baggage on a motorcycle: just the shoulder bag I left in the hall.’ He finished his third cup of coffee and rum and searched the pockets of his battered tartan, zip-fronted jacket to get cigarettes and matches. Pauli – always a good host – offered cigars from an inlaid humidor, but Fritz preferred the cheap, evil-smelling cigarettes he always smoked.

‘When will we meet him?’ Inge asked.

‘Tomorrow, for tea. He’s installed his half-sister over there as his housekeeper. She used to work as a pastry cook, and she makes the finest cream cakes I’ve ever seen; the Chief is very fond of cream cakes.’

‘Yes, we heard his widowed sister was living there. Angela, is it? Isn’t there a brother, too?’

Fritz got up from the fender seat, where he’d been warming himself, and gave a little laugh – a snigger almost. ‘The Führer’s half-brother, Alois, is rather a touchy subject, Inge. He’s been in and out of prison a number of times – some petty theft and then bigamy – and the last we heard of him, he’s run off to live in England.’

‘The Führer’s brother lives in England! That’s extraordinary.’

Fritz looked Inge straight in the eyes. ‘Yes, well, it’s not something that has been given wide publicity, and I’d be obliged if you’d keep it to yourself.’

She touched his arm in a gesture of reassurance. ‘Of course, Fritz.’

‘I’ve become very close to the Chief over the last few years, Inge. I’ve been loyal to him, and he’s a man who respects loyalty. The Chief has a lot of good people round him: now more of them than ever, of course. But when the Führer has a problem, I’m proud to say he often turns to Fritz Esser. And Fritz never lets him down.’

‘And what does Fritz Esser do?’ said Inge. ‘He goes to Pauli Winter.’

‘Exactly,’ said Esser.

Pauli smiled contentedly. Although he knew it to be a childish thought, he allowed himself to contemplate how perfect it would be if they all shared a house like this: together always. To be with Inge and Fritz and Peter and Lottie all the time was Pauli’s idea of heaven.

Later that night, the two women were tidying the room. They had no living-in staff, and the two young village women who cooked and cleaned for them would not arrive until seven-thirty next morning. It being Sunday, they would come after Mass.

‘You’re not really going, are you, Inge?’

Inge was plumping up the cushions. She stopped and said, ‘To see the Führer?’

‘The man is a monster.’

‘So is Brecht. Even Peter said so.’

‘That’s different. Brecht doesn’t rail against the Jews and threaten his opponents.’

‘But he does, Lottie. Brecht passionately hates everything that I love. He despises the soldiers who fought in the war for us. He says horrible things about officers, and Pauli and Peter were both officers. He hates the Homeland. He hates the church. He hates us!’

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ said Lottie. It was no good. Inge was one of the most intelligent German women she’d ever met, but…

‘Don’t be silly, Lottie darling.’

‘I’m not being silly!’ said Lottie, a new, quiet anger in her voice.

Inge looked at her, not knowing how to deal with her. She’d never seen her sister-in-law on the verge of tears before. She’d never guessed that there were such strong emotions within her.

‘Did you read the speeches Hitler just made at Offenburg and at the University of Erlangen?’ Lottie asked her. ‘Everyone strives for expansion, he told them, and every people strives for world domination. World domination! He’s a madman, I tell you.’

‘You mustn’t take it all so seriously, Lottie,’ said Inge, much relieved to find that it was nothing more serious than Hitler’s rhetoric that had upset her. ‘It’s the sort of thing Germans want to hear. I am a German, and I understand these things. Please don’t worry yourself.’

‘Perhaps we should go back to Berlin.’

‘Please don’t go,’ said Inge. ‘It’s so nice to see Peter and Pauli together. And it’s Christmas.’

‘What is Christmas to me?’ said Lottie. ‘I’m a Jew. Or have you forgotten that?’

‘This obsessional hatred for the Führer’

Inge’s mother-in-law, Veronica Winter, had met Adolf Hitler almost two years before. It was also at his house here on the Obersalzberg, and under similar circumstances. Veronica thought him a horrible man. He fawned and smiled and behaved like the men she’d met at the salons in Vienna, hand-kissing men who hung around on the fringes of the art world being nice to rich old ladies.

But Inge and Pauli met a far more confident Hitler. Although the election success had not brought power, it had brought him the promise of power. There was not much hand-kissing now. They met a middle-aged man with unmistakable energy and determination. Not in any way like a peasant, he was obviously urban and quick-witted and might have been mistaken for a semi-skilled foreman in one of Harald Winter’s heavy-engineering factories. His carefully parted hair was almost unnaturally black, and his eyes were alert, but the colour of his skin was grey and unhealthy. He wore a dark double-breasted suit with a Nazi Party badge in the wide lapel, and he made anxious little movements all the time: hand upon hip, then in pocket, raised fist, pointing finger, and hands clasped together.

Despite the violent and flamboyant speeches he’d made in the period leading up to the election, and his more recent ones at Offenburg and Erlangen, Hitler was today displaying the face of the respectable statesman.

For working-class audiences and students, Hitler concentrated on what they wanted to hear. He promised that everyone must be compelled to work, and that all income from investment would be abolished. Workers would nevermore be subjected to the ‘slavery’ of interest repayments. All corporations would be nationalized, and department stores would be turned over to individual traders. Land would be redistributed to the peasants.

But today, for his prosperous neighbours, he talked of the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, the cooperation between workers and management that would bring a more prosperous Germany. He talked of his love for the mountains, his impoverished youth and his ambition to see Germany and Austria united.

Hearing that Pauli Winter had been born in Vienna started the Nazi leader on a long, rambling account of his difficult days there. Only one light illuminated the darkness: the inspiring career of Karl Lueger, a man Adolf Hitler greatly admired. Once he had completed his short eulogy, uniformed aides made a passage for him, and the Führer moved away without waiting for any reaction.

Inge was thrilled. Years fell away, till her face shone with the excitement of a young girl. Nervously she ran her hand up the side of her face and back through her short-trimmed hair, holding her hand to her head as if trying to awaken herself from a dream.

There were many people in the chintzy little house with its fretwood and dried flowers and gingham. Too many for the cramped rooms, even when chairs and tables had been moved to make more space. In the corner was a piano – a present from his neighbours the Bechstein family – and Hitler sometimes played it. Besides aides, cronies, secretaries, bodyguards and hangers-on, there was a crush of invited guests. Six of them were newly elected deputies, and Fritz Esser was amongst these. Inge was interested to catch a glimpse of Hitler’s half-sister, Frau Angela Raubal. She was a cheerful, matronly woman who, Inge guessed from her appearance, had not given up hope of remarriage. Her daughter Geli was there, too, and had Inge been even better at guessing, she would have looked more closely at this plump twenty-two-year-old blonde who passed round the cream cakes. Before another year had passed, Geli Raubal would be found shot dead in Hitler’s Munich apartment, with Hitler’s personal 6.35mm Walther pistol at her side, and be the centre of speculation about ‘Uncle Alf’s’ love affairs.

But, for Pauli, Hitler’s half-sister and niece, and all the other local residents and high-ranking Nazis, were of only passing interest compared with the presence amongst the Führer’s guests of Heinrich Brand. Pauli was horrified. He’d heard Esser’s stories and other reports in the party papers of Brand’s distinguished career as a brownshirt officer. And Alex Horner had told him of his encounter during the military exercises. But to see Brand face to face again was another matter.

An SA Obersturmbannführer now – a lieutenant colonel – and smartly turned out in beautifully cut riding breeches, and a well-fitting brown shirt on the pocket of which was an Iron Cross first class, exactly like the one the Führer wore. Had Pauli been prepared for this confrontation, it might have been endurable, but the sudden sight of his old tormentor made his stomach turn.

Pauli and Brand shook hands. Only a flicker of a smile from Brand revealed the hatred that he wanted made obvious to the younger man. Obersturmbannführer Brand, explained Fritz Esser, was setting up the headquarters for the return of the newly appointed brownshirt leader Ernst Röhm.

‘Crazy Heini’ was forty-five years old and, like his Führer, had grown less and less crazy with every step up the ladder of fortune. Brand had aged in the way that most people aged. His hair was grey and so was his moustache, but his eyes were the same as they always had been in so many of Pauli’s worst nightmares. It wasn’t just that they were set rather close to his thin, bony nose; the eyes were hard and glasslike, almost alive but not quite, moving always, and blinking like the eyes of a very expensive doll.

Pauli made polite comments about the important new post and how much he looked forward to meeting him again in Berlin. Brand touched his moustache and stared at Pauli, responding to his politeness with no more than a grunt. Pauli became nervous; he desperately wanted a cigarette, but they’d all been warned that the Führer didn’t permit smoking.

Fritz Esser was suddenly at his elbow, persuading Pauli to repeat a joke that ended in a long speech in Austrian dialect, which Pauli could imitate so perfectly. He was halfway through before he remembered Hitler’s strongly accented speech. He looked across the uncomfortably crowded room. It was damned hot in here, what with the woodstove and all these people. Hitler was at the window, surrounded by nodding, smiling sycophants. He was out of earshot, but Pauli had the feeling that this unfortunate joke would be repeated to the Führer. And Hitler’s contempt for lawyers was well known.

When they got back home, it was dark. It got dark early in the mountains; that was the worst part of being there in the winter. Inge went upstairs to change into a dinner dress. Pauli poured himself a big glass of cognac and drank it too quickly. The shock of seeing Brand again had upset him. He decided that he wanted to talk about it to someone, and the depth of his fear was not something he wanted to reveal to Fritz Esser. Esser respected Pauli, and Pauli was determined to keep it that way. Pauli looked down at his hands. They were shaking so much that he’d already spilled some of his drink in pouring it out. Perhaps he should go and see one of these damned psychologists that were so fashionable nowadays.

But first he would speak about it with his brother. Peter understood him better than anyone. Peter wouldn’t laugh at his fears. Peter would reassure him and give him advice, sensible advice, not the sanctimonious sermon that Papa delivered whether asked or not. It must have been fate that brought Peter here at this time of need. He went up to the big guest bedroom, the one with the balcony that provided a view of the legendary Untersberg. When there was no response to his knock, he tried the door. It opened, but Peter wasn’t in, and neither was Lottie. And there was no sign of any of their clothes or personal possessions. On the dressing table was an envelope. He opened it.

It was a polite note, thanking Pauli and Inge for their hospitality and the extra work the visit had made for them. There was an appropriate gratuity for the servants. But they’d had to return to Berlin suddenly. Peter was sure that Pauli would understand.

Pauli read the note again, and then a third time. He could hear Inge’s bathwater running: it was no use going to her. He loved her dearly, but Inge wouldn’t understand: he needed Peter. Pauli wanted to shout aloud, or at least to sob. But Pauli’s days of crying had ended back when he used to cry himself to sleep in the cadet-school barracks at Lichterfelde.

He went downstairs and had another drink. It always took Inge a long time to bath, change and rearrange her hair. She liked to have some time to herself. When she came downstairs again, the fire was almost dead and Pauli was asleep on the sofa. She shook him, but the cognac decanter was empty and he was very drunk.

‘Are you hungry, Pauli? There is ham and chicken.’ She touched his arm to wake him. ‘You haven’t changed. …Pauli!’ She switched the table lamp on. ‘Pauli!’

‘Peter’s gone home,’ he mumbled.

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I love Peter,’ said Pauli drunkenly.

‘Yes, you love your father and you love Peter. But can’t you see that that’s just your way of saying how much you depend on them?’

‘I do depend on them.’

‘Then stop it! Pull yourself together, Pauli. Be a man. Start living your own life and making up your own mind about everything. I hate to see you abasing yourself to Peter. You’re as good as he; better, in fact.’

‘Why did he go?’ asked Pauli.

‘They were angry about our visit to the Führer,’ said Inge. ‘I heard him on the phone ordering a car. It was Lottie, of course. She has this obsessional hatred for the Führer.’

‘You should have told me,’ said Pauli. ‘I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known it would make that much difference.’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Inge. ‘You would have refused to go, and what would have happened to us then?’ She knelt on the carpet beside him and, holding him very tight, she kissed him. She loved this clumsy, silly Pauli, who never sent her flowers, never remembered her birthday, took her love for granted, as he expected her to do with his love. She loved him so much because he needed her to care for him. Germany had millions of unemployed, and many of them were lawyers. She wished Pauli would realize how lucky he was to have his fat salary and good job with the Nazis. It was all right for Lottie to air her opinions about what should be done, but her husband, Peter, had the security of the Winters’ family business. Sometimes Inge resented the way that Pauli had been treated by his family. ‘Pauli, darling. I love you, I love you.’

1932

‘Was that more shouting in the street?’

In Berlin-Schöneberg, the evening of Sunday, April 10, 1932, was miserable. The sky had been overcast all day, it had got dark early, and the unrelenting rain was enough to persuade many people not to vote in the second presidential election. The whole city was plastered with election posters. Under the light of the streetlamps were regiments of Hitlers and rows of swastikas, shiny now in the persistent downpour. There weren’t many people about, except for small squads of uniformed SA men, whose studded jackboots could be heard on the street, and sometimes their strident voices, too, as they sang their songs and looked for Jews to beat up or communists to battle with.

In fashionable Haberlandstrasse, a few houses from the apartment where Albert Einstein – the world’s most famous scientist – had lived, the Isaac Volkmanns were preparing for a dinner party. The host was Isaac Volkmann, a prematurely balding thirty-six-year-old who would have been strikingly handsome but for the nose broken in a boxing match at school. Even so, his damaged nose, and a scar on his cheek, gave him the look of a slightly overweight pugilist, which some people, including his wife, thought attractive. But Volkmann was not a professional fighter, he was a fashionable dentist, whose clients included many of Berlin’s most famous film and theatre stars. His particular skills included the fitting of beautifully made crowns and the general ability, by means of all sorts of magic tricks, to make a mouthful of crooked, yellow, neglected teeth into something even, white and beautiful.

Frau Volkmann – a petite young woman with carefully plucked eyebrows and a sensuous mouth that too often pouted – was twelve years younger than her husband and still found the role of hostess somewhat stressful. For that reason the Volkmanns would often take their guests to a restaurant. Lately they had been favouring the newly furbished Restaurant Traube on Leipziger Strasse with its tropical gardens and the tables arranged round a lily pond. Or the Café Berlin next door, where the orchestra was directed by Emil Schugalté, who, before the revolution had been one of the most brilliant violin students of the conservatoire in Saint Petersburg.

But tonight the Volkmanns were entertaining at home, in their apartment, where Isaac’s superb collection of prints and paintings were on every wall. Feininger, Nolde, Grosz, and all sorts of bizarre examples of Dadaism. That magnificent collection was, it was whispered, the reason so many of Berlin’s artists had notably fine teeth.

But Isaac Volkmann hadn’t invited his guests to see his art collection. He was engaging in a tricky exercise in social engineering: trying to re-establish the former close relationship between the Winter brothers. The men had not taken a meal together since Peter’s visit to the Obersalzberg at Christmas 1930. If it didn’t work, if his two friends resented this contrived meeting – he’d not warned either of them – and there was some awful row, better then, that it should take place at his home than in a restaurant for all the world to see.

This explanation did nothing to allay the fears of his wife, Lily. Since she was already worried about the cooking, the table arrangement and the fact that by six o’clock that evening the fish for the second course had still not arrived, the last thing she wanted to contemplate was the chance of her guests quarrelling.

‘Oh, Lily. I forgot to mention that I invited that young English patient, too.’

‘Oh, Izzy. How could you!’ She stamped her foot angrily.

‘He’s a nice young man. I thought Lottie might enjoy speaking her own language for a change.’

‘The table has been arranged for hours.’

‘Just one more dinner, Lily, my sweetheart.’

‘An extra man. It’s worse than asking two people. I can’t possibly fit him in, Izzy.’

‘Nonsense, darling. Just move the flowers.’

‘Izzy, I spent all the morning doing those flowers.’

‘They’ll look just as good on the side table there.’

‘I haven’t got enough food.’

‘You have far too much. You always order far too much food: enough for double the numbers we invite. Sometimes I think it must be that you had an impoverished childhood.’

‘Izzy. How could you do this to me? Do you hate me so much?’

‘My darling, how could you say such a thing?’

‘You’d better tell me about him, so that I don’t say the wrong thing.’

‘He came to the surgery a week ago. In pain. A hairline crack in an upper front tooth. I saw immediately that it was a root canal.’

‘Izzy, I haven’t got time for one of your lectures on modern dentistry.’

‘An Englishman. Twenty-three years old. Born to poor parents…’

‘Did you ask him?’

‘His teeth are in terrible condition. Poor parents, there is no doubt. He works for Dornier. A clever young man, very quick and amusing. He came today for a final checkup. I had a cancellation, so I was able to chat with him. On an impulse I invited him. Be nice to him, Lily.’

‘Am I ever anything but nice? I am too nice, that’s my trouble. And what happens? I end up married to an inconsiderate brute who wants to make my hair turn grey. Why didn’t you phone and tell me there was an extra man? I could have invited Lisl Hennig. Her husband is giving a recital in Breslau and won’t be back until the weekend.’

‘Ah, the door. Someone must be very early.’

‘Izzy, it’s not funny to try to make me more nervous than I already am. It’s the fish.’

‘I know,’ said Isaac. ‘You have hours yet.’

‘I haven’t even chosen what to wear.’

‘You look lovely just as you are, my darling.’ He put his arms round her.

‘Izzy. Stop it. One of the servants might come in.’

Dr Isaac Volkmann’s ‘experiment’ seemed to work well. Volkmann was not a man who attempted such things without being confident of the outcome. He was about the same age as Pauli and had been with him in the Storm Battalion during the closing weeks of the war. He’d met him again after the war, and Pauli had been one of his very first patients; Peter Winter came to him soon after. Peter’s contacts with the theatre world had brought Isaac some of his first celebrated patients. Isaac Volkmann felt obliged to both men, and the trouble he’d taken for tonight’s reconciliation was a measure of his feeling about them both.

The brothers, and their respective wives, Lottie and Inge, talked and laughed together as if there had never been a difference of opinion about the visit to Adolf Hitler’s private residence. Peter’s wife, Lottie, just over the hurdle of her thirtieth birthday, had dispensed with the fringe she’d had for so long and let her lustrous black, wavy hair grow long enough to cover her ears. She wore a mustard-yellow silk-georgette dress with metallic-gold embroidery, a daring sort of colour that only the exuberant Lottie could carry off with such style. And, never outdone, Inge, who had kept her hair short and boyish ever since bobbed hair had become fashionable, wore a conservative sleeveless black dress and a double rope of real pearls. Peter was slimmer, and his gaunt appearance suited him. His features had become more pointed with age – a hatchet face – unmistakably German. He looked, Inge noticed, more handsome than ever. The two brothers were in dinner jackets, like their host, but the Englishman, full of apologies, had arrived in a lounge suit, the most formal clothes he possessed.

Over the fresh asparagus the conversation was mostly about the new film about Frederick the Great. Otto Gebühr, who’d played Frederick the Great in the UFA comedy film Das Flötenkonzert von Sanssouci, was to repeat this role in the more serious film Der Choral von Leuthen. As Peter Winter said, the actor might not have been an exact likeness of that eighteenth-century monarch, but he was exactly what every German wanted to believe Frederick was like. Pauli, typically provocative, said that Richard Tauber, the singer from the Metropole Theatre, would be much better in the role of Frederick the Great. It was Lottie, of course, who said sarcastically that she could think of someone who could play the role of Frederick the Great better than either. The laughter was restrained. There was no need for her to say whom she had in mind. This was election day, and even when Hitler’s name was kept out of the conversation, he was not far from everyone’s thoughts.

‘He won’t win,’ said Pauli. ‘That’s obvious even to the Führer himself. But he’ll show the world that a great many Germans want him as their leader.’ He passed the melted butter to Lottie without taking any. He was getting fat, and tonight he’d had trouble getting into his evening-dress trousers.

‘What are you betting?’ said Peter. ‘A third of the votes?’ Peter could take melted butter, and all the other good things of life, and still remain slim. Why do some people get fat so easily? Peter looked lanky, long-haired, and ‘artistic’: floppy bow tie and saffron-coloured silk handkerchief in his top pocket. The handkerchief exactly matched his wife’s dress. It really was too much. Peter tried to look like the theatrical crowd with which he spent so much time. His American grandfather was just the same: he loved to be mistaken for a painter.

‘Yes, and anything up to fifty per cent for Hindenburg. The rest for the communist,’ said Pauli in a voice that he kept flat and unemotional.

‘It makes me shudder,’ said Volkmann. ‘The thought of your Nazis getting into power…’

‘You’ve nothing to fear, Issac,’ said Pauli.

‘Are you crazy, Pauli?’ said Isaac Volkmann. ‘Outside the department stores I see your brownshirts carrying signs saying, “Don’t buy from Jews”. How long before I have a brownshirt on my doorstep saying, “Don’t have your teeth fixed by a Jew”?’

‘They’re just signs,’ said Pauli. He was embarrassed.

‘They’re not just signs, Pauli. While I was passing Wertheims last week, I saw a couple of customers getting punched by brownshirt bully-boys just because they insisted on going in.’ Volkmann’s face had gone red: it always did when he became excited.

‘Then they should have gone to the police,’ said Pauli. ‘We don’t claim to be above the law.’

‘When will you open your eyes, Pauli?’ said Isaac. He had stopped, knife and fork in mid-air, eyes wide open and fixed on Pauli, his old army comrade. He wanted to make him understand the validity of his fears. ‘Two policemen stood there and watched it happen. They did nothing. Germans can’t rely on their police any more. It’s tragic.’

No one said anything. Volkmann became calmer and ate some asparagus. ‘What do you think of all this, Mr Samson?’ Volkmann asked his English guest. Brian Samson was a handsome young man with light-brown wavy hair and the sort of straggling, lopsided moustache that young men are sometimes tempted to grow. He would have been very handsome except for the ruddy complexion that so often afflicts the British. He wore a grey worsted suit of English styling. The suit was of good enough quality, thought Volkmann, but how he would have liked to tell the young man that a celluloid collar – even a brand-new white one – spoiled everything. However, Volkmann knew enough about the world to know that Samson’s plain blue silk tie explained a great deal about this young man. He’d met enough Englishmen who mattered to know that the men who made the decisions in England wore ties with stripes or patterns: ‘old school ties’, the English called them. And Samson’s hands were a worker’s hands: scarred and calloused, with oil and dirt that seemed to be under the skin, so that no amount of scrubbing would make them like the hands of a gentleman.

‘I don’t know what to think, Herr Doktor….’

‘Isaac. Call me Isaac, as my friends do.’

‘I’m an engineer. Designing, costing and testing prototypes is about as much as my brain can deal with. I like things I can measure on a micrometer and calculate on a slide rule. I just haven’t got the time, let alone the inclination, for politics.’

There was confusion as three or four of the guests started to reply together and then stopped; everyone laughed.

‘We all have a solution, you see,’ said Isaac, speaking to Samson, ‘but we all have a different one. That’s what’s troubling us in Germany.’

‘I’ve never been very religious,’ said Samson. ‘My mother was a Roman Catholic and my father a Church of England Protestant, so they compromised by bringing me up as an agnostic….’ He laughed briefly, as if perhaps he resented what his parents had done. ‘So I can’t follow Hitler’s religious persecution of the Jews. I don’t see what the Nazis can hope to gain from it.’

‘It’s not religious persecution,’ said Lottie, ‘it’s racial.’

‘You’ll have to explain the difference,’ said Samson.

‘We’ve had persecution of the Jews in Europe for centuries,’ said Lottie. ‘But in the old days, if a Jew converted to the Christian faith the persecution ended. Hitler offers no such respite. Hitler hates the Jews because they are of Jewish race, not because of some subtle distinctions in their beliefs about God.’

She stopped, but it was obvious that Lottie had more to say. Lottie glanced at Peter. She was always worried about embarrassing him. It was difficult to know when he was upset, and she still felt guilty about getting him to leave the house on the Obersalzberg so precipitately that Christmas. Peter smiled at her. He knew she was using the presence of the English guest as an excuse to air her fear and anger, but it was better that she did so.

‘You can’t leave it like that,’ said Samson. ‘Explain, please.’ Samson was an experienced and trained observer, so he noticed the way Lottie kept her husband always in view. There was nothing obvious about it, but Samson decided he’d never seen a woman so desperately in love, and he felt an irrational pang of jealousy for Peter Winter. He wondered if Winter realized how lucky he was.

Lottie said, ‘Hitler’s Nazism, like Mussolini’s Fascism, is a society at war. Its members are asked to make sacrifices and obey orders and put up with all kinds of indignities and deprivations because the society is at war’. She looked quickly round the table to see how the others were taking it. Everyone except Inge was looking at her: Inge was concentrating on her plate. ‘Nietzsche worshipped the warrior. He said that the only role for man was fighting, and the only role for women giving birth to warriors. In order to swallow that sort of garbage, you have to persuade yourself that you are at war, threatened by a cunning and merciless enemy. Hitler has provided that enemy. Hitler’s Germany, if it ever came, would be permanently at war with the Jew.’

‘I hope you’re wrong, Mrs Winter,’ said Samson.

Pauli laughed. He could not take that sort of intellectualization seriously. He said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t all read between the lines. You don’t pick your way through every line of the Communist Party manifesto. You don’t take seriously every promise and threat in the speeches of the Social Democrats. It’s only Hitler that you treat like a bogeyman. But Hitler is just as cunning a politician as the others. He knows how to handle a crowd and tell them the things they want to hear. Once in power he’ll do what all politicians do once they’ve achieved their ambition: he’ll drop all these nonsensical points. He’d make a good chancellor, the only man strong enough to stand up for Germany against the rest of the world.’

Lottie said, ‘I don’t know why you need someone to stand up for Germany. The world’s treating Germany generously, if you ask me.’

‘Come down from the mountain, Lottie,’ said Isaac Volkmann good-humouredly. ‘Look at the Versailles Treaty and you’ll see how “generously” the world is treating us.’ He glanced at the others for support. Even Samson nodded.

Lottie said, ‘Have you forgotten the terms Germany inflicted on France after winning the Franco-Prussian War?’

‘Even worse, yes, but that was a long time ago,’ said Lily Volkmann, whose schooldays were nearer than those of most of the others present.

Lottie smiled. It was just what she expected them to say. ‘Then look at the terms Germany forced on the Russians when they stopped fighting in 1917. Look at the enormous areas of Russia the army occupied. Compared with that treaty, the terms the Allies drew up were lenient.’

‘That’s all history now,’ said Dr Volkmann dismissively. ‘It’s not relevant.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Lottie emphatically. ‘German schools are the root of all the problems. German schoolteachers have always taught that Germans are racially superior and destined to rule Europe. No sooner was the war over than the Weimar government encouraged schools to say that Britain, France and Russia had forced Germany to go to war. Kaiser Wilhelm II appears in classrooms as an apostle of world peace. From that kind of baloney it’s a short step to anti-Semitism.’

‘You exaggerate, Lottie,’ said Inge gently.

Lottie smiled bitterly at her. ‘You know I don’t,’ she said.

Frau Volkmann pressed a hidden buzzer to signal that the servants should come in and clear the dishes and serve the next course.

As a relief from the emotive political arguments, Isaac Volkmann asked leading questions of his English guest. Brian Samson told them of his childhood, which he’d spent as the only child of two domestic servants in a baronial estate in England’s Midlands. When his father’s employer bought a Rolls-Royce motorcar, Samson’s father had been sent to the factory in Derby for a course in driving and maintenance. At that time such an instructional course for the customer’s servant was included in the purchase price of the car. The young boy was thrilled at his father’s good fortune and took a passionate interest in the wonderful car, so that by the time he left school, at fourteen, he was skilled enough to get a job in the local garage. Since then he’d studied at night school and got an intermediate engineering exam. But the chance of a job in the design department of the Dornier diesel-engine factory on the Bodensee persuaded him to defer taking his final exams for a year or two. Now he spoke excellent German (and had picked up adequate French on side trips to France) and was wondering whether to go back to England at all.

‘If you get tired of your present job, Samson, come and see me,’ said Peter Winter. ‘We need skilled men in the factory my father’s company is building in Bremen. You’d have good prospects.’

‘What sort of work would that be, Herr Winter?’

Winter continued removing the bone from his grilled sole. Then, encouraged by Samson’s earlier remark that he was not interested in politics: ‘Aircraft engines. Very high-power, water-cooled, in-line designs … fuel injection, but petrol, not diesel.’

Samson was immediately interested. ‘For fighter planes for the air force?’

Without looking up from his fish, Peter said, ‘There is no air force; the Versailles Treaty forbids it. Our engines go for export to Sweden and other countries.’

‘I have no objection to helping Germany build aircraft engines for export or for any other purpose, Herr Winter. The engines you describe are exactly what I have been working on. I’d be grateful for any introduction you can arrange.’

Peter Winter passed a business card to Samson. ‘Come and see me. Phone me next week, and my secretary will make an appointment for us. Lunch, if you’re free.’

‘That would be very convenient,’ said Samson. He had no illusions about the lunch, or the job he was being offered. The Winter companies had only recently gone into aircraft-engine design. An ex-employee of Dornier could provide them with all sorts of information, including what their rival was up to. Peter Winter would sound him out over lunch. That was how these things worked: it was like espionage.

‘Good,’ said Peter.

Until now there had been nothing to indicate it was election day. But now from the street outside came the sounds of marching men, and then some shouting. Bayerischer Platz, around the corner, was a favourite assembly place for the Nazi parades and rallies.

‘Can the results be known already?’ said Lily Volkmann. She asked her husband: he always seemed to know everything.

‘Far too early,’ said Dr Volkmann.

There were more shouts. No one got up from the table. Peter Winter said, ‘Tomorrow I will join the Social Democrats.’

Pauli said, ‘We’ve had the Social Democrats since the war ended, and what has that got us but millions of unemployed, and streets not safe to walk down?’

‘Was that more shouting in the street?’ said Lily Volkmann nervously.

‘It was more like screaming,’ said Brian Samson.

Dr Volkmann poured more wine. No one spoke, and no one got up to look out the window.

‘Would I know his name?’

For Pauli the dinner party with his brother was nothing short of rejuvenating. And the next day Peter phoned him and invited him to lunch at the luxurious wine restaurant that Lutter and Wegener (whose restaurant in the Gendarmenmarkt had been famous since the eighteenth century) had now opened in the West End of the city.

Their lunch was modest enough, and they drank no more than a bottle of Rhine wine and some French brandy, but Pauli was grateful for a chance to talk at length with his brother. He told him about his troubles at work. He’d been moved away from Party Headquarters to a dark little office near the Tempelhof S-Bahn station. It was a long way from his home in Pankow, and now that he no longer had a car and driver, he spent hours every day on the train. He had no secretary, either. These things were all said to be part of an attempt to cut back the expenses, but Pauli had seen the order that specifically named Paul Winter as one of the staff who didn’t need either a secretary or an assistant. There had been many complaints. Most of Pauli’s co-workers said the economies were Dr Josef Goebbels’s idea but Pauli didn’t believe it. It was Brand, of course, trying to force him out, or perhaps hoping that Pauli would complain or do something silly to get even with him.

‘Then, for God’s sake, leave them, Pauli,’ his brother urged. ‘We can always find a job for you somewhere in the firm.’

‘Another lawyer! You’ve got them coming out of your ears already. I’ve heard you say so.’

‘We’ll get rid of someone.’ Peter had always been ruthless about such things. He didn’t see it as a moral question; it was just a matter of administration.

‘I wouldn’t feel right about that, Peter. Thanks all the same.’

‘Then what will you do?’

Pauli toyed with his wine glass before answering. ‘I’ve been thinking about all the people I’ve got to know at the top of the tree.’

‘Yes, go and see the Führer.’

‘No I couldn’t….’

‘It was a joke, Pauli.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘But how long will it all last, Pauli? These scandals will bring Hitler down. You must have seen those letters from Röhm that the Münchner Post published in March. Are you going to tell me that they were forgeries?’

‘No, Röhm is an unrepentant homosexual. He makes no great secret of it.’

‘And now Vorwärts has a story about a murder plot against Röhm. It sounds like a madhouse. It sounds as if the SA is run by murderers, lunatics and homosexuals. You don’t belong among such people.’

‘You mustn’t believe everything you read in the papers, Peter.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Well, I know one old soldier in Munich who is said to wield influence with Röhm and some other top SA people. I know him well. I’m taking the train tomorrow.’

‘Would I know his name?’

‘No,’ said Pauli and felt guilty, for Peter would have known his name only too well.

‘Him and many more like him’

Pauli Winter had regained contact with Captain Graf when a letter arrived at Berlin Party HQ enclosing a list of books and asking to have them sent to his address in Munich. The clerk who authorized payment for such things queried the order, because the books were so different from the usual official demands by party and SA units. Captain Graf wanted old textbooks issued by the Kaiser’s army. His list included such manuals as Forage and Shelter for Cavalry Horses and Transport Animals Under Active Service Conditions, The Construction and Maintenance of Field Latrines, Parade Orders for Infantry Officers, and Divisional Operations: Test Papers for Staff Officers Under Training.

News about the curious Captain Graf – his old army comrade and Freikorps commander – was always of interest to Pauli Winter. And he couldn’t help noticing that the clerk’s query was answered by an official letter from the SA chief of staff’s office. It said that Captain Graf was engaged on work of great importance and was to be provided with any books and any other materials that he wanted. Even more remarkably, the letter was signed not only by Röhm’s secretary; the chief of staff had scrawled his own signature on it, too.

Pauli had noted the address and, telling Inge only that he had to go to Munich ‘on business’ he caught the sleeper which arrived in Munich’s Hauptbahnhof at eight in the morning.

Pauli was not usually a worrier, but the pressure that he’d been under for the last few months had caused him to add about six kilos to his weight. Pauli was one of those people who nibbled between meals, and ate more and more when under stress. It was this extra weight that made Pauli wear his Tracht: his green loden breeches and decorated jacket had always been too large for him.

Tracht was exactly right for his visit to Bavaria. A man dressed in such local costume was sure of a welcome anywhere in the South. It was the right dress for any activity, for work to wedding. And Pauli – born in Vienna – had an incontestable right to wear it.

When he came out of the Munich railway station, it was a bright, clear morning, with the chilly wind from the Alps that made the Bavarian capital’s weather so unpredictable. Pauli would normally have reported to the Brown House – the former Barlow Palace now used as Party HQ – but news of that would have got back to Brand. Pauli didn’t want that; this was to be a purely private visit; not even Inge knew where he was going. He took a taxicab to Captain Graf’s address. It was in the district of Giesing, one of the former villages that make up the town. At the end of the street were a small bridge and a stream and a couple of old farmhouses, enshadowed now by the big blocks of nineteenth-century apartment buildings. Pauli opened the street door of one such grimy tenement and entered a dark lobby, its walls covered with scratched green tiles. He squeezed past a dozen or more bicycles, which seemed inextricably locked together, and opened doors that gave onto a dimly lit staircase.

He found Graf’s name on one of the two dozen postboxes and then climbed the stairs. He was out of breath when he got to the top – badly out of condition, not as in his army days, when he could run five kilometres before breakfast and enjoy every minute of it. He rang the doorbell and waited. On the other side of the door were voices. There was a long delay. Pauli looked out of the dirty window. From here he could see down into the yard: a row of overfilled rubbish bins and a restless dog.

‘Yes?’ A beautiful young blond man had opened the door in response to the bell. ‘Your name?’ The boy was wearing lederhosen and a Bavarian-style shirt. The SA uniform was now banned.

‘Winter. Oberleutnant Winter. I phoned.’ Too late, he realized that it might have been more appropriate to use his honorary SA rank, but he was still enough of a snob to prefer his army title. And so, judging by the label on the bell, was Hauptmann Graf.

‘The captain is expecting you. Third door on the right. Go in.’

Pauli had always remembered Captain Graf as a man of action, a man he’d marched with and fought alongside, a tough, ruthless and cruel commander who ruled by fear and fought mercilessly. Pauli didn’t expect to see him in this setting.

The large room was lined with books: hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, filling crudely made shelves and piled high on the floor. Graf himself was sitting at an old-fashioned carved desk, with more volumes spread round him. Some of the books were open for reference, and others had pages marked with slips of paper. Before him there was an open loose-leaf book in which he was writing in longhand. From the next room came the sound of a typewriter.

Graf looked at Winter sternly before greeting him. The Tracht that Pauli had chosen to wear was significant. Tracht was worn these days by men and women who believed that South Germany had its own destiny. The costume had become a symbol of patriot ism and of traditional country life and of the Nazis who stressed these values so diligently.

‘Winter! Sit down. Move those books from the chair! It’s good to see you again. Coffee or schnapps? Or both?’ Graf was the same ferret-faced little fellow, but his weathered face was wrinkled now and his body was bent. He took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and put them on the desk. He was wearing shiny brown leather high boots and a tight-fitting tunic. After a lifetime of uniforms he felt uncomfortable in anything else.

‘Both,’ said Pauli.

‘Hans!’ Graf yelled. ‘Coffee and my bottle.’ He watched Pauli moving the heavy books in order to sit down. ‘You’re as fat as a pig, Winter. Exercise. You need exercise. Too soft. Everyone’s too damned soft these days.’

‘You’re right, Herr Hauptmann.’

‘Thirty minutes every morning. See that muscle?’ He slapped his own arm and then looked at Pauli again. ‘My God, man, you are flabby. It’s a disgrace.’

‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann. I want your advice. I know you’re a busy man.’

‘Do you? “Busy man”. What else do you know?’

‘The Chief of Staff has given instructions that you are to be sent anything you ask for.’

‘Yes, I know. I got him on the phone. I won’t have some little shit of a clerk questioning my instructions. Did you kick his ass?’

‘He doesn’t work for me,’ said Pauli. ‘I’m in the legal department.’

‘Ha!’ said Graf. ‘Yes, I phoned the boss direct; I’ve known Röhm since he was a child. I could tell you some stories – I won’t, but I could. I sentenced him to ten days in the cells. He was a cadet in those days. This is going back a long time, of course.’

The coffee and schnapps arrived on a teak tray complete with a linen traycloth and polished silver spoons and cream jug. The young man who brought it looked apprehensive and kept his eyes down. ‘Sugar, cream … Schnapps cold? Yes,’ said Graf as he checked the tray in military style. ‘Get out.’ The boy departed without having spoken.

Pauli was nervous. It was now or never. ‘Do you know an officer named Heinrich Brand? An Obersturmbannführer.’

‘Know him? Of course I know him. Insolent bastard! I know all about him. Started off a ranker in a cavalry regiment…Then some damned fool made him an officer. He’s an upstart. Blood will out, Winter. I’ve always said that.’

‘I remember.’

‘Brand. An ambitious little peasant. Of course I know him.’

‘He’s making life difficult for me, Captain Graf.’

‘A peasant! Who made him an officer? Answer me that.’

‘He’s an Obersturmbannführer now.’

‘Rank counts for nothing. It’s a matter of influence.’

‘Brand is close to the chief of staff.’

Graf became agitated. ‘Is he? Who told you that? Do you know what I’m doing here, Winter? Let me show you.’ Graf went across to a cupboard and took a rolled sheet of paper from it. He waved the roll at Pauli. ‘As soon as we gain power, the SA will be merged into the army. Every one of our men will become a soldier. The chief of staff has appointed me to draw up the plans for that great day.’ He unrolled the large sheet of paper. He spread it on the desk and weighted the corners with books so they could see it. It was a complicated diagram showing the units of the German army, down to company level, and their present regional disposition, Wehrkreis by Wehrkreis.

Upon the drawing in coloured inks, were the names and numbers of SA units: SA Standarten had always been numbered to correspond with the old Imperial Army regiments. Now Graf’s diagram showed how every army regiment would have a large brownshirt component to guarantee its loyalty to the Nazi regime.

Graf snapped his glasses on over his large ears and proudly stabbed a finger at his diagram. ‘The Reichsheer will be expanded so that each regiment will have one ordinary battalion – allgemeines Bataillon – and one brownshirt battalion.’ He moved his finger across the paper. ‘The staff arrangements are somewhat more complex. Eventually brownshirt officers will be represented in all arms, but for the time being the technical branches – engineers, artillery and panzer – will have to remain the monopoly of the Reichsheer’s trained officers.’

‘Has the Führer agreed to all this? I thought he had promised the generals that they would be the “sole bearer of arms”.’

‘The Führer? Come alive, boy. Wake up! The SA is more than four times the size of the Reichswehr, nearly half a million men. We don’t have to bow and scrape to the soldiers, or to the Führer, either. We are the new army of National Socialism. When the little Austrian gets into power, it will be because we’ve put him there.’

Pauli suppressed a shudder. He’d heard such ideas before, and even though Ernst Röhm was a fearless soldier and a capable staff officer, the idea of that plump homosexual with his scarred face and coarse manners taking over the German army was unthinkable. ‘Does Röhm say this?’ Pauli asked.

‘You’re not some damned spy, are you, Winter?’

‘No, of course not, Captain Graf. But this is all a big surprise for me.’

‘And it will be a big surprise for some of those other fellows in Berlin, too, eh?’ He winked.

‘And Brand?’

He looked at Pauli for a moment before deciding he could confide in him. ‘Brand will be taken care of. Don’t worry about our friend Brand. His name is on the list.’

‘The list?’

‘The list of enemies, boy. You don’t make an omelette without cracking eggs. Ever heard that expression? Yes, Brand is one of them. The chief of staff keeps Brand there in order to keep an eye on him. We know Brand reports to his damned Führer everything he sees and hears.’ Graf was still studying his diagram with great pride and interest.

‘Killed? He’ll be killed?’

Graf looked up. ‘There’s no other way. It’s been decided at top level. Him and many more like him.’

‘When?’

‘When?’

‘When will this happen?’ said Pauli.

‘When we assume power,’ said Graf, releasing the diagram from the weights and rolling it up again.

‘This year?’

Graf shrugged. ‘I’m not a politician. You’d better ask your friend Esser. He’s one of the high-ups nowadays.’

‘Do you see Fritz?’ Pauli asked. It was a question that really meant, Does Fritz Esser know about Röhm’s plans to take over the army no matter what anyone else says or does?

‘Esser? Haven’t seen him for years.’ Graf scratched his head pensively. ‘He owes me a favour or two. I hope he’ll remember that.’

‘Fritz never forgets a friend.’

‘I’m not a friend,’ said Graf with pedantic precision. ‘But he owes me favours.’

‘Brand is making my life unbearable,’ said Pauli.

‘I could talk to Röhm, but he hates complaints of that sort.’

‘No, don’t say anything to anyone. I wanted your advice.’

‘Stick it out. That’s my advice. Brand and all his cronies will be gone out of your life forever within a month of our achieving power. Stick it out, boy.’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli, and resolved to do so. He respected Graf’s advice. Pauli needed someone to turn to: at cadet school, when Peter couldn’t help, he’d turned to Alex Horner. In party matters he used to go to Fritz Esser. In this case, when Esser was in no position to help, he went to Graf. He admired men who were confident and decisive. He wished he were such a person, but it was such a strain being decisive, and decisive men made too many enemies. Pauli preferred to go along with the tide. Life was too short to be taken seriously. What was that joke he’d heard from his soldiers during the terrible fighting of 1918? ‘If you take life seriously you won’t get out of it alive.’ He knew why rankers refused promotion. It was easier to be a private soldier, to take each day as it came, to comply with orders, and not to have all the problems that came with decision-making. Yes, damn it, he’d stick it out.

‘Drink your coffee, Winter.’

‘I can see you’re busy, Captain Graf.’

‘Never too busy to chat with an old comrade. Drink your coffee.’

‘After that I must go and leave you to your work.’

The two men sat in awkward silence for a few minutes; then Captain Graf said, ‘That fellow who got hurt that night …?’

‘Hauser. My father’s valet.’

‘Is he well?’

‘Very well. He still works for my father.’

‘I’d had too much to drink, Winter.’

‘It’s all forgotten, Captain Graf.’

‘Thanks to you, it all blew over, I think,’ said Graf.

‘It’s all forgotten,’ said Pauli again, embarrassed at the mention of the stabbing at his party so long ago. He finished his coffee, swigged back his schnapps, and got up to go.

When Pauli got to the door Graf said, ‘I never forget a favour, Winter. You leave Brand to me. I’ll speak to the chief of staff.’

‘Thank you Captain Graf,’ said Pauli.

It was still early, and Munich was one of Europe’s most beautiful medieval towns. Pauli strolled back across the river and into the centre of the city. There was a Nazi demonstration assembling behind Marienplatz – big banners, slogans, and dozens of swastika flags. On one side of the open square the brownshirts, complete with brass band, were getting into their formations, and behind them were dozens of men and women in the elaborate lacy national costumes of Upper Bavaria. It was usual for the Nazis to combine their new authoritarian urban creed with sentimental evidence of their love of things natural, traditional, and rural.

Pauli turned aside lest he meet someone he knew. He walked down as far as the Viktualienmarkt: he liked to smell the fresh fruit and vegetables, and there were open-air eating places selling beer and an array of fine sausages. It was almost lunchtime, and there was enough sun to warm the air. He sat down at an iron table and ordered Maibock – the dark Munich beer that is brewed in May – and Munich-style white sausages with rye bread.

He was eating contentedly, and idly watching the girls strolling in the market place, when a voice behind him said, ‘In Munich you skin the weisswurst before you eat them, Winter, old comrade.’

‘Koch!’ said Pauli. It was Lothar Koch, his Feldwebel from the storm company, now dressed in an expensive black leather overcoat and a Tirolean hat, complete with leather band and badger brush. He was no longer that pimply youth; he’d become a mournful-looking man in his early thirties with a large bulbous nose, bushy black eyebrows, and dark rings under his eyes.

The two men shook hands, and Koch’s face lit up with a smile to reveal a gold molar amongst his sound, white, even teeth. ‘What are you doing in Munich? I thought you lived in Berlin.’

‘A business trip. I’m catching the afternoon train back. And you?’

‘I’ve lived here for over five years now. I work for the party,’ he said, avoiding the word Nazi, as so many did at that time. He sat down uninvited. Koch was not a stickler for etiquette.

‘So do I,’ said Pauli, relieved at not having to surmount a hurdle that sometimes made social difficulties.

‘I know. I’ve heard about you. I am with the “Sicherheitsdienst Reichsführer-SS.” He smiled as if this was an inappropriate job for him. The SD was the official name for the Nazi party’s private security service.

‘What do you do, Lothar?’ The waitress came and Pauli ordered beer and weisswurst for his friend.

‘I work for a young fencing champion named Reinhard Heydrich. Know him? Too young for the war … One of these young lunatics who thinks they missed something good. You must know the type – Germany’s full of them.’

‘And now?’ Pauli asked. The white sausages arrived, complete with beer, bread and the special sweet, dark mustard that goes with them.

‘My boss is on the staff of Reichsführer Himmler. We have a little office at Türkenstrasse 23, here in Munich. Officially, since the government banned Nazi organizations, we are called the Presse und Informationsdienst.’

‘And unofficially? I mean, what do you do, Lothar?’

‘My remarkable “Reini” persuaded the Reichsführer that the whole damned organization is riddled with police and communist spies. We track down antiparty elements within the party. We report on the communists and we keep a file index on everyone we can think of.’ He laughed and stabbed a sausage to lift it from its dish of hot water. Once it was on his plate, he skinned it expertly and started to eat. Lothar had always been a hearty trencherman: it was strange that he didn’t get fat. Maybe he worried a lot, thought Pauli, but he didn’t look like a worrier. A sad fellow, perhaps, but not a worrier.

‘Are there so many spies within the party?’ asked Pauli.

‘If Reini Heydrich wants them, I will provide them,’ said Koch.

‘Be serious, Lothar.’

‘I am serious. My God, Pauli. This fellow Heydrich has only just joined the party – in no time at all he’s on the Reichsführer’s staff. From then on I can hardly keep up with his promotions. Last night there was a teleprinter message to say that as of July 19 he’ll be formally appointed head of the SD, with the rank of Standartenführer to take effect ten days later. Can you imagine what he’s earning? And now, to cap it all, he’s on a trip round all the SD offices in Germany.’

‘How many offices do you have in Germany?’

‘Only a handful of informers here and there.’ He stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth and carried on talking. ‘That’s just Reini’s excuse for a jaunt: having his women, his luxury hotels and his fancy restaurant bills paid for by the party.’ He ate sausage.

‘Can he get away with that?’

Lothar had a mouthful of sausage but still he smiled. ‘Who’s going to stop him. Are you? Is some little party official in the cashier’s office going to object? No. We know how things are done in the party, don’t we, Pauli? Anyone who gets in the way of this cunning steamroller will find himself on a card index file and then in hot – very hot – water.’

‘What sort of hot water?’

‘I don’t mean a scented bath. Reini knows how to deal with opposition, whatever else he doesn’t know.’ There were no table napkins. Koch reached into his pocket and wiped the mustard from his lips with his handkerchief.

‘Sounds awful,’ said Pauli.

‘It’s all a big joke,’ said Lothar. ‘The biggest bloody joke I know since that bastard Woermann got his ass shot off in no-man’s-land, remember?’

‘Yes.’ Pauli remembered. He’d remembered that along with a thousand other nightmares, but had never been able to find amusement in the memory.

From Marienplatz came the sound of the brownshirt brass band. It started with a rousing old Bavarian march from the days of the monarchy. That would bring the crowds: young and old. Only later would they play the solemn Nazi songs, and finally the sentimental ones, to create a serious mood for the speeches. Then, at the very end, would come the merry, catchy tunes for the collection boxes. It was all worked out in great detail.

‘Damnit, Pauli, loosen up, man. If the law of averages was straight, we wouldn’t even be here. We’d be manure under a piece of French farmland. If these stupid bastards want to spy on each other, that’s all right by me. And the pay is good.’

‘Is it?’ said Pauli.

‘Ah!’ He laughed again and waved a finger under Pauli’s nose. ‘It’s well over twice what I’d be getting if I’d stayed in Munich Police Headquarters, and I was a senior inspector.’ So he was a policeman. That explained the way he bolted his food: cops took their refreshment on the move, that went with the job. ‘You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli.

‘My Reini is looking for a lawyer. He said so only last week. And eventually we’ll have a proper Berlin office. If you played your cards right, you’d have a senior position there.’

‘I’m not sure I’d fit in.’

‘Don’t be a damned fool. No one would fit in better. You’ve had police court experience, you’re not one of these desk lawyers, you’re wise to the ways of the real world.’

Pauli nodded and wondered how Lothar Koch knew so much about him.

And if sensing this, Koch said, ‘I’ve seen you in court more than once when I’ve been sent to Berlin on prosecutions. You’re sharp, Pauli. I’ve seen you in action, and you’re damned quick.’

‘What would I be doing?’

‘I tell you what you’d be doing: almost nothing. My Reini is nervous about falling foul of one of these liberal lawyers who enjoy making trouble for everyone these days. He likes everything legal, my Reini does. At present we take our proposals round to the lawyers at the Brown House. Well, that’s bad security, isn’t it? We need our own lawyer to run through our plans and okay them. You’d be our tame lawyer.’

‘It sounds good.’

‘It’s as easy as skinning weisswurst, old comrade. Can I put your name up to my Reini when he gets back, exhausted, from his womanizing Olympics?’

‘Yes, thanks, Lothar.’

‘You’ll feel more at home with us, Pauli. More laughs and more freedom. You were never meant to be working with all those brownshirted riffraff or those stiff-necked freaks from the party.’

They sat and drank another beer and talked of old times. They talked of the trenches in 1918 and the friends they had lost there.

‘I’ll have to go now or I’ll miss my train back,’ said Pauli, looking at his pocket watch.

‘I’ll walk over to the cab rank with you,’ said Lothar Koch.

They walked across the market place. When they said goodbye, Lothar Koch said, ‘You’ll not regret joining us, my old friend. You’re our sort.’ The band music from Marienplatz ended suddenly. There was only a brief pause before the first speech began. They were using amplifiers and loudspeakers, so that from this distance the voice was distorted into an incomprehensible shudder of sound from which only the odd word could be recognized.

‘Lothar,’ said Pauli, on nothing more than an inspired guess, ‘did you know I was coming to Munich? Did you follow me today? Did you follow me from the railway station to see where I went, and then follow me all the way to the Viktualienmarkt before talking with me?’

Lothar laughed, and this time Pauli could see two gold teeth. ‘There you are, Pauli, my old comrade – I said you would be at home with us!’

1933

‘We think something is definitely brewing over there’

‘Sometimes I think I’ve wasted my life,’ said Alan Piper. Though he was sixty years old, he had the same pink baby face and innocent eyes that at Oxford had earned him the nickname Boy. He was dressed in a suit of green Harris tweed, the shapeless sort of outfit such Englishmen wore on their country estates rather than here in government offices in London S. W. 1. Piper offered his young visitor a cigar. He said it again – ‘wasted my life.’ There was a slight drawl in his voice, the warning that Englishmen like Piper used when they didn’t want to be taken too literally.

Brian Samson took the cigar gratefully. He knew that few field agents ever met the European Controller, let alone got invited up to his top-floor office to enjoy a chat and a cigar. It was a pleasant room, but dark and shadowy, and furnished in a style that suggested the consulting room of an Edwardian physician. ‘Wasted, sir?’ Piper tossed the matches and cutter to him. He cut the end from the cigar and put it in his mouth.

‘Because the politicians take no notice of what we tell them, Samson. They think I sit up here inventing it all.’

Samson laughed nervously. My God, this was as near as the senior staff of M.I. 6 could get to mutiny. ‘I’m sure they don’t,’ said Samson awkwardly.

‘No, they believe it all right, Samson.’ It was a firmer sort of voice now. ‘That’s why they ignore it. Right, Glenn?’ He looked at a man seated in the corner smoking a curly pipe.

‘Sure thing,’ said the man. He smiled. So ‘Mr Rensselaer’ was an American, thought Samson; he’d not noticed the accent when they were so briefly introduced. He could see it now: a middle-aged cowhand with weathered face and slow smile. He was younger than Piper: wide face, big-boned, with a lot of black hair which was beginning to grey at the temples.

‘And now Hitler’s made it: Chancellor Hitler,’ said Piper. ‘It was inevitable, I suppose.’

Samson got the cigar lighted. ‘Yes. He’ll rule Germany forever. They’ll never get rid of him. But it was inevitable,’ said Samson. ‘He knows how to appeal to middle-class Germans: the farmers, the schoolteachers, the doctors and so on. The communists couldn’t reach such voters as those.’

‘Then maybe you’ll explain it,’ said Glenn Rensselaer gloomily. ‘Because it sure beats me.’

Samson turned to see the American better and said, ‘The violence in the streets. Mobs – communists, Nazis and troublemakers – roamed through the cities looking for a fight. No one was safe. For the middle-classes – and lots of other people, too – nothing mattered except feeling it was safe to walk along the streets, and it seemed like only a Nazi government could bring back law and order.’

‘And has he brought back law and order?’ Piper asked.

‘Yes and no. In Berlin thousands of party members were appointed police auxiliaries. Certainly the communists have been suppressed. But most of the current lawlessness is due to his millions of brownshirts. They’ve set up improvised prisons in empty factories, warehouses and cellars. They’ve locked up anyone they don’t like. Many have been tortured to death. They are a law unto themselves, and they listen only to their Chief of Staff, Röhm.’

‘So how will Hitler deal with that?’

‘You want my opinion or the facts?’ said Samson.

‘I have the facts in your report,’ said Piper. ‘I sent for you to get your more personal impressions.’

Samson puffed at his cigar. ‘Since getting into power he’s been as active as a wagonload of monkeys. The emergency decrees enabled Hitler to ban public meetings and newspapers, tap phones, intercept mail, search homes and so on. But a reliable source told me that he is slowly taking control of the political police in every state in Germany and putting them under one man. This would be a big step towards total control. I mean total control!’

‘My knowledge of the German constitution is rusty,’ said Piper, ‘but I would have thought that was illegal.’

‘It is illegal,’ said Samson. ‘That’s why it’s all being done in secret. Even Interior Minister Frick seems not to be aware of what’s happening.’

‘Who is aware?’

‘Himmler. He’ll end up as chief of the Political Police for the whole of Germany.’

Samson glanced out of the window. Across the road was a beautiful Georgian house, and behind it the tops of the trees of Green Park. It was winter now – almost Christmas – and the trees were bare. There would be parties, paper hats, Christmas crackers, turkey and pudding flared with rum. A sudden homesickness hit him. He’d love to live in England again. He’d had enough of boardinghouses and cheap hotels and interminable foreign voices.

Glenn Rensselaer said, ‘Perhaps Himmler is doing it in his own behalf.’

‘I don’t think so, Mr Rensselaer,’ said the young man. ‘In each state the Gauleiter will have to approve such a change to the state’s police force. The Gauleiters are old Nazis, very touchy, very jealous of their powers. Only Hitler could persuade the Gauleiters to agree to such a change.’

‘Yes, and eventually Göring will also have to approve, if Himmler is to take over the Prussian Political Police,’ said Rensselaer reflectively. ‘Yes, Hitler would have to be a party to it.’

‘Make no mistake, sir, Röhm could win. The next heads to roll could be Hitler’s, Goebbels’s, Göring’s and Himmler’s. Röhm is energetic and he has millions of men who’d back him against Hitler.’

‘Tell us about getting the job with Winter’s organization,’ Piper asked the young man. He’d heard all he wanted to hear about Röhm’s ambitions.

‘It was luck, really. A dentist, a decent old cove, invited me to dinner, and Peter Winter was one of the guests. His brother, a Nazi Party lawyer, was there, too. Pauli, they call him. He let slip a couple of remarks that confirmed my other source. Peter Winter asked about my work. I just floated my job at Dornier past him, and he jumped at it. It was easy.’

‘What do you think of Peter Winter?’ said Glenn Rensselaer.

Samson thought for a moment before replying. ‘Very German. He even looks German. Authoritarian, very proper …and fair, I suppose. Not the sort who’d cheat anyone…’

Boy Piper nodded. Samson’s description of Peter could pass as a description of Samson himself. It was always like that: men had a sharp eye for their own attributes when looking at others. But Glenn wanted to hear more. ‘Go on,’ said Rensselaer.

Samson said, ‘Sophisticated. Single-minded, perhaps narrow-minded in some ways. Speaks wonderful English: his wife is American, of course.’

‘Artistic?’

Brian Samson hesitated. He was no judge of art. ‘Playing the piano and so on? Yes, I heard that he’s mad about the theatre, and plays jazz on the piano. But, after that one evening, I only met him in connection with work.’

‘And his wife?’ Glenn Rensselaer had taken over the questioning.

‘The American? Well, she’s…’

‘Jewish. Yes, she is.’

‘She told good jokes that night. A very clever woman. Attractive, too. And she seems to know a lot of history: I wouldn’t like to get into a political argument with her. Outspoken about the Nazis – too outspoken, I’d say. Her husband gets embarrassed at some of the things she says.’ Samson looked at the two men, wondering what he was expected to say. He couldn’t understand why the questioning had become so personal.

Piper decided to elucidate. ‘Life will get difficult for them under the Nazis, won’t it, Samson?’

‘Unendurable, sir.’

‘We were wondering whether to make an approach to Peter Winter. He could be useful to us. He knows a lot of things we’d like to find out more about.’

‘Offer him a job in England?’ said Samson.

‘Or America. He has relatives in America.’

‘Oh, yes, someone told me that his mother is American.’

Piper did not deny or confirm this suggestion. He said, ‘Do you think the time is ripe? You worked for him; what do you think?’

Samson smoked his cigar for a moment. ‘He’s very loyal to his father, sir. He might feel he was letting his father down. But the regime might start to put pressure on his wife. She loves him – that’s obvious – but how much does he love his wife?’

‘I see,’ said Piper. Samson noticed that the American was biting his lip.

Samson said, ‘But there’s a close relationship between the brothers, too, unusually close. The elder man treats his younger brother with exaggerated consideration. Anything you plan would have to take the younger brother into account.’

‘That’s very useful, Samson. Well, thank you.’ The meeting was at an end. Samson wondered what he was expected to do with his magnificent cigar. He placed it carefully in the big cut-glass ashtray before he got up and shook hands with both men. ‘Ever meet the parents, Samson?’ said Piper as Samson was about to leave the room. He couldn’t resist asking.

‘Only once, sir. They came to the Bremen factory. Old Mr Harald was presenting certificates to young workers finishing their apprenticeship.’

‘What do you think of them? Did you see the American mother?’

‘A nice old couple, sir.’ Samson looked from one man to the other. Piper looked a little flustered, and the American was wearing his slow smile.

‘Thank you, Samson. Drop in on Tuesday morning. I’d like to see you again before you go back.’ Samson eyed the cigar but decided not to pick it up and continue smoking it.

When Samson had left the room, Glenn Rensselaer grinned broadly and said, ‘A nice old couple. It serves you right, Boy. For that young man we are both old fossils.’

Piper ignored the remark. ‘What do you think?’

‘He’s a good kid.’

‘A lad like that should have gone to university. He left school at fourteen and educated himself in public libraries and night schools. It’s a crying shame. With a decent education he might have ended up doing my job. As it is, unless something unexpected happens, he’ll be lucky to end up downstairs in Registry.’

‘He’ll be lucky to even survive,’ said Glenn Rensselaer. ‘The Nazis will tighten everything up. It will get more and more dangerous for him. You notice what he was saying about the Political Police? That was a cry from the heart, Boy.’

‘I know, but I can’t pull him out yet awhile. He’s one of the best men we have. He’s a very experienced engineer, you see. He can get a job where others can’t.’

‘It was good of you to let me sit in.’

‘I know you are going to Berlin next week. I particularly wanted you to hear that business about the Political Police all coming under one control.’

‘It’s not really my department, Boy.’

‘I think it is, Glenn, because if my sources have got it right, your nephew Paul Winter is one of the SS lawyers working on that development.’

‘Is he?’

‘So if you learn anything that we could use…’

‘Sure, Boy, sure.’ Wasn’t that just like the British? They never gave anything away without strings being attached. Glenn sometimes regretted starting these unofficial exchanges of information. If the State Department got to hear, they’d roast him.

‘We think something is definitely brewing over there, something big. We know for certain that Röhm now has a million paid, active brownshirts, with no fewer than three and a half million men on reserve. That is to say, five times as many men as the German army. We want to know everything there is to know about this new SS formation under Himmler. Whose side will he be on when the crisis comes?’

‘Okay, okay, okay. If I find out what’s cooking, I’ll be sure to let you know.’

‘I would appreciate it, old chap.’

‘It’s good to be back in Berlin, Sis’

Glenn looked round the redecorated and refurnished drawing room of the Winter house in Berlin. All the old furniture had gone; everything was new. He sighed. Despite his enthusiasm for progress, there were some things he preferred unchanged.

It was Christmas. The mountain of presents he’d brought from all the family almost obscured the Christmas tree in the corner. From outside in the street came the sound of a band playing carols and the rattle of collection boxes.

‘You’re looking younger and more beautiful than ever, sis,’ he said.

‘When are you going to bring your wife and little Cyrus to see us here in Berlin, Glenn? Your photos just make me long to see them and hug them.’

‘We had this crazy idea of coming over on the Graf Zeppelin when it returned from the Century Exposition in Chicago, but there was a waiting list for tickets about four miles long. The girl in the shipping office put our names down anyway, but I knew there was no chance.’

‘You should have written, Glenn. Harald still has dealings with the Zeppelin company. He might have been able to arrange it.’

‘I would have done that, but when I heard he’d been sick I thought it better not to bother him. We’ll do it another time. Did you hear they’re planning a new airship that will run scheduled transatlantic flights? Think of that, sis. We’ll see each other a lot.’

‘That would be wonderful, Glenn. Tell me more about Dad.’

‘I’ve told you all there is to tell. They took him to the hospital that one night and gave him every sort of test. The doctor said he’s as strong as a horse. He could easily live another ten years: the doctor said that. Of course, he’s had to take things easy – no smoking and no booze – but otherwise he’s just fine, sis.’

‘And he must adore having a grandson to spoil.’

‘Sure, and Cyrus was twelve this year. Dad took him out to lunch on his birthday – “little Cy” we call him. Dad says that spoiling grandchildren is the only revenge a parent has.’

‘Little Cy. I’m so glad you named him after Dad. It was sweet of you.’

‘Yeah, Dad was pleased,’ said Glenn.

‘And Dot’s grandson Bret must be seven, the same age as Peter’s Helena.’

‘It would be swell to get the whole family together.’

‘I can’t imagine Harry crossing the Atlantic, even on an airship.’

‘Tell me about Harry. What’s been wrong?’

‘It all started with the Fischers. Last year, after the second presidential election, and Hitler’s big share of the vote, Richard Fischer decided they should sell up.’

‘And leave Germany?’

‘Yes, and go to Paris.’

‘But their home …and everything…’

‘Yes, Foxy couldn’t bear the thought of it. He’s eighty-two, nearly as old as Dad. He was determined to stay put.’

‘But why go?’

‘The regime,’ said Veronica. Lately it had become a way of explaining every horrible thing that happened.

‘But the Fischers are Roman Catholics. They were Catholics even before old Foxy was born.’

‘But the Nazis don’t think like that. If your ancestors were Jews, you are a Jew.’

‘What happened?’

‘They didn’t go. Richard was arrested in August. “Fuchs” almost died of worry, and Harry went rushing around to everyone he knows.’

‘What was Richard charged with?’

‘No one could find out. They say he was interrogated for four days.’

‘But he got out?’

‘He signed all his Fischer holdings over to the Nazis.’

‘That must have been worth millions.’

‘The Nazis seized Wertheims department store, too. Jewish property is being appropriated everywhere.’

‘But Richard is safe?’

‘I don’t know. He was arrested again in September. They say he’ll be charged with changing Reichsmarks into Swiss francs. It may be all trumped up. They do that sometimes: just invent some offence and let you try to prove you are innocent.’

‘So what’s happening now?’

‘Poor Fuchs is with relatives in the country, and Richard has disappeared. The police won’t say if they’re holding him or not. He might have gone abroad. He has cousins in England.’

‘Couldn’t Pauli find out anything?’

‘No. Göring runs the police here in Prussia. Himmler – who Pauli works for – is in charge of Bavaria. Peter went along to Police Headquarters in Alexanderplatz and said he wanted to act as a lawyer for Richard Fischer and demanded to see him, but he got nowhere. I was worried that Peter might get into trouble, too.’

‘Thank God Lottie has kept her U.S. passport. What about little Helena? Has she got a German passport?’

‘She’s only seven years old, Glenn, so we don’t have to worry about her for a little while.’

‘These people are maniacs,’ said Glenn.

‘A lot of people support the Nazis,’ said Veronica. ‘At least they tell me they do.’ She became flustered in the face of such unbridled criticism of the new regime. The Nazis were not like other political parties who’d come to power. The Nazis were vindictive, spiteful and very, very violent. Even in Berlin, these most outspoken of all Germans had quickly learned to curb their tongues. Nowadays only visitors like Glenn, and a few foolhardy opponents of the Nazis, voiced their innermost thoughts.

‘I can understand why Harry got sick.’

‘He was so frustrated, Glenn. Before, he’s always been able to go to the right people, or get lawyers, or find out the facts. But the Nazis thrive on secrecy. He became ill, and the doctor told him that if he didn’t have a complete rest he wouldn’t be responsible for his health.’

‘But now he’s back at work?’

‘Hauser drives him to the office at about ten-thirty. He has a look around, and then he comes home about three. But it’s making too much work for Peter.’

‘But the companies are all run by directors. Isn’t it time Peter took a holiday? You told me he hasn’t been away for years.’

‘Poor Peter. He so hates working for the company. In the old days Harry had complete control, but now the directors have their own ideas about everything. Even though Peter tries to make sure that Harry’s wishes are approved, sometimes Harry and Peter disagree. Peter is so much happier playing the piano. But in September Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry set up a “Chamber of Culture”, with departments to control the theatre, the radio, the press, films and so on. Peter, being married to a Jew and associated with Brecht – and the other Marxists, who have run away to America – will probably find it difficult to continue his work in show business.’ Veronica sighed. ‘Young Hennig has been doing so well with his piano recitals, and many people thought Peter much more talented. I wish you’d speak with him, Glenn. See if you could persuade them both to take a vacation – just a vacation – back home. It would do wonders for him. Sometimes I think he’s forgotten that he’s half American.’

‘Married to Lottie, I’d say that would be difficult.’

She smiled. ‘Yes, you’re right. Darling Lottie.’

‘And Pauli? We haven’t talked of Pauli.’

‘Pauli. What can I tell you about him. He’s still the same: he’ll never change. The baby of the family. Marriage has worked wonders for him. Thank goodness he has Inge to look after him.’

‘But he lives in Munich?’

‘Next year they’ll be back in Berlin. With the Nazis in power, all the Munich offices will be coming up to Berlin.’

‘But you said that Göring runs the police in Berlin.’

‘Yes, dear, but that’s all changing. By next summer, Pauli’s department will be coordinating political-police offices all over Germany, and he’ll be working in Berlin. They’ve even asked me to look out for an apartment for them. It will be so lovely having them back here.’

‘Next week I will be going to Friedrichshafen. The Graf Zeppelin is having a complete mechanical overhaul, from Spitze to stern. On the way to Bodensee I had a mind to stop over.’

‘Yes, do go and see him. Pauli would love that, Glenn. He’s very fond of you. He’s a real Rensselaer, and I’ve often thought you understand him better than anyone.’

‘I like him, sis, I really like him.’ Glenn looked round the room. All the old Biedermeier furniture had gone, in favour of modern pieces. Modern woven fabrics on low angular chairs, chromium and mirror everywhere, and a white carpet that he was constantly frightened of spilling coffee or ash upon. He guessed it was Harry’s idea. Harald Winter prided himself upon his taste in modern art. It made the room lighter, of course, but for him this wasn’t Berlin, this was more like some flashy new ‘roadhouse’ on the New Jersey turnpike.

‘If only they could have a child. I pray for them. It would transform Inge, and wouldn’t Pauli be the most wonderful father any child could ever wish for?’

Glenn nodded and got up from his chair. Yes, that was true enough. Pauli, with his tricks and his jokes and his infectious laughter, would make any child happy. Glenn wished he’d spent more time with his two nephews. Now it was too late. Now they were men with their own lives to lead: they could have little use for an uncle, no matter how well meaning he might be. Sometimes he’d thought of bringing his wife here for a holiday, but not now. He didn’t like what was going on in Germany.

He looked out of the window to see the crowded street below. It was almost Christmas and, except for the paths swept along the pavements and the roadways, there was snow everywhere. The shoppers looked happy enough, warm, well dressed and busy. In the shopwindow across the street was an elaborate nativity scene, complete with a model donkey that nodded. The only jarring note was a bored-looking brownshirt on the corner outside Schachtmeister’s Konditorei holding a big sign that said ‘The true German does not buy from a Jew’.

But Berlin did not belong to Hitler. Berliners had seen too many fakes and charlatans to be fooled easily. And Hitler’s promises about restoring agricultural land to the peasants cut no ice with those factory workers who had so recently escaped the worse slavery of unmechanized farm labour. Nor did the Nazi talk of nationalizing factories appeal to Berliners, who could see here in the city the dismal result of enterprises run by bureaucrats. And if Berlin was ready to succumb to the fanciful promises of politicians, it would be to those of the left, for Berlin was ‘Red Berlin’ and always had been.

‘It’s good to be back in Berlin, sis,’ said Glenn.

1934

‘Gesundheit!’

Pauli had this filthy influenza. Inge said it was his fault for not wrapping up well, but anyway he couldn’t shake it off. He’d been running a temperature for two days and he should have been in bed, and would have been except that Lothar Koch had made such a fuss. In any case, the last place he should have been at 4.30 a.m. on Saturday, June 30, 1934 was standing in front of the passenger buildings on the silent, empty and icy-cold Oberwiesenfeld, the airport for Munich.

The breath of the two men condensed on the night air. ‘He left Bonn at two a.m.,’ said Lothar Koch. Behind the airport buildings a line of big cars were parked. The drivers had been sleeping. But now they’d been wakened and were wiping condensation from the glasswork and running the engines to have them warm and ready.

Pauli wiped his nose and didn’t answer. It was all right for Koch. He was used to outdoor duties, and he had woollen underwear to wrists and ankles and his new heavy black leather overcoat. Leather was the only thing that offered protection against this sort of cold wind, and Pauli decided to buy one from the same shop where Koch had got his. It had a removable woollen lining in a hideously vulgar plaid, not even a genuine tartan. Pauli’s Scots nanny had taught him to despise such fakes, and he had decided against buying the coat. But this morning he wouldn’t have cared what the lining was like. Anything would have been warmer than his thin raincoat.

‘Are you sure the Führer himself is aboard?’ said Pauli. He huddled in the shelter of a mobile generator, but it gave little protection against the piercing wind. ‘Why would he come so early? He’s not due in Bad Wiessee until eleven a.m.’

‘Something very special is happening. The teleprinters have been going all night,’ said Koch. ‘I was in the Brown House last night soon after Sepp Dietrich arrived with two Berlin Criminal Police officers. He’d come directly from a meeting with the Führer. He said that two companies of the Leibstandarte are coming from Berlin-Lichterfelde. Does that bring back some happy memories?’

Pauli nodded and wiped his nose again. Lichterfelde barracks. It was odd to think of the black-uniformed LAH, Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler – the Führer’s SS bodyguard – occupying the old Prussian-army cadet school. Nineteen fourteen – that was a long time ago. He’d been just a child, and the world was foolish and innocent. If only he’d known what was waiting for him.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Koch. ‘The Leibstandarte are on their way by train to Kaufering, near Landesberg am Lech. Sepp Dietrich is meeting them there with transport to take them to Bad Wiessee.’

‘I don’t see any special significance in that,’ said Pauli. ‘The Leibstandarte companies have to provide security for the Führer’s meeting with Röhm.’

‘Röhm and all SA Obergruppenführer, and Gruppenführer and inspectors. All the SA top brass will be there,’ said Koch. ‘My pal from the Kripo got a look at the Führer last night. He said he was in a really bad mood.’

Pauli nodded and sneezed into his handkerchief.

Koch added, ‘But the most significant thing of all, my friend, happened last Monday. The German Officers’ Association expelled Captain Ernst Röhm. Expelled him! Why is the army distancing itself from him? I think those bastards know something we don’t know.’

‘But which we soon will know,’ said Pauli, and wiped his nose. In this cold wind his eyes were watering, too. He felt like death. Whatever was going to happen, he fervently hoped it would happen soon, so that he could go home and go to bed.

There was the sound of a door slamming and a flash of yellow light from the building behind them. A man in blue coveralls and a leather jacket came out of a door marked ‘Weather Bureau’ and told them the plane would be landing in ten minutes. Soon afterwards all the runway lights came on, revealing a layer of mist through which the lights shone like dandelion puffballs. Then they switched on the big floodlights that illuminated the apron where the passengers disembarked.

Now a group of people came from the airport buildings and stood looking at the northwestern sky. They didn’t speak to one another. They stood like statues, still and silent. Some of the reception committee were easily recognized. They were mostly men from the Munich offices: personalities who had several closely written index cards devoted to them in Lothar’s constantly updated SD records. There were a couple of army officers, and high-ranking officers of the SA, the SS and the Nazi Party. The only ones not in uniform were two airport officials, who kept looking at their watches.

Pauli was the first person who spotted it in the streaky purple sky. It was the big three-engined Junkers that Lufthansa had refurbished specially for Hitler. It landed smoothly and taxied to where the steps had been wheeled into position. Lothar Koch and Pauli Winter kept well aside from the reception committee. Their orders would come from the office of Reichsführer-SS Himmler: that’s how important it was. Meanwhile, Koch was writing in his tiny black notebook the name of everyone present. Koch kept a note of everything; it had become almost an obsession with him.

The aircraft’s door opened, and as the first passengers emerged the reception committee formed a line, fidgeting about, like recruits on a parade ground, to be sure they were properly in position. The third man – a leather-coated figure – coming down the steep metal steps paused to look round, like an actor making his first appearance on a new stage. It was the Führer – there was no mistaking him – and even from this distance it was clear that he was agitated. After him came Josef Goebbels, lame and cautious on the steps, then Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s press chief, and then – a dispatch case clamped tight under his arm, and keeping apart from the others – came Viktor Lutze, the SA leader in Hanover.

The Junkers cut its engines one by one, and in the silence that followed, Pauli heard Hitler tell the Reichsheer officers, ‘This is the blackest day of my life. But I shall go to Bad Wiessee and pass severe judgement. Tell that to General Adam.’

Koch eyed Pauli and smiled sardonically. Now, slowly, it was becoming clearer to them. They both knew that Lieutenant General Wilhelm Adam, commander of the Reichsheer’s 7th Division in Munich, was one of their regular sources of information about SA activities. If Röhm and his men were to be the target of some punitive action, General Adam would be only too pleased to provide the army’s help. No doubt that was where Dietrich, the LAH commander, would get his trucks.

A tall man in the long black overcoat and peaked cap of the Allgemeine SS detached himself from Hitler’s party and came over to them. ‘Which of you is the lawyer?’ he asked. He wore the headquarters cuffband, a badge that identified him as one of the adjutants that Himmler’s offices teemed with nowadays.

‘I am,’ said Pauli.

‘You’d better start now,’ he said. ‘Röhm’s Headquarters Guard might put up a roadblock. You’d better have your story ready.’

‘I have false papers,’ said Koch. Even Koch was deferential to this august personage from the Reichsführer’s office.

‘Don’t park near the Pension Hanselbauer. We don’t want them alarmed.’

‘It’s all prepared,’ said Koch. ‘I have chosen a place already.’

‘Very efficient,’ said the tall man in a voice that might or might not have been sarcastic. ‘Are you men armed?’

‘Yes,’ said Koch.

‘And you, lawyer?’ As he said it the adjutant looked away to see where Hitler’s entourage were going.

‘I have a pistol,’ said Pauli.

‘And do you know how to use it?’ asked the man. He was too young to have been in the war. It was typical of such upstarts that he wore an army sabre instead of the SS sword that regulations prescribed.

‘Yes,’ said Pauli, ‘I know how.’ Pauli did not share Koch’s awe. He added, ‘Is the Führer going to Bad Wiessee?’

The tall SS adjutant looked at him with contempt. ‘You’d better get started,’ he said and turned away to rejoin Hitler’s party, who were now getting into the cars.

‘Don’t ask questions,’ said Koch after they were on the road south. It was getting lighter every minute, and the cloudy sky changed from red to pink and curdled, like a bowl of soured cream. ‘That’s one of the basic rules.’

‘It’s a damned stupid rule.’

‘Perhaps it is,’ said Koch judiciously, ‘but it’s a rule nevertheless. If you wanted so badly to know where the Führer is going, you should have asked me.’

‘Why? Do you know where they’re all going?’

‘They’re off to the Ministry of the Interior in Munich. The Führer will give Minister Wagner a good talking to. After that they’ll come out to Bad Wiessee.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I asked one of the drivers. That schmuck you asked had no idea where they were going. That’s what made him upset when you asked.’

Pauli laughed despite his misery. He liked Koch. Koch had the right pragmatic approach; that’s why he’d falsified his age to get into the army, and that’s why he’d become a sergeant major at some ridiculously young age.

‘And forget about roadblocks,’ said Koch. ‘Röhm’s Headquarters Guard are in Munich. Does that oaf think we haven’t been watching their movements all the time?’

Bad Wiessee was a small resort near the Austrian border where the elderly came to retire and the infirm to enjoy the iodine baths. When the two men arrived in their car, the streets were empty. In the sanguine light of early morning, the still water of the lake reflected the surrounding mountains and the tall peak of the Wallberg, which was, for the few brief weeks of summer, devoid of snow.

They parked in the back alley of the little Goldenes Kreuz Gasthof. From there they could see the road while remaining virtually out of sight. Bad Wiessee is only fifty-four kilometres from Munich, but it is high in the mountains, and in the unheated car Pauli shivered with the cold.

Inge had provided them with some cold meat, bread rolls, and a small flask of hot soup. The soup would make Pauli feel better: Inge’s home-made soup always did. There was not much of it, and he shared it between the two metal picnic cups.

For a few minutes the two men sat there chewing in silence, but they watched the road constantly.

‘Here they come now,’ said Koch. It was 6.30 a.m. He opened the car door to tip away his untouched cup of hot soup. Pauli could cheerfully have killed him.

Pauli turned his head towards the road but saw nothing. ‘Where?’

‘They won’t have their lights on,’ said Koch. ‘There!’

He could see them now, three vehicles coming slowly down the final stretch of road.

‘Where’s Dietrich and his Leibstandarte?’ said Koch anxiously. ‘Oh my God! Where is he? How the hell can we protect the Führer if he goes in there now?’

The three cars rolled on right to the front door of the Pension Hanslbauer. Someone there must have been expecting the visitors, for the door opened immediately. Men tumbled out of the cars. Besides the Führer and his associates, there were six broad-shouldered, reliable men from the Political Police department in Munich.

‘Come along!’ said Koch. ‘This is us.’

Pauli swigged down the rest of his soup, even though it burned his throat, and clambered out of the car into the colder air that came off the lake. Koch in the lead and Pauli chasing after him, they ran across the yard and entered the hotel building along with Hitler and the rest of them.

The proprietors – a man and wife – were up and dressed. Perhaps they were preparing breakfast for the fully occupied hotel. The woman hurriedly took off her apron and started to welcome the Führer formally. She even held the guest book ready for signing. Someone elbowed her aside roughly, Lutze grabbed the visitors book and they raced up the stairs. By now everyone had pistols drawn, even Hitler.

There was a banging of doors: they were looking for Röhm. There were shouts and screams. ‘No, not there!’ More shouts. ‘He’s not there, either!’ A thump was heard as something or someone was knocked to the floor. Many of the SA leaders were in bed with young men. Lutze shouted the number of Röhm’s bedroom – he’d read it from the visitors’ book he’d snatched from the old woman. Now Lutze’s role was clear: Lutze was Judas.

Someone was knocking at Röhm’s door and shouting that he had something urgent to discuss. There was a delay, and then the door opened very wide. Röhm was dressed in pyjamas. He stood in the doorway, heavy with sleep and blinking in the light. Hitler called him a traitor and Röhm shouted ‘No.’ Hitler said, ‘Get dressed. You’re under arrest.’ His voice cracked with emotion. Röhm was his oldest friend, an associate and a supporter right from the very beginning, and still almost the only man who used the familiar du to the Führer.

Röhm, his scarred face flushed with anger, stared at him until Hitler turned away and banged on the door opposite Röhm’s. SA Obergruppenführer Edmund Heines opened the door; behind him a young nude man was sitting on the bed, wide-eyed, and searching amongst the rumpled sheets for something to wear. Lutze pushed past Heines into the room. He opened the chest of drawers and wardrobe, looking for weapons, but there were none. Whatever the SA leaders had been doing, there was no evidence of armed revolt.

In the absence of Hitler’s comments, Goebbels – the Führer’s mouthpiece – was shouting ‘Nauseating!’ and ‘Revolting!’ from the other end of the corridor. Pauli stood watching. Otto Dietrich, the press secretary, caught his eye and shrugged. The two men had something in common. Pauli Winter was going to be asked to justify this madness in legal terms, and the press secretary would have to make it into something the public might swallow. Hitler croaked, ‘Take him out and shoot him,’ but no one was sure who was meant to be shot.

Heines heard it, however. He turned to Lutze and said, ‘Lutze, I’ve done nothing. Can’t you help me?’ Lutze, still rummaging through the wardrobe, said, ‘I can do nothing. I can do nothing.’

Koch pushed his way along the corridor. ‘Come, Pauli.’ He seemed to know where he was going. He kicked open the unlocked door of a room and went inside. Pauli followed, pistol ready. There was no SA man to be seen in this bedroom, only a boy in bed: skinny, very young, little more than a child. Koch pulled the sheets from his naked body and the boy flinched, shielding his face with his hands, as if expecting a blow. Koch turned away from the bed and pulled open the wardrobe. At first there seemed to be only clothes hanging there. Then Koch shouted, ‘Out! Out, you bastard!’ and a small hunched figure stepped out from the hanging garments.

He was completely naked. A pale, wrinkled body contrasted oddly with hands and head darkened by sunlight. It was Graf. Without his spectacles, he had to screw up his eyes to see Koch and Pauli more clearly. ‘Winter,’ he said in a subdued voice. ‘I thought it might be you.’

Pauli said nothing. For a moment the two men looked at each other. There would be no pleas from Graf. Even now, humiliated and vanquished, he wouldn’t ask for help. ‘You’d better get dressed,’ said Pauli. He handed the old man his gold-rimmed spectacles.

Koch watched the exchange with interest. He’d known all along, of course. And Lothar Koch couldn’t resist telling you he knew. In a policeman it was a failing – perhaps Koch’s only failing as a policeman.

From outside in the corridor someone said, ‘Lock them in the cellars. We’ll take them to Stadelheim.’ It wasn’t clear who said it. Hitler was overcome with emotion and seemed almost in capable of speech. Perhaps it was Goebbels.

Pauli Winter and Lothar Koch drove behind the truck that took the arrested men to Stadelheim Prison. They went the long way, right round the southern end of the lake, through Rottach-Egern and Tegernsee, having heard that the men of Röhm’s HQ Guard were waiting on the direct route back, hoping to rescue their charges.

By the time they got to Munich, the city was awake and at work. Armed men were in evidence everywhere. Nazi Party HQ in Briennerstrasse was completely sealed off – not by brownshirts or SS men but by armed soldiers of the Reichsheer. There were soldiers at the railway station, too, and plainclothes policemen were meeting every train and arresting SA leaders as they arrived for the scheduled SA conference with Hitler at 11:00 a.m.

At the prison, Pauli recognized most of the brownshirt leaders detained. Some of the most famous names in Germany were that day written into the prison records, for the SA had found supporters in high places. Ritter von Krausser, Manfred von Killinger, Hans-Peter von Heydebreck, Hans Heyn, Georg von Detten, Hans Joachim von Falkenhausen…Rumours abounded throughout the city, everyone was confused, and fear could be seen in almost everyone’s eyes.

At the SD office, Pauli Winter was given a list of names and addresses. He would serve the warrant – no more than a typed note – and Koch would make the arrest. There were no police cars to spare, so they had to take a taxicab. They had found and arrested six wanted men before they stopped for a quick lunch. They went to the big Bierkeller opposite the prison. It was crowded with policemen, most of them on the same task as Pauli and Koch. By this time Stadelheim Prison in central Munich was full. Prisoners were being taken up the road to where the old Royal Bavarian Gunpowder Factory buildings were now being used as a camp for ‘enemies of the state’. Dachau concentration camp, they called it. Koch cursed their luck long and heartily. Dachau was seventeen kilometres away, the extra journeying was going to make much more work.

Pauli sat back, exhausted. His influenza had weakened him so that every exertion was too much. He drank his ‘soup with egg yolk’ in the hope that it would give him more strength. It wasn’t like Inge’s. Inge’s home-made soup – like everything else she did – was perfect. He loved Inge, and needed her, especially when he wasn’t well. He was lucky to have such a wonderful, beautiful wife. She grumbled sometimes, but Inge did everything just the way he liked it.

Koch, who seemed to enjoy the excitement that the day had brought, was at the next table swapping stories with plainclothesmen from the Political Police desk. Someone said that Viktor Lutze had been declared the new Chief of Staff of the SA, so things didn’t look too rosy for Röhm. There was a story going round that the Stadelheim Prison authorities had put Röhm back into the same cell that he’d occupied when arrested for marching alongside Hitler after the attempted putsch in 1923. If true, it was a grim sort of joke, but it was the type of black humour that policemen enjoyed. Koch and his cronies howled with merriment at the idea of it.

An even better story was that the team sent to arrest Dr Ludwig Schmitt, an ally of Hitler’s old enemy Strasser, had come back with Dr Wilhelm Eduard Schmid, the well-known music critic of the Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten. ‘And,’ said the policeman telling the story, ‘once inside Dachau the poor old bastard was executed, so it’s too late to do anything about it now.’ The other men drank their beer and exchanged self-conscious smiles. No one knew if it was true; there were many such stories going the rounds. And it was not only in Munich. Summary executions – officially sanctioned murders – were taking place everywhere. The news just in said that in Berlin Dr Erich Klausener – a director of the Reich Transport Ministry and onetime head of the Police Section of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior – had been shot dead in his office by a uniformed SS man.

Pauli closed his eyes listening to Koch and his pals and tried to clear his blocked sinus. He was suffering. Koch told him to eat up, but Pauli just couldn’t bear to. Once they were in the car again, Koch looked down at the paper and said, ‘The next on the list is SA Obersturmbannführer Heinrich Brand!’

Pauli almost jumped out of his skin. ‘What? Brand?’

‘Just a joke, Pauli, old friend. No, your Brand is far too smart to get caught in the mangle. Brand is to be on Lutze’s new staff, from what I hear.’

Koch looked at his watery-eyed, red-nosed friend and smiled. Koch knew about Pauli’s court-martial, and his time with the Punishment Battalion. Koch had a spy in the army records office who checked up on everyone Koch needed to know about, but he never revealed that knowledge to Pauli, and had arranged the SD personnel files so that Pauli Winter’s army record was unblemished. Koch regarded such little favours as the sort of thing any comrade would expect of another.

They arrested four more SA leaders that afternoon. The elderly brownshirts went meekly and with only mild complaints. It was the journey to Dachau that was so tiring. By 6:00 p.m. the two men reported back to the SD office in Zuccalistrasse 4. Pauli sank down behind his desk while Koch found for him the bottle of schnapps they kept in the filing cabinet. ‘What a day!’ said Pauli, but just as he was signing out, a clerk told him that a lawyer was required at Stadelheim Prison. He was to report to SS-Gruppenführer Sepp Dietrich.

He found the well-known Leibstandarte commander in the courtyard of the old prison. The cobbled yard was dark, the low evening sun making the rooftops golden and the enclosed yard blue in the summer-evening light. Dietrich, forty-two years old, was a broad-shouldered man who’d been a manual worker for most of his life: farm labourer, petrol-pump attendant, customs officer, factory worker. Hitler had chosen him as a personal bodyguard back in the days when he needed physical protection at his meetings. Now Dietrich was an SS general, but he’d not lost the common touch. When Pauli found him, he was smoking a cigarette and chatting in Bavarian dialect with six of his black-uniformed soldiers and a tall young subaltern with shiny new officer’s badges.

‘Hello, Pauli,’ said Dietrich, still speaking in his strong Bavarian accent. He prided himself on his informality. ‘It looks like we’re ready to go.’ He threw down his cigarette and ground it under the heel of his polished boot. The firing squad picked up their rifles. ‘I want it all neat and tidy,’ said Dietrich. He put an arm round Pauli’s shoulder and walked him away from the soldiers and the young officer.

‘Yes, Gruppenführer,’ said Pauli.

‘You’re the legal expert. I want it all neat and tidy.’ He looked into Pauli’s watery eyes and, to be sure that it was clear, said, ‘We’re executing these SA people. Not Röhm: he stays in custody while the Führer thinks it over. What’s the normal procedure?’

‘A trial and a verdict,’ said Pauli.

Dietrich was a simple man, and now he smiled as if Pauli had made a subtle joke. ‘The Führer has tried them and found them guilty,’ he said.

Pauli wiped his nose and his eyes. Dietrich was staring at him as if he might be crying. He felt a fool. ‘Do you have orders?’

‘I don’t want the Public Prosecutor chasing me,’ said Dietrich, turning his back and lowering his voice. With remarkable bravery, the Munich Public Prosecutor had persuaded the Ministry of Justice to file cases for ‘incitement to murder’ against the Dachau camp commandant and two of his officials.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Pauli. ‘The Minister of the Interior told the Cabinet that any investigation of Dachau must be refused for reasons of state policy. This will come under the same heading.’

‘But the camp commandant was sacked,’ said Dietrich, scowling. He didn’t want to risk the same fate.

‘It will be all right,’ said Pauli, who wanted only to go home and go to bed. ‘But, for legal reasons, your officer had better read the sentence to each man before the execution takes place.’ Pauli felt a sneeze building up and had his handkerchief ready for it. He sneezed.

‘Gesundheit!’ said Dietrich politely, and beckoned the young officer over to them. ‘Tell him what to say,’ he instructed Pauli.

Thinking quickly, Pauli said, ‘Something like “You have been condemned to death by the Führer.”’ He blew his nose.

‘Is that enough?’ said Dietrich doubtfully.

‘They only have to be told the sentence,’ said Pauli. ‘That’s the law.’

‘“Heil Hitler” at the end,’ said Dietrich. ‘“You have been condemned to death by the Führer. Sentence to be carried out herewith. Heil Hitler.” Got it?’

‘Yes, Gruppenführer,’ said the subaltern.

Crack! The sound of the rifles echoed round and round the narrow prison courtyard. The small barred windows were silent and dark, with bright-orange rust marks disfiguring the grey bricks. Yet Pauli could not get over the feeling that he was being watched by many eyes.

Next! Next! Next! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Cold and wet from a quick drenching under a cold shower, the SA leaders arrived one by one in the yard doorway, frightened and bewildered. The young SS officer’s face was impassive, but he gabbled too quickly through the sentences and sometimes stumbled over the words.

More than one of the prisoners stood erect and met the bullets with a Nazi salute and a shouted ‘Heil Hitler!’ believing that they – and their Führer, too – were the victims of an SS coup.

Pauli had qualms when Edmund Heines crumpled under the bullets. As well as being SA-Obergruppenführer, Heines was the Police President of Breslau. And even Dietrich’s iron nerve seemed to go as SA-Obergruppenführer Schneidhuber faced the firing squad. Schneidhuber was Police President of Munich.

But the shooting went on. Pauli watched it dispassionately. Better men than this had died alongside him in the war, he reminded himself. If the truth was known, some of the British and Frenchmen he’d killed were more to be pitied. Only when Captain Graf came into the courtyard did Pauli feel like turning his eyes away. But he didn’t. He watched Graf standing erect in front of the wall that was now chipped and broken with rifle fire. The dust of the broken brickwork hung in the air like smoke, and mingled with the cordite to make a unique stink that he never forgot.

Graf refused a blindfold. He looked at Pauli right to the end. And Pauli stared back at him. Graf didn’t shout ‘Heil Hitler’ or give the Nazi salute. He had never been a great admirer of Hitler, or of the men around him. Graf was one hundred per cent soldier; the Freikorps and the SA were just ways of holding on to a soldier’s mode of life. When the volley came Graf was torn in two and the blood spurted like a fountain. His death seemed bloodier than the others. Perhaps because a chance bullet clipped an artery – or perhaps because Pauli felt it more. Graf had been a comrade, a good comrade, and a man does not lightly lose a friend. But Graf was a soldier; it was a good enough way for a soldier to go.

‘Leave the presidency vacant, what a great idea’

It wasn’t turning out to be the successful dinner party that Inge had planned and she was unhappy. It was the first time that they had had guests in this new Berlin apartment that had been redecorated to their own wishes, and she’d had her dress made specially for the occasion. It was a long slinky bias-cut gold satin gown that hugged her figure. Sleeveless, with a plunging neckline, it revealed her wonderful skin. Inge had invited her sister Lisl with her husband, Erich Hennig. The guest of honour was to be Reichsminister Fritz Esser, now one of the party luminaries, a member of the cabinet, and a close associate of the Führer. But Fritz Esser had sent a huge bunch of flowers and a note that said he was delayed in meetings at the Reichskanzlei and wouldn’t arrive until after dinner.

‘It’s because the President is so sick,’ Inge explained to Erich, her brother-in-law, as if she was well informed about the state of President Hindenburg’s health. ‘I feel so concerned about the Führer. He looks tired.’ The two sisters always spoke of Hitler as a couple of starry-eyed schoolgirls might speak of an adorable hockey coach. It was a competition between them, a contest in which a curiously large proportion of Germany’s female population also participated.

‘I know,’ said Lisl Hennig. ‘We’re hoping Erich will play before the Führer next year at the Bach Festival in Leipzig.’

Lisl was always saying that her husband would be playing at one of the concerts Hitler attended. It would be impetus enough to put Erich Hennig far ahead of his rivals. But Adolf Hitler did not attend many such musical events, and Erich’s career was at present in the doldrums. Hennig’s piano recitals, and his occasional performances with large orchestras, were to be heard in far-off German provinces, while Berlin’s concert halls were monopolized by more famous performers of a previous generation.

In the hope of pleasing his musical guest, Pauli said, ‘Fritz Esser was with the Führer at Bayreuth last week. They saw Das Rheingold. Fritz said it was the best ever.’

It proved not so pleasing. ‘Fritz Esser!’ said Hennig contemptuously. ‘And how many other productions of Das Rheingold has he seen?’

Pauli smiled and poured more wine. Inge had always said the Hennigs were jealous of Pauli’s longterm friendship with the very influential Fritz Esser. To say nothing of Pauli’s regular meetings with Heydrich, Himmler, and Josef Goebbels. Perhaps it was true.

It was a warm summer evening, uncomfortably warm, and the Winters’ apartment had the windows open to catch the breeze. Their new cook was determined to show her skills for such a celebrated guest and had produced an exquisite meal of fresh tomato soup, trout and then roast beef, with Pauli’s favourite chocolate cake to follow.

The absence of Fritz was a disappointment to all, but it gave the two sisters a chance to talk about family matters. The Hennigs now had a four-year-old son, and their present apartment was not big enough. Also Frau Wisliceny had died the previous month, and now that the initial shock was over they were able to discuss more practical problems.

‘Papa has enough money,’ said Lisl Hennig. ‘He has the pension and his investments.’

‘But not enough to keep that big house going,’ added Erich Hennig quickly. Lisl and Erich had discussed it before coming tonight, thought Pauli. Erich was shrewd. Peter had always hated him, of course, and sometimes Pauli could see what his brother disliked. Politics, business, or the custody of his father-in-law’s house, Erich Hennig would always manage it to his own advantage.

‘He told me he wanted to go in one of those new service apartments round the corner, on Prenzlauer Promenade,’ said Pauli in an innocent voice.

It amused him to see that this had exactly the effect he expected. ‘One bedroom, one bathroom, one drawing room and a tiny little kitchen!’ said Erich excitedly. ‘He’d go crazy in a tiny place like that.’

Just to keep Erich agitated, Pauli said, ‘He said he’d eat most of his meals downstairs in the restaurant.’

‘Ridiculous!’ said Erich Hennig. ‘He says that now, but wait until he’s tried it for a few months.’

It was quite amusing to bait Erich, thought Pauli. He decided to memorize every word: it would amuse Peter no end. ‘But he eats in restaurants now,’ said Pauli. ‘He likes restaurants. Even before your poor mama died, they went to restaurants a lot.’

Inge knew what Pauli was doing, of course, and now she indicated that it had gone far enough. ‘Let’s hear what Lisl thinks,’ said Inge.

‘We were thinking of moving in with Papa,’ said Lisl. ‘He needs someone to look after him. He could eat with us, and we could see to his laundry and so on. The maid we have is a wonderful laundress. She even does Erich’s dress shirts for his concert performances.’

‘That would mean a lot of extra work for you,’ said Inge. ‘It’s such a big house.’

Lisl said, ‘It wouldn’t mean any extra work. We’d keep Papa’s two girls, so we’d have three staff.’

‘Couldn’t Papa move to your apartment?’ said Pauli.

‘We’re too cramped already,’ said Erich.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Lisl. ‘Papa’s house is partly Inge’s; of course it is.’

‘Professor Wisliceny is getting old,’ said Erich. ‘He can’t last that much longer.’

Lisl said, ‘When Papa dies, Inge, then we wouldn’t expect to keep the house.’

Erich was not prepared to be a party to such rash and selfless promises. He said, ‘On the other hand, looking after your father will be a lot of extra work for Lisl.’

‘She just said it wouldn’t be any extra work,’ said Pauli.

‘Be quiet, Pauli,’ said Inge. She’d already been considering how much to spend, and where to invest the remainder of the proceeds of her share of the big Wisliceny house. Similar houses round the corner from Papa in Kant Strasse, were fetching high prices nowadays. The Ku-damm area had gone up and up. Some speculator would buy it to convert to apartments, or even into a hotel.

‘We need a room for our little one and two rooms for the nanny,’ said Lisl. ‘And it would help Erich to prepare for his concert.’

‘What concert?’ asked Inge.

‘Erich has this wonderful chance to play the Mozart wind quintet in Breslau,’ said Lisl. ‘But the new tenants downstairs from us have been complaining about the piano.’

‘If you are thinking of having wind quintets playing there, you’ll have Professor Wisliceny’s neighbours complaining, too,’ said Pauli.

‘It’s the Köchel 452,’ said Erich Hennig slowly and patiently. ‘Piano with wind instruments. I would only be practising the piano part. We have rehearsal rooms for the ensemble.’ He smiled as a children’s photographer smiles at a particularly difficult sitter.

‘In Papa’s house the walls are so much thicker,’ said Lisl resolutely. ‘Think of the times Mama had musical events there.’

‘If Papa agrees, then of course you must,’ said Inge suddenly. ‘You need the extra rooms.’

Pauli looked at her with some surprise, but Inge always gave in to her younger sister, or so it seemed to him. He wondered if that was the way other people saw the relationship between him and Peter.

‘Thank you, Inge,’ said Lisl.

‘We’ll drink to it,’ said Inge, reaching for the wine. In some ways the decision was a relief to her. It would mean that Papa would be properly looked after. She would have been worried to have her father living alone. ‘When you move out, we’ll sell and share the money.’ The Hennigs drank the wine, but Pauli noticed that they didn’t confirm the idea of eventually sharing the money.

After the Hennigs had gone, Inge seemed to regret her impulsive generosity. She was often like that: she gave away things she treasured and then regretted it, venting her consequent anger not upon herself but upon the person to whom she’d been so generous. Pauli poured a nightcap for her, and they sat together in the study while he glanced through some papers from his office.

‘They’ll never move out,’ said Inge sadly. ‘We’ll never see a pfennig from Papa’s lovely house.’ She was also thinking about the extra space they’d need when she had babies, but she didn’t say that.

‘I doubt if they’ll be able to afford it after your father goes, darling. It must cost a lot of money to keep up. I remember your father complaining about the enormous bill for that new roof a couple of years ago.’

‘Well, at least they won’t have the roof to worry about,’ said Inge.

Pauli laughed. His wife was determined to be downhearted.

‘I’m going to bed, darling,’ she said. ‘Don’t be long.’ She smiled and kissed him. Some husbands might have scolded a wife who’d so foolishly abandoned a large part of her inheritance, but Pauli would never look at it like that. Pauli didn’t care much about possessions, beyond his basic comfort. Sometimes she felt he wouldn’t even care if he lost her.

It was half past midnight when Fritz Esser rang the bell. Inge was in bed and asleep. Pauli was sitting in his tiny study, reading through a sheaf of regulations and amendments; these now appeared on his desk in ever-increasing amounts.

Fritz Esser stood in the hallway with a stupid grin on his face. At first Pauli thought he was drunk, but no one ever came drunk from a meeting with the Führer, except drunk with happiness.

‘I pissed myself laughing,’ shouted Esser as Pauli showed him into the little study and brought out a bottle of fine old French brandy. Fritz was forty last birthday. He laughed. Except for his dark eyes and his amazing collection of crowded, broken and irregular teeth, this man was scarcely recognizable as the lean youth who’d pulled the Winter boys out of the Baltic so long ago. Esser had put on weight to a point where his suits had to be tailored for him. They were all made by one of Berlin’s best tailors. Pauli’s weight went up and down, but Inge nagged him when he had to diet. Esser was unmarried and had no such restrictions. Still, Esser was tall and big-boned: he could put on this much weight without appearing ridiculous.

‘What happened?’ said Pauli.

‘It’s not what’s happened,’ said Esser, ‘it’s what’s going to happen tomorrow. The Chancellery is a madhouse: generals, admirals, Gauleiters and all the press and propaganda bigwigs.’

‘Hindenburg? Has he gone?’ Hindenburg was dying; everyone knew that it was just a matter of time.

‘Those army bastards,’ said Esser. He drank some brandy and laughed again. It was Fritz Esser’s naughty-boy laugh, with something of a snigger in it. ‘Those generals are too stupid to know when it’s raining. Which of those idiots chose tomorrow as the day for their big military celebration? They haven’t won a war for over half a century. They certainly can’t celebrate victory day for the last show – which they lost – so they decide to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the day the Kaiser ordered mobilization.’ He laughed again, a loud, hearty laugh that suited his big frame. He picked up the brandy bottle and poured more for himself. They knew each other well. In Pauli Winter’s house he didn’t have to ask for what he wanted: he helped himself. ‘Remember mobilization day, 1914?’

‘I remember,’ said Pauli. That fateful day in 1914 was etched deeply into his memory. At the Lichterfelde cadet school there had been a special parade. His parents had attended; Mama had cried.

‘So now all the toy generals are taken out of their boxes and wound up, ready to march backwards and forwards to the music of their tin-soldier bands. The generals have put on their nicest uniforms and groomed their pet donkeys…. And what’s going to happen? That inconsiderate old bastard Paul Ludwig Hans von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg is going to snuff it … and screw up the whole bloody show. Ha, ha, ha! It’s the best laugh I’ve had since they shot that bastard Röhm last month.’

‘Are you sure about Hindenburg?’

‘I was with the Führer when the latest doctor’s bulletin was delivered. The army will look such fools. Blomberg, that wonderful War Minister of ours, is in the Bendlerblock sending teleprinter messages to every army unit in Germany cancelling the celebration and ordering them to prepare funeral ceremonies instead.’

‘What did the Führer say?’

‘Oh, naturally, the Führer was very upset,’ said Esser, in a voice that indicated that the Führer wasn’t upset at all. ‘The Führer will become president now and probably combine the rank of chancellor with it.’

‘That would be illegal,’ said Pauli.

‘Are you sure?’ He stopped drinking, put the glass down, and wiped his mouth.

‘You should know that, Fritz. You were a deputy in 1932, when the Reichstag passed the amendment. It said that in the event of the President’s death, the duties of president will be performed by the president of the High Court of Justice until a new election is held.’

‘Authority doesn’t automatically pass to the Chancellor?’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

‘President of the High Court of Justice? You can’t be serious.’

‘I’m perfectly serious,’ said Pauli.

‘You’re forgetting “The Enabling Act”,’ said Fritz Esser. ‘That gives him power to do anything he wants.’

‘Except interfere with the authority of the presidency. That was specifically excluded.’

‘Jesus Christ! An election? That could ruin everything. I’d better go back and make sure the Führer knows.’

‘Sit down and relax a moment, Fritz.’ Fritz Esser cautiously sipped at his brandy and sat down to think it over.

‘Better not to become president,’ said Pauli, to make conversation. ‘If Adolf Hitler becomes president, he’ll have to take an oath to uphold the constitution. That will limit his powers.’

‘How could he avoid it?’

‘He could leave the presidency vacant and create a new office.’

‘For instance?’

‘Just call himself Führer, for instance.’

‘Führer, Yes, excellent. Chancellor and Führer – he could combine those roles. He’s sending for the service chiefs. He’s going to make them swear an oath of allegiance.’

‘That would be a way round it,’ said Pauli.

‘A way round what?’ said Esser.

‘Normally the army swears an oath of allegiance to the presidency and, as a safeguard, the President takes an oath to uphold the constitution. That’s how the system works.’

‘You mean, get the army to swear an oath to the Führer, then leave the presidency vacant, so that he doesn’t have to promise to uphold the constitution. That’s damned clever, Pauli. The Führer will like that.’

He picked up his glass, then, remembering his Führer’s abstinence, put it down again. ‘I’d better get going. There’s going to be the devil of a lot to do. It’s a good thing I didn’t let my driver off for an hour; I usually do when I come to see you.’

‘If you must go, Fritz.’

‘You’re too bright for that job you’re doing with the Gestapo, Pauli. I’ll have to find you something better than that.’

‘I’m okay, Fritz. It’s interesting and I’m good at it.’

‘Leave the presidency vacant – what a great idea.’

1936

‘Rinse and spit out’

‘Rinse and spit out,’ said Dr Volkmann. ‘Don’t eat on that side for an hour or two. I’ll need to see you one more time.’ He pressed the foot pedal, and the dentist’s chair slowly resumed the upright position.

‘Thank you,’ said Peter Winter. He washed out his mouth and wiped his lips.

‘You can go, Ursula,’ Volkmann told his nurse.

‘Thank you, Herr Doktor.’

When they heard the outer door close after her, Isaac Volkmann said, ‘Her mother’s sick, and I have no more patients this afternoon.’

Peter looked at the clock. It was only three-fifteen.

Volkmann said, ‘I’ve lost a lot of patients over the last six months. I’m seriously considering whether I should move out of the Ku-damm area.’

‘But your sort of patients expect to come here, to a smart address.’

‘The radio, film and theatre crowd, you mean? I’m afraid I’ve already lost a lot of those.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter.

‘I don’t exactly blame them,’ said Volkmann. ‘They depend on the Nazis for their living, and Goebbels is one of the worst anti-Semites of the lot. And now young Ursula has given notice. She’s been with me for over three years, but her father says he doesn’t want her working for a Jew.’

‘She’s lucky to have a job at all,’ said Peter.

‘She’ll get another job all right. The Nazis have reduced unemployment, Peter – we have to be fair about that.’

‘And how have they done it?’ said Peter. ‘By drafting men to work on the land or to build the Autobahnen. Or by giving them jobs working at the local Nazi Party office for little or no wages.’

‘I have to be thankful I’m not in the army or the civil service,’ said Volkmann, ‘or I’d be unemployed, too. At least they are allowing me to work.’

‘These people are mad,’ said Peter.

Volkmann smiled ruefully. ‘The funny thing is that in many ways I agree with this Hitler fellow. I am proud to be a German nationalist. I rescent every last clause of that damned Versailles Treaty. I, too, hate the communists, and despise the pseudo-intellectuals and their café-society Marxism. There are many ways in which I support Hitler; why must he pursue this insane vendetta against us?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Peter.

‘And shall I tell you something, Peter, old friend. When I switched on the radio last Saturday and heard that our soldiers had marched into the Rhineland, I exulted. He was right to take our sacred German soil back from the French.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Peter. He was always embarrassed when Isaac became emotional, as he so often did on the subject of his homeland.

‘And you are busy?’

Peter nodded. ‘We are hoping to get some contracts for coal by-products. It would make a great difference to next year’s shareholders’ report.’

‘What sort of by-products: oil?’

‘Yes, and now I. G. Farben have discovered how to make very good synthetic rubber, too.’

‘Is it cheap?’

‘No, thank goodness,’ said Peter, and laughed. ‘It’s damned expensive.’

‘So why don’t we buy rubber and oil on the world market?’

‘Germany has a lot of coal, Isaac. It will keep our miners employed.’

‘That’s not the reason, my friend, and you know it. This fellow is determined to fight a war.’

‘We must be ready to defend ourselves, Isaac. The Russians and Poles are not to be trusted.’

‘I hope to God I’m wrong,’ said Volkmann. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I must return Lottie’s passport.’

‘Lottie’s passport?’

Volkmann had already reached it from where it was hidden in his locked drugs cabinet before he looked up and registered Peter’s surprise. ‘Oh dear! Didn’t you know?’

‘What? What’s it all about, Isaac?’

Volkmann stood uncertain whether to hand him the package. ‘I would hate to be the cause of a disagreement between you, Peter. You are our best and most loyal friends.’

‘What are you doing with Lottie’s U.S. passport, Isaac?’

Again the dentist hesitated, but decided that he had no choice but to tell everything. ‘Your wife loaned her passport to a friend of mine. We have been looking at the visas in it.’

‘Don’t talk in riddles, Isaac. You mean you’ve been copying the visas to make forgeries?’

‘Yes, that is what I mean, Peter. I thought you knew about it. I suppose it must come as a shock to you.’

‘And forging U.S. passports, too?’

‘Some of my people are desperate, Peter. Terrible things are happening in this country of ours.’

‘You’ve no right to put my wife in danger.’

‘I didn’t put her in danger. Lottie insisted that her passport be used, and as a Jew she has the right to decide such things.’

‘She is my wife, and we have a young child. What would happen if…’

‘I know, I know…’

‘You should not have encouraged her.’

‘I did everything I could to dissuade her, Peter. Everything! I swear I did. I thought she must have discussed it with you.’

‘And you should not be mixed up in such activity, Isaac. These people are criminals and you are an accessory.’

‘Do not quote the letter of the law, my friend, when justice lies bleeding at my feet.’

‘For such things people go to prison for life, Isaac.’

‘For the sin of being born a Jew, people are being done to death. Should I shun my duty as a Jew, to serve a regime that is murdering my people?’

Peter took the passport and put it into his pocket. ‘Please, Isaac. No more. She is a Jew, but she is also my wife.’

Isaac Volkmann did not give Peter Winter the assurance he sought. ‘Shall we say next Tuesday at 2.30 p.m.? It gives you a chance to lunch. There is very little to do except scaling, but I’d like to look again.’

‘That will be very convenient,’ said Peter. He took his hat and gloves from the stand in the hall. Volkmann followed him to see him out.

‘Your wife is a very determined woman, Peter,’ he said.

‘Next week, then,’ said Peter. He nodded to Volkmann and departed. Usually he shook hands when he said goodbye, but today he didn’t; and he didn’t say goodbye, either.

1937

‘You know what these old cops are like’

The Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt – the Gestapa, or what people called the Gestapo – had taken over the huge art school in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, and Pauli Winter had been assigned an office on the third floor, overlooking the magnificent gardens they shared with the adjoining little palace Heydrich had taken over for his SD.

Now that the Nazis had consolidated their political control of the nation, fundamental changes were made to police forces, too. Pauli Winter – aided by six clerks and the two young lawyers who worked under him – had spent long working weeks, over many months, tackling the organization plan for the Security Police (Sipo). At one time this authority had included the whole police organization, from traffic police to Gendarmerie. But now that all the German police forces had come under the command of SS-Reichsführer Himmler, a new sort of Sipo was being formed from just the most powerful units – the Criminal Police (Kripo) and the Political Police.

This newly created Sipo, under the direction of Heydrich’s Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei, ranked as a ministerial authority and came directly under the Reich’s Ministry of the Interior.

It made the Sipo potentially one of the most powerful instruments of repression ever seen in modern society. But it was Pauli Winter’s report, based upon the legal restrictions of Paragraph 42 of the Reich Criminal Code, that enabled Himmler’s policemen to be their own judge and jury.

Paragraph 42 authorized law courts throughout Germany to order the ‘preventive arrest’ of habitual criminals and other potential troublemakers. But it was the legal work of Dr Pauli Winter that provided the notion that, under the völkisch concept of German law, people and police must work together to maintain law and order. So, argued Winter’s long and carefully worded report, in the case of a preventive arrest, the Sipo represented the police and the arrested person the ‘people’. Thus it was lawful for the Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei to order preventive arrest without going to the law courts. This was a triumph for Himmler, the SS-Reichsführer – a triumph of bureaucracy.

To avoid too much discussion about guilt or innocence, the arrested persons were usually categorized as Volksschädling (anti-social malefactors), a description that included prostitutes, beggars, homosexuals, traffic offenders, psychopaths, grumblers, the tellers of anti-Nazi jokes, and anyone who’d ‘refused without adequate reason employment offered to them on two occasions’.

The difficulties that would have come from delivering prisoners to prisons without the necessary court documents were avoided by delivering the arrested people to concentration camps, which also came under the SS-Reichsführer’s command. ‘The Ministry of Justice objected to this, but the objections were ignored.

So, by 1937 in Nazi Germany, or what the Goebbels propaganda machine preferred to call the Third Reich, the courts and the whole legal system had been short-circuited. The powers of arrest, judgement and punishment – terrible punishment, torture and death – could be instantly used against anyone the Nazis didn’t like.

It was March 9, 1937, when the new powers were first put into effect. From the Berlin Police Headquarters in Alexanderplatz, Kripo offices throughout Germany were instructed to take into preventive arrest two thousand people who might commit a crime, might offend against morality, or might otherwise act against the Nazi regime. They were delivered by the police to the nearest concentration camp. It was only the beginning.

For Pauli Winter, March 1937 marked the end of a lot of thankless and tedious administrative work. Up on the third floor he missed the excitement of real police work, and it was years since he’d pitted his wits against some lawyer in the rough and tumble of the local courts.

He missed Lothar Koch, too. Lothar could have come up here to where the decisions were made, and there would have been more pay, too. But Lothar was smart: he chose to remain downstairs and deal with people every day. Up here was just a corridor of cramped offices where self-important bureaucrats dictated long documents that were sent to policemen who would manage better without them.

‘Pauli?’ It was the end of a long day, and Pauli was putting a few things into a briefcase before going home to dinner. The offices, hastily converted to provide extra accommodation, were small and ill-lit, and his visitor was in the shadow, out of range of his desktop light.

‘Lothar. What are you doing up here? Want some coffee?’ He was always pleased to see Lothar, and the more downcast he looked, with his big mournful eyes and shaggy eyebrows, the more Pauli wanted to laugh at him. ‘Come in, come in.’

‘I had to see you. It’s urgent.’

‘What is it? Who have you got out there?’ Pauli peered. The offices all had glass panels through which people could be seen walking down the corridor.

‘Can I bring him in? It’s one of my detectives.’

‘If you wish,’ said Pauli, disappointed that he was not going to have the pleasure of a chat.

The detective came in. He was deferential. Everyone knew Pauli Winter by reputation. Pauli was a minor celebrity: Pauli was the man who knew Fritz Esser, Pauli had cracked Para 42, Pauli was the man who lunched with Heydrich, Pauli had a house on the Obersalzberg.

The detective was named Theodor Steiner, a beer-bellied old-timer who’d got into the plainclothes force after many years on the street. A red-faced man with a big rosy nose and circular-shaped horn-rimmed glasses that he had to wear when reading from his notebook.

‘Steiner is going to pull in that forgery ring who’ve been doing the travel documents. Do you know about that?’

‘No,’ said Pauli. ‘Should I know about it?’ He indicated two little caneback chairs, but his visitors remained standing.

‘It’s been on the sheets for months. They’ve been leading us a merry dance.’

‘Travel documents?’ said Pauli. He was puzzled.

‘Even American passports. One of our undercover agents at the Hamburg-Amerika Line offices picked up the first one. He wasn’t suspicious: he just started talking to this “American” and found he couldn’t speak a word of English.’

‘He was an illegal?’

‘You bet he was. It’s neat, isn’t it? With a U.S. passport he doesn’t need a U.S. visa or a letter of invitation or any of the papers to authorize the export of jewellery, currency or other valuables. He’s an American tourist, going home. You can see the beauty of it, can’t you?’

‘Yes, I can,’ said Pauli.

‘Well, Steiner here has busted them. He’s found the printshop. A printer named Geschke – not even a Jew – in Dietrich-Eckart-Strasse, near the Wittenau station. They’re there now, working away: we’ve got men outside. This will be a big bust, Pauli. Steiner here might get a promotion.’

‘Congratulations, Steiner. How did you do it?’

‘I have an inside man: a Jew, of course.’

‘That’s probably the only way,’ said Pauli.

‘It is with this crowd,’ said Steiner. Steiner had a thin, chirruping voice that was unexpected from such a big-framed fellow. ‘They’re very cautious, and very skilled.’ He offered Pauli a passport and other papers.

‘This is one of their forgeries?’

‘It is.’

‘Take a look,’ Koch told him, and Pauli moved his briefcase in order to spread the papers across his desk, under the light of the green-shaded lamp. There was the forged blank U.S. passport, a sheet of clear rubber-stamp marks photographed on line film, and photos of a genuine passport, page by page.

‘What do you think?’ Koch asked.

Pauli glanced up at him. Koch’s face was set in an inscrutable grimace: the sort of face he always pulled when telling one of his jokes. Now that Koch was nearer to the desk light, his face could be seen more clearly. How strange that, while his hair was growing greyer and greyer, his big eyebrows remained coal-black.

Pauli looked down again. It was Lottie Winter staring at him from the photograph in the genuine passport. And there was her name: Charlotte Sarah Winter. Born 1902, Los Angeles, California. Pauli looked up. ‘They are there now? At the printing shop in Tegel?’

‘Yes,’ said Koch. ‘The owner, Geschke, and his son, four other men, and this woman.’ He indicated the photo of Lottie.

‘What has the woman to do with it?’ Pauli asked Steiner.

‘She’s one of them. Also, she tells the people who use the passports how to pretend they are American.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Pauli sharply.

‘My inside man,’ said Steiner.

‘Your inside man, yes, of course.’

‘Steiner has a preventive-arrest order. He was on his way over there when I met him. I said you might want to talk to him.’

‘I don’t want this done by preventive-arrest order,’ said Pauli. ‘This is too important for that. These people are enemies of the state. They must be arrested by the police. I’ll talk to the Kripo desk right away.’

‘I don’t think that’s the way to do it,’ said Steiner. His rank was nothing, but he spoke with the assurance of a lifetime of police work. ‘If the Kripo handle it, they’ll take the credit. And it will have to go through the courts.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Pauli.

The merest trace of a smile passed over Steiner’s big, round, inscrutable face. ‘Nothing, except that my boys will have to type out all the reports and spend a lot of time in the courtroom giving evidence.’

‘This is an American citizen,’ said Pauli. He tapped the forged passport with his fingertips.

‘German resident,’ said Steiner doggedly. ‘She’s not a tourist, she’s a German resident. When a resident commits a crime, it doesn’t matter what colour her passport is.’

‘Technically,’ interjected Koch, ‘technically, Detective Constable Steiner has the right to decide.’

‘And on February 26 this year,’ said the stolid Steiner, ‘SS-Gruppenführer Heydrich issued an order that said that no future use was to be made of police arrest, “so as to avoid the necessity for subsequent examination by the courts of measures taken by the police”.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Pauli, who’d had too long with his law books to be outwitted by a mere detective. ‘But the Interior Minister’s decree of April 12, 1934, said that “preventive arrest shall not be used as a punishment for criminal offences”. This is a serious criminal offence with a foreign national involved. You must use a proper warrant.’

There was a long silence. They all knew that, although Pauli was theoretically correct, and although the Sipo came under the direct orders of Interior Minister Dr Wilhelm Frick, Frick’s authority was flouted, his 1934 decree ignored.

Pauli stared at Steiner, and Steiner, like many before him, was alarmed to recognize in Pauli a man who was entirely devoid of the restrictions that fear usually imposes upon even the bravest of men. Steiner looked into Pauli’s cold, colourless eyes and felt uneasy. Eventually Steiner said, ‘Very well. I’ll go down to the Kripo desk. Will they give me the warrant there, or do I have to go through all the business of getting an authorized signature?’

‘It’s urgent,’ said Pauli. ‘I’ll phone and arrange everything.’

Steiner sighed, picked up the photos, and went out.

‘Will he do it my way?’ Pauli asked Koch after the surly detective had departed.

‘He knew she was your sister-in-law. You realize that, don’t you?’

‘Did he? Winter – it’s a common enough name.’

‘Steiner’s no fool. He’s been on the Berlin force for over thirty years. He knows everything that happens round here.’

‘But he’ll do it?’

‘Oh, he’ll do it your way. I know Steiner well enough to be sure of that. He’s not going to make an enemy up here on the executive level. But he’ll mark it up as something you owe him. In due time he’ll come to collect a favour or two. You know what these old cops are like.’

‘No,’ said Pauli. ‘What are they like?’

‘They are like you,’ said Koch, and he laughed.

Pauli Winter phoned Inge to say he was delayed and then went to see his brother. Breaking the news of Lottie’s arrest was one of the most painful moments of his life. Peter seemed to think that Pauli could have done more. It was impossible to make Peter see that no one could have done more.

When Peter opened the door to his brother, he was dressed in a blue silk dressing gown with a red scarf tied at his throat. He looked like a prosperous actor. Pauli found it surprising that someone could take so much trouble with his appearance when he was alone in the house, but Peter had always been like that.

‘Peter. I’ve got something to tell you.’

Peter let him in, saying, ‘I’ve been looking for the coffee. I can’t find it anywhere, and Lottie is with Mama.’

‘She’s not with Mama. It’s Lottie I want to talk about.’

‘Then goodness knows where she’s got to. I do wish she’d tell me what she’s doing. The girl is not here, and the omelette I made turned out a terrible mess.’ The radio was playing ‘The Way You Look Tonight’.

‘Lottie has been arrested, Peter.’

‘Oh my God! Are you sure?’ Peter turned away to compose himself. His hands were trembling as he switched off the music.

‘You aren’t mixed up with it, are you?’ asked Pauli.

‘What is she charged with?’ Peter replied. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown.

‘The charges are not drawn up yet.’

‘Is it something to do with passports?’ said Peter.

‘You’d better sit down, Peter.’ Peter had gone very pale.

‘I think I will.’ He sat down and took a cigarette from a box on the table.

‘Yes, forging passports.’ Pauli lit his brother’s cigarette for him.

‘I must go to her.’

‘They won’t let you see her tonight. She’s being questioned.’

‘I thought she was with Mama.’

Pauli said nothing. He’d never seen his brother so upset, and it caused him pain.

‘Are you sure they won’t let me see her tonight? Poor, darling Lottie.’

‘At the remand prison? You know what they’re like. Of course they won’t.’

‘Not even if I am her defence lawyer?’

‘Peter, be sensible.’

‘I can’t think straight.’

‘Did you know she was doing this kind of thing?’ But before Peter could answer, he held up a hand to silence him and added, ‘No, I don’t want to know the answer to that. Forget I asked.’

‘She’ll think I’ve deserted her. Only last night I scolded her about the housekeeping accounts. If only I’d known what was going to happen.’

‘Pull yourself together, Peter, for God’s sake!’ said Pauli sharply.

‘You’re right: I must. For Lottie’s sake I must.’

‘I insisted that the Criminal Police arrest her, using a warrant from a law court. That means she’ll get a fair trial, Peter. And she’s being held in the remand prison. If they’d used a protective-custody order and taken her to a concentration camp, you’d probably never see her again.’

‘They’ll give her life imprisonment,’ said Peter.

‘We don’t know what sentence she’ll get; we both know how unpredictable the courts are. But we do know she’ll serve her time in a proper, civilized prison,’ said Pauli. He couldn’t seem to make his brother understand how lucky she was.

‘Who shall I get to handle her defence?’

‘She’s guilty, Peter. You do realize that, don’t you?’

Peter nodded.

‘There’s no lawyer in the world who is going to get her released.’

‘She must have the best.’

‘I’ll find someone. But not many lawyers want to defend “enemies of the state”. It might be difficult.’

‘You mustn’t get involved, Pauli. I realize your job makes it difficult for you.’

‘I like Lottie: I’ve always liked her.’

Peter looked round at him. ‘But you think that as a foreigner, and a Jew, she should have kept out of German politics?’

‘I didn’t say that, Peter: you said it.’

‘But that’s what you think, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what I think.’

‘How can you work for those Nazis?’ said Peter and then regretted it. He was just taking out his frustrated rage and misery on his younger brother. It was stupid and unfair.

Pauli blinked but didn’t respond to his brother’s flash of anger. He said calmly, ‘You must realize, Peter, that we are not restricting the emigration of Jews. The SD has an office that does everything it can to encourage emigration. The problem is that no country wants them. The real reason these people were forging American passports was because they can’t get entry permits on a German one.’

‘Does Inge know what’s happened?’

‘No. I must be getting along.’

‘Thanks, Pauli.’

‘Did you ever think about living abroad?’

‘Is that your advice, Pauli?’

‘I’m thinking of Helena … schools and so on.’

‘I will have to see what happens to Lottie.’

‘If you went now it would probably be easy. But if and when Lottie is convicted, you might find it impossible to get permission to leave, even as a tourist.’

‘I can’t think about such things at this time.’

‘This will make a difference in other ways, too, Peter. Be prepared for that.’

‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘There will be publicity, and it won’t be helpful. The company might have complaints from shareholders. I’ve seen it all happen before. A thing like this makes a lot of ripples in the pool.’

‘I’ll be ready.’

‘If I can help…’

‘Thanks, Pauli. You already have.’

‘And, Peter, you see Isaac Volkmann now and again, don’t you?’

‘I’m one of his patients,’ said Peter defensively.

‘I hear that he’s looking for somewhere to live.’

‘Yes, poor Isaac. Their landlord has thrown them out with only a month’s notice.’

‘I wonder if he’s ever thought of living in a lock-up shop?’

‘Why?’

‘Shopowners don’t have to register tenants with the police the way people have to with apartments and houses.’

‘Live in a shop? Like a fugitive. Is that really necessary?’

‘No, it’s precautionary. There will be more and more pressure brought on Jews. Life might become intolerable for them.’

‘Is this an instruction?’ said Peter, carefully choosing his words, ‘or just information?’

‘It’s advice,’ said Pauli unhesitatingly.

‘I’ll pass your message on.’

‘Better not say it’s from me, Peter.’

‘I can’t believe the Volkmanns will go to live in a shop.’

‘You never know,’ said Pauli.

‘Lottie is so headstrong,’ said Peter. ‘She wouldn’t listen to me.’

When Pauli finally got home he was exhausted. He let himself into the apartment and entered the drawing room. The room was dark except for a pool of light on the sofa, where Inge was lounging. Next to her sat Fritz Esser, his jacket off and necktie loosened. They were laughing: laughing in a way he’d never heard either of them laugh before. When they looked up to see him the laughter stopped, and their faces were frozen in a circle of yellow light from the parchment-shaded table lamps. He felt like a stranger, an intruder almost.

‘Pauli darling,’ said Inge. She got up hurriedly and smoothed her skirt. ‘We heard about Lottie.’

‘I’ve been with Peter,’ explained Pauli.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘I don’t want anything.’ All he needed was a stiff drink. There was an assortment of drinks on a side table, but Pauli hesitated. He’d been drinking far too much lately. It would be better to have coffee.

‘How is Peter taking it?’ Inge asked.

‘It’s a shock for him.’

‘It’s a shock for all of us,’ said Fritz Esser. He got up unsteadily. He’d been drinking.

‘Did you want me, Fritz?’ Pauli asked.

‘Fritz came to ask if he could help in any way,’ said Inge.

‘That was very kind of you, Fritz,’ said Pauli. He looked at the brandy decanter and decided to have a proper drink. After a day like this one, a man was entitled to get a little drunk.

1938

‘Being innocent is no defence’

Riding across the snow-covered German countryside on a good horse was one of life’s finest pleasures. It was white everywhere, with not a human habitation in sight. Sometimes it was hard to believe such open country existed so near to the heart of Berlin.

Despite the loose zipper jacket he wore and his red silk scarf, a careful observer would have recognized the horseman’s riding breeches and high boots as belonging to an officer’s uniform. He always came here in uniform straight from church. It was a part of his long-established routine.

Colonel Alex Horner had spent too long in the War Office. The introduction of compulsory military service had expanded the German army to almost unmanageable size, and the paperwork was overwhelming. The Bendlerblock had become a madhouse. Some of his fellow desk-bound officers – especially the older ones – liked being at the centre of things, delighted in the petty departmental squabbling, and enjoyed the sophisticated pleasures of life in the capital. But such desk work was too tiresome for any fit young officer, and too constricting for the energetic and ambitious Horner.

To make it worse, the civil war in Spain had been going on for over a year, and the German army had been using this foreign battlefield to test its men, its commanders, its tactics and its equipment. Now, when he seemed to have arranged a posting there, Horner’s wife, Chrisi, had announced that she was pregnant. It would make no difference to his determination to go – that his career came first had been agreed at the time of their marriage – but she had no relatives in Berlin, and it seemed unkind to leave her.

He was thinking of these things while riding Pola, a wonderful chestnut roan, back to the Bernau stables near Berlin. He relished these Sunday-morning outings. He loved his wife, but he also cherished the opportunity to be alone now and again. And these Sunday-morning rides were the only chance he got to withdraw from his demanding daily life.

The stables were run by ex-Sergeant Major Winkel, a comrade from the war. It was funny to think that Winkel had come back to Berlin suffering so badly from British chlorine gas that the doctors had almost given him up for dead. Six months, they’d said, or maybe a year, providing he got out of the filthy Braunkohle fumes that Berlin’s factories and power stations spread over the city like a brown blanket.

So Winkel took his hundred-per-cent-disability pension, such as it was, and a pretty young farmer’s daughter, and the two good-tempered horses that came as her dowry, and set up his riding stables out here in what had then been open countryside. And now, twenty years after the war ended, Winkel was looking as well as ever he looked, and raking in the cash from officers like Horner who wanted a decent horse, rather than the mounts the army provided for such exercise.

It was January and the air was cold. He’d given the horse a good chase, and now, for the final kilometre, he let her walk to cool off. She knew the way home even better than he did. It was a chance for Alex to think his own thoughts about Spain, changing tactics, Germany’s Condor Legion and his contemporaries who were building reputations there. Soon – too soon – the white-painted gates of the stables came into sight, and another Sunday-morning excursion was ended.

He let the horse find her own pace as her feet encountered the uncertain surface of the cobbles. The experts said horses liked cobbles, but Pola seemed to be an exception. As he rode into the yard, he saw Winkel and his teenage son trying to find the leak in a bicycle tyre by holding it in a tin bath of water.

‘Leave her to me, Winkel,’ said Horner, waving away assistance. Winkel always made sure that Horner had his favourite, Pola, and Horner liked to look after her. He liked the stables, the smells of sweat and dung and old harness. He liked to see ex-Sergeant Major Winkel, too. Winkel’s comfortable existence confirmed for Alex Horner that the army looked after its own. Bernau was outside the city limits of Gross-Berlin, half an hour on the train from Stettiner station, and yet enough officers came here to make sure that Winkel flourished.

Now that his father was dead, and his elder brother – who’d inherited the estate in East Prussia – wrote to him only once a year, it was this feeling about the close comradeship of the army that made life worth living for Alex Horner. Once, many years ago, during the terrible time when the army was being torn apart by Bolsheviks and revolutionaries, a fierce artillery colonel had asked him whether he would be prepared to die for his country. It was the sort of question only an old man who’d spent the war years at a divisional HQ twenty miles behind the fighting would put to a very young infantry subaltern who’d seen as much front-line service as Horner. Horner – a mere Leutnant at the time – had immediately given an answer in the affirmative, but a more truthful answer might have expressed his willingness to die for the army. He loved the army, and perhaps it was a significant reflection upon his relationship with his father that his proudest memory was of his father’s words of praise after Alex graduated from Lichterfelde and went home wearing his regimental uniform.

As he rode Pola into the dark stables, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, he didn’t for a moment see the figure standing near the ladder that led up to the hayloft.

‘Hello, Alex.’

It was a man of about his own age. A man wearing a grey felt hat and black leather overcoat with a grey knitted scarf wrapped around his neck in that careless style sometimes affected by students.

‘Pauli?’

Pauli took the horse without answering, but now Alex Horner recognized his old friend.

‘How did you find me here, Pauli?’ He swung down off the horse and they shook hands and exchanged greetings. Then Alex Horner turned back to his horse again. He released the girth and hauled the saddle off.

Pauli took the saddle from him and hung it on the half-door. ‘So Winkel’s still got this place,’ said Pauli. They’d both known Sergeant Major Winkel in the war. Long ago Pauli had ridden with Alex for a few Sunday-morning rides. But Inge felt neglected, so he stopped.

Pauli took off his overcoat and hat, and started to help. He grabbed some straw and began rubbing the horse down. On the other side of the horse, Alex did the same. For a few minutes the men worked on in silence; then Alex, finding the silence discomfiting, said, ‘Let me guess what you’ve come to tell me. Have you come to give me the inside story on the downfall of our beloved War Minister?’

‘That’s another matter,’ said Pauli. ‘Field Marshal von Blomberg is finished; no one can do anything to help him. He’ll have to resign.’

‘Blomberg must have guessed she was a whore before marrying her, don’t you think?’

‘I’m not an expert on women, or on the working of army officers’ minds,’ said Pauli.

Alex gave a brief smile. ‘But still…he surely must have…’ He waited.

‘Men don’t usually check with the Identification Office of the Kripo before proposing marriage,’ said Pauli.

‘Was it just bad luck that someone saw her antics on old porno photos and then recognized her in the marriage-group photo?’

‘There was no marriage photo, as far as I know. It was a very private ceremony.’

‘Very private,’ said Alex sarcastically, ‘with the Führer and General Göring as witnesses.’ He paused and waited until Pauli smiled at the notion of Göring as a general. ‘So how did the police find out?’

‘That change-of-address card,’ said Pauli.

‘Well, Blomberg is big enough and old enough to look after himself,’ said Alex. ‘Let him resign. There are plenty of other men to fill his job. I don’t want people pointing a finger at the War Minister and saying. “There’s Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg, the old fool who married the whore.” It makes the army look ridiculous.’

‘The Frau Generalfeldmarschall was never a whore, as far as police records go,’ said Pauli patiently. ‘She posed for pornographic photos.’

‘Then she must be a damned odd one,’ said Alex.

‘After working for the Gestapo, you start realizing how many odd people there are about,’ said Pauli.

‘I don’t approve of this so-called tolerant society.’ Alex threw down his handful of straw and moved away.

‘You’re a stuffed shirt, Alex; you always were,’ said Pauli.

‘You say that about everyone. You used to say that about your brother.’ His voice was raised as he went out through the door and into the locker room beyond.

‘I still do,’ called Pauli.

‘Have a drink.’ Alex Horner came back with his army tunic over his arm and a hip flask in his hand.

‘I’ve stopped drinking; I really have.’

‘One schnapps won’t hurt you. It would be better than all those cigarettes you smoke.’ Alex carefully removed the silver cup from the flask and poured a measure into it. After offering it again to Pauli, he downed it in one gulp. This also was a part of Alex Horner’s Sunday-morning routine.

‘Cigarettes don’t spoil my judgement, Alex.’

‘Would the occasional spoiled judgement be so bad? You’re not on the battlefield.’

‘Oh, but I am, Alex.’ Pauli watched Colonel Alex Horner put on his beautifully tailored tunic. Pauli felt a twinge of envy. But for one isolated piece of bad judgement, plus the spiteful officiousness of that swine Brand, Pauli might have been wearing the same colonel’s uniform and been working alongside his friend. But Pauli didn’t dwell upon it: he’d never wasted much time feeling sorry for himself. He’d grown up under the shadow of his academically brilliant brother. Considering his meagre assets, Pauli was satisfied with his good fortune. Still, Colonel Horner looked damned good, even if he did have to wear those ridiculous little swastika badges. Despite his own party affiliation, Pauli felt that von Blomberg should never have agreed to making the German army wear political-party insignia: it was undignified.

‘Won’t you come home and have lunch with us? Chrisi is only cooking home-made soup and some bratwurst. There will be plenty.’

‘I have to get back to the office, Alex. Thank you.’

‘Chrisi is keen that you and Inge come to dinner.’

‘Next month things will be easier.’

‘It’s Sunday! My goodness, you people work hard. The Gestapo now, is it?’

‘I’m trying to keep my SD desk running, too. It’s the devil of a lot of work.’

‘Then you’d better tell me your news.’

‘How close are you to von Fritsch?’

‘No one is close to von Fritsch,’ said Alex without hesitation. Colonel General Werner Freiherr von Fritsch, the Commander in Chief of the German army was a forbidding figure.

‘Is he a homosexual?’

‘No. Fritsch, a homosexual? It’s out of the question.’

‘He’s not married,’ said Pauli.

‘Is this official?’

‘I’m trying to help.’

‘Well, Fritsch is not a homosexual; I’d bet anything on that. Now, what else can I tell you?’ It was one of those rare moments when Alex Horner revealed a hint of displeasure.

‘It’s not official, Alex. We’re old friends. I wanted to talk with you.’

‘About the C in C?’

‘The railway police at Wannsee picked up some little piece of rubbish named Otto Schmidt. He was hanging around the station there. He makes a living by blackmailing homosexuals. In the course of his interrogation he started name-dropping. One of the names was Fritsch.’

Alex Horner showed both relief and exasperation. ‘Good God, Pauli, you’re surely not going to take that seriously. He just wanted them to think he had influence. What other names did he drop?’

‘Lots of other names: the Potsdam Police President and the Minister of Economics.’

‘There you are.’ Alex poured some more schnapps from the flask, then held it up, but Pauli shook his head to decline again. Alex drank. Usually on Sunday he limited himself to only one drink, but today was different.

‘Not quite,’ said Pauli. ‘The police pushed him along to the Gestapo desk that deals with the suppression of homosexuality….’

‘Is there such a department?’ He wiped his lips on the back of his hand.

‘We think of everything,’ said Pauli sardonically. He watched Alex carefully; Pauli had become an expert observer. In the next stall a restless horse put its weight against the wooden partition so that it creaked. ‘And they showed him photos. He picked out the photo of the C in C.’

‘Hardly reliable evidence.’

Still studying his friend’s face, Pauli said, ‘He is prepared to say he saw Fritsch committing a homosexual act with a youth he picked up at the Wannsee station.’

‘Oh,’ said Alex, keeping his emotions under control. ‘What will happen now?’

‘Quite a lot has happened already. A file on the case went to the Führer. Reichsführer Himmler took it to him personally, so we kept the tightest security.’

‘And?’

‘The Führer said, “Burn this muck.”’

‘Good for the Führer. Was it burned?’

‘We don’t burn anything.’

Alex sighed. ‘Oh, come along, Pauli, old friend. Some things get burned in the Third Reich. Didn’t I see big piles of books by Jewish authors being burned in Unter den Linden not so long ago? At Opernpiatz; I stopped to watch. A big bonfire. I noticed quite a few books there I rather fancied. Freud, Gide, Proust, Zola, Wells, Zweig, Mann…’

‘I wish you’d trust me, Alex.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

It was not easy to help people; Pauli had found that again and again. They all acted as though Pauli were talking to them in some incomprehensible foreign tongue. ‘Warn Colonel General Fritsch.’

‘You expect me to walk into his office and tell him that Hitler suspects him of committing homosexual acts at the Wannsee station?’

Alex still couldn’t get it into his head. All these years in the army seemed to have made him incapable of understanding the simple facts of German political life. Pauli explained it as simply as he could. ‘Now that it seems as if von Blomberg must go, Göring will persuade Himmler to bring up the Fritsch business again.’

‘But why?’

‘Don’t be naïve, Alex. Göring wants Blomberg’s ministry, and Fritsch is next in line right now. “War Minister Göring”: he’d love that.’

‘And how would Himmler benefit?’

‘If Fritsch went, the Reichsführer-SS would also take the opportunity to extend his powers.’

‘Himmler, extend his powers? My God, the fellow has taken over all the police forces in Germany. And now he’s expanded this SS army of his to three regiments, plus a combat-engineer company and a communications unit.’

‘Top marks to the Abwehr, Alex. They keep you well informed.’ He took out a cigarette, lit it, and blew smoke. ‘And the concentration camps, too. The Totenkopfverbände who guard the camps are also part of his command.’

‘And you, too?’

‘Yes, me, too.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘Don’t you know that, Alex?’

Alex paused. ‘The army? Does it mean so much to you still?’

‘I don’t know, Alex. Perhaps I simply want to prove I can be my own master sometimes. Inge keeps telling me I should be my own master.’ He got up, took his overcoat off the hook.

Alex watched his friend putting the heavy leather overcoat on. Pauli moved like an infirm old man. Goodness knows what he was doing these days, but he looked as if he was working too damned hard. Even the Bendlerblock let its inmates spend Sunday at home. ‘You don’t believe it, either, do you?’

‘About Fritsch? No, it’s all nonsense. The man who paid blackmail money to this Schmidt filth is someone quite different; a retired Captain von Frisch.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘His address was in Schmidt’s original statement. I went along to the address and spoke with him. After a little questioning he admitted it, and we got his bank statements to prove the payments.’

‘Then it will be all right,’ said Alex. Pauli patted the horse and it nuzzled him affectionately. He loved horses; he always had.

‘No, it will not be all right. Someone had better tell Fritsch.’

‘Tell him what? He’s innocent. You’ve just said so.’

‘Tell him that being innocent is no defence.’ Pauli smiled, buttoned his coat, and decided to say no more about it. Already he’d said too much.

Alex nodded and took another drink. The world had gone mad.

Case Otto

On the evening of Friday, March 11, 1938, the most splendid social event in Berlin was undoubtedly the lavish party given at the newly named and redecorated Haus der Flieger – the old Prussian Diet building on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – by Hermann Göring.

Göring himself, forty-five years old, Commander in Chief of the newly created Luftwaffe and in charge of all civil aviation, too, had recently been made a field marshal. The promotion was to compensate him for his disappointment at not taking over von Blomberg’s job as war minister (Hitler had taken that authority for himself). This night he arrived at his gala pink-faced and excited. He was wearing his new field marshal uniform, complete with an array of medals. At his neck there was the Orden Pour le Mérite, the nation’s highest award for valour, which Göring had won as a fighter pilot in the war. Short in stature, as so many fighter pilots are, and very overweight, Göring this night was the essence of charm.

It was a sumptuous affair: more than a thousand guests, including diplomats and high-ranking officials, were entertained by the orchestra, singers and ballet of the Berlin State Opera. Among the many guest performances was a Beethoven piano sonata played by Erich Hennig.

Ever since playing before the Führer at the Bach Festival in Leipzig in June 1935, Erich Hennig had been a celebrity of the Third Reich. Once Hitler had admired him, he’d become noted as an interpreter of Bach as well as of Beethoven and Mozart, and Hennig was regularly to be heard on the radio. A handsome man, thin and rather drawn, with a carefully trimmed moustache and intense black eyes, Hennig had cultivated the appearance that audiences expected of a concert pianist. It was his appearance – and such mannerisms as flicking his coat tails and ‘washing’ his hands quickly before the piano’s first entry – as much as his talent, that had earned him a regular place on the new entertainment medium, television. On March 22, 1935, Germany had started the first regular public TV broadcasting system in the world. Despite the small number of TV receivers in use, performers such as Erich Hennig were becoming famous ‘personalities’.

And so, when Hennig took the stage that evening, this familiar figure was given a welcoming applause that outmatched that given to any other performer.

‘Erich would have got tickets for you,’ Lisl Hennig told her sister Inge after showing her some snapshots of the Hennigs’ eight-year-old son.

‘We were invited anyway,’ said Inge haughtily. ‘Pauli gets tickets for all the big events.’

‘How wonderful,’ said Lisl as she put the photos back in her handbag. Inge sometimes liked to pretend she preferred the freedom of being childless, but her face, as she looked at Lisl’s snapshots, made it obvious how much she wanted a baby. And Pauli – unlike Erich – was wonderful with children. ‘Forgive me for the way I keep watching the stage, but Erich will probably be presented to Field Marshal Göring, and he’ll want me to be with him.’

‘How is Papa?’ asked Inge to change the subject.

‘He misses Mama terribly. Though he hardly ever mentions her, he just isn’t the same without her. It’s easy to forget how old he is, but his memory is going. He has no sense of time. Last week I mentioned that I’d seen you buying fish in Ka-De-We and he said, “Is Inge going to marry that young Peter Winter? He’s a polite young fellow.” I replied, “She’s married his brother.” Papa said, “Oh, is that legal?” We laughed. We were eating dinner at the time. Erich laughed so much I thought he would choke. Yes, Papa says odd things at times.’ Lisl chuckled.

Inge didn’t laugh. She said, ‘Pauli couldn’t come. Pauli’s packing to go to Vienna.’ She shouldn’t have said it, really – Pauli had sworn her to secrecy – but she’d suffered enough of her sister’s tormenting.

‘Vienna? So the Anschluss is happening?’

‘At dawn tomorrow, our troops cross the border. Please God the Austrians won’t start shooting.’

‘Start shooting? You can’t be serious, Inge. The Austrians will love to become a part of the Reich.’ She looked at Inge. ‘Why is Pauli going there?’

‘He’s taking into custody the dissidents, the Marxists and troublemakers. A lot of German criminals have gone there to hide.’

‘And Jews,’ said Lisl.

‘Yes. The Gestapo have nearly a hundred thousand names with Vienna addresses,’ said Inge.

‘So Pauli will be there for a long time.’

‘No, thank goodness. The SS-Reichsführer has promised that Vienna will be safe for the Führer to visit by Tuesday. I couldn’t bear to have Pauli away for a week. I miss him dreadfully, and he needs me, Lisl. Without me the poor darling doesn’t even remember to change his linen, and he never eats properly when he’s away from home.’

At ten-thirty that evening, those favoured musicians and members of the corps de ballet and corps diplomatique who’d been alerted to the prospect of shaking hands with Field Marshal Göring were told that plans for these formal presentations had been cancelled.

Although no reason was given, it was because Göring – who’d taken a major role in the planning for the annexation of Austria – was closeted with one of his guests. Göring was determined to persuade Dr Mastny, the Czechoslovak ambassador, that Germany’s aggression boded no such similar fate for his country. This was just a ‘family matter’, said Göring – the Austrians were in fact Germans – and Germany was determined to have excellent relations with Czechoslovakia. He hoped that there would be no question of Czechoslovakia’s mobilizing against this entirely German affair.

Dr Mastny was not entirely convinced.

‘It’s a lovely dress, Inge,’ Lisl told her, and there was no doubt of her sincerity. It was a floor-length dress of grey shot-silk that shimmered in the light of the chandeliers. The bodice was buttoned high to the neck in a style based deliberately upon some of the old German country costumes. It was a ‘model dress’ exclusive to her. Inge had chosen it from one of the expensive couturiers in Ku-damm. She had in mind taking it with her when they next went to the Obersalzberg. She knew it was the sort of dress the Führer would approve of. ‘It must have cost a fortune.’

‘Well, I told Pauli that now he’s an important man in the administration, I have to dress accordingly.’

‘You’re lucky,’ said Lisl. ‘Erich is awfully mean about my clothes.’

‘You must speak with him,’ said Inge. ‘You entertain all sorts of interesting artists. And if you are going to come to events like this, where there are lots of foreigners, it’s important that you look your best. Germans must show them that we have a new place in the world.’

‘That’s all right for Pauli,’ said Lisl, ‘but you’d never get away with that with Erich. If I said I had nothing suitable to wear, Erich would just leave me behind.’

Colonel Alex Horner first heard officially on Thursday, March 10. It all started just before 9:00 a.m., when General Wilhelm Keitel arrived. Although Keitel was officially styled the chief of the Armed Forces Command (the OKW, an office that Hitler created to replace von Blomberg’s War Ministry), everyone knew that Keitel was no more than Hitler’s office boy.

But, as Alex Horner noted, ‘Hitler’s office boy’ could certainly make the Bendlerblock come alive. When Hitler had got rid of Fritsch and Blomberg, he’d ruthlessly purged the generals: there had been fifty transfers and forced retirements. Now, when Keitel came through the door unexpected, the anxiety could be smelled in every corridor.

The Austrians were planning a plebiscite on Sunday as a way to appeal to world opinion and so counter the German ultimatum. The Führer had decided that, to prevent it, the army must occupy Austria by Saturday. It was already mid-morning Thursday. Colonel Horner’s immediate superior – an elegant and cultured old general whom Horner had come to distrust if not despise – sent for him urgently.

‘Anything on Austria, Colonel Horner?’

‘Nothing in the way of military plans, Herr General.’

‘No contingency plans against the Austrians? Nothing at all?’ He was trying to maintain his usual supercilious, patronizing manner, but to Horner he sounded harassed.

‘Nothing, Herr General.’

‘Come along, Horner. General Jodl says there is something.’

‘Did he say what it was, Herr General?’

‘I gather it is a rather impractical scheme that was prepared when there were rumours that the Austrians were planning to restore Otto of Hapsburg to the throne.’

‘I don’t remember it, Herr General,’ said Horner.

‘He thinks it’s called Case Otto. Perhaps it’s filed downstairs in one of the storerooms. Get some reliable officers to go through the filing cabinets downstairs.’

‘Immediately, Herr General.’

‘And Colonel Horner. I’ve decided to deny that application for you to go to Spain.’

‘As the General wishes.’

‘Oh, I know you must be disappointed, but with your wife pregnant with a first child, and the High Command’s decision to cut back on the forces in Spain…’

‘I understand, Herr General.’ His General was not the sort of man who considered the feelings of pregnant wives, he simply had another protégé lined up for the Spanish posting.

‘What would you say to a weekend in Vienna instead? It looks as if the army is heading that way.’

‘Vienna, Herr General?’

‘Type yourself some orders for attachment to one of the units in the order of battle. I’d choose one of these Panzer outfits, unless you relish some hard marching.’

‘The Herr General is very kind.’

‘Lots of time for Spain, Horner. That young General Franco is not going to beat the Reds for a long time yet, judging by the way the Russians are putting material into the fighting.’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

‘You don’t want to go to Spain, Colonel Horner. It’s full of flies and beggars. The food’s terrible, too: olive oil and rice with odds and ends in it. Go to Vienna: better food, decent music and far more beautiful women.’

‘I’ll get started on the search for the plans for Case Otto, Herr General.’

‘Don’t break your heart on it, Colonel. If those plans were here, I would have seen them; and I don’t remember them.’

‘I thought General Jodl…’

‘General Jodl is getting old, Colonel. You go and dust off your dancing pumps. Send a couple of officers downstairs, then go and prepare your orders, and get me to sign them while I’m still in a good mood.’

‘Yes, Herr General. Thank you.’

Meanwhile, Keitel had left the building to hurry across to the Reichskanzlei for his ten o’clock meeting with the Führer and was relieved to hear that Hitler would be satisfied with Case Otto. But when he returned to the Bendlerstrasse, no one had found it, and despite more searching the plans were never located.

‘It’s a typical Bendlerstrasse balls-up,’ Alex Horner told the two young officers who’d emerged from the storerooms with hands and faces blackened with the dirt and dust of filth-encrusted bundles of old documents.

Keitel went into immediate conference with General Beck, Chief of the General Staff. When Beck was summoned to see the Führer, he had the luck to grab General Erich von Manstein – the army’s most capable general – to go with him.

Manstein was supposed to be on his way out of Bendlerstrasse where, until Hitler’s purge, he’d been deputy chief of the General Staff. By now he should have been on the train to Liegnitz, to the humiliatingly low job of commanding the 18th Infantry Division.

It took Manstein five hours to draft the plans, which, to conceal the fact that the original was lost, were called ‘Case Otto’. By 6:30 p.m. orders were on the teleprinters to mobilize three army corps and the necessary air-force units.

Alex Horner found an excuse to go into the room where the fabled General Manstein was at work. He was a ferocious-looking man with grey hair, bushy eyebrows, and a big beak of a nose. But Manstein’s ferocity was not selectively targeted. Everyone remembered that it was the lonely voice of Manstein who’d objected to the order that in 1934 had dismissed Jews from the army. And Manstein was not afraid to put his objection in writing and send it to the High Command. He protested the meting out of such treatment to men who’d proved, by voluntary enlistment, that they were ready to give their lives for Germany – and added that the army had shown cowardice in surrendering to the Nazi Party on such an issue. Manstein’s courageous protest had alarmed those generals who were frightened to rock the boat. War Minister Blomberg was furious and ordered General Werner von Fritsch (the army C in C) to take disciplinary action against Manstein, but the stalwart Fritsch said it was none of the War Minister’s business.

Now Blomberg had gone, and Fritsch had gone, too, and Manstein was perfecting Hitler’s plans for the invasion of Austria.

TOP SECRET

§ If other measures prove unsuccessful I intend to invade Austria with armed forces to establish constitutional conditions and to prevent further outrages against the pro-German population.

§ The forces of the army and air force detailed for this operation must be ready for invasion on March 12, 1938, at the latest by 1200 hours.

It all seemed a long time ago, thought Colonel Alex Horner as he sat by the roadside perched upon the hull of a broken-down tank.

Alongaide him sat his old friend Captain von Kleindorf wearing the black uniform of the tank men. ‘They’re not tanks at all,’ complained von Kleindorf, thumping the thin steel of the PzKw IA with his fist. ‘Five metres long, and armed with nothing better than a couple of machine guns. The damned thing only weighs six tons! Look at it.’

Alex didn’t want to look at it: he hated it and all the other miserable little steel boxes like it. ‘So why have we got them?’

‘Ask your friends in the Bendlerblock,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘For parades past the newsreel cameras, I suppose. We’ve got fifteen hundred of these useless little two-man machines, and hundreds of them still have the rotten little four-cylinder Krupp engine, like this one.’

‘I know,’ said Alex. He didn’t exactly know, but he’d seen so many of them broken down on the roadsides of South Germany that the figure didn’t surprise him.

A company of infantry marched past. They’d been getting ready to jeer and catcall the men on the broken tank but, recognizing the uniforms of the two officers, the sergeant called the marching men to attention.

‘And the damned SS soldiers are all in trucks,’ said von Kleindorf bitterly. ‘And they’re wearing proper field-grey army uniforms!’

‘Guderian shouldn’t have agreed to have SS units with us in the corps,’ said Alex.

‘What option did he have?’ said von Kleindorf. ‘The tanks need motorized infantry in support, and Himmler seems to know where to get his hands on trucks. Our poor devils have to march.’ It wasn’t exactly true – most of the infantry units passing them were using horse-drawn vehicles – but Alex had been up all night, he was tired, and he was not in the mood for arguing.

‘You two officers! Quickly!’ Two large open-top staff cars had stopped. The second one had hit a mud patch and almost skidded into the other. Staff officers leapt out in the way that staff officers do when they want to impress their commander.

‘He wants us,’ said von Kleindorf.

‘Ja!’ shouted Alex Horner, and jumped to the ground.

‘Come here!’

They ran to him. He was a Generalleutnant, his overcoat collar open to reveal the huge crimson lapels that are the insignia of the rank of general. He stood up in the open Mercedes with one arm resting along the top of the windscreen and the other hand impatiently shaking a pair of expensive kid gloves. His face, like his uniform, bore splashes of mud.

Magisterially the general said, ‘A colonel authorized tank commanders to break the locks on civilian gas pumps and steal petrol from service stations. A colonel with a helmet painted dark green, I was told. Was it one of you two officers?’

Alex Horner’s helmet was painted dark green, as it had been for autumn manoeuvres last year. All around him the soldiers of the corps had their helmets the same shade of brownish grey. ‘Yes, Herr General,’ said Alex, ‘I authorized it.’

‘From civilian gas pumps?’

‘There is no fuel convoy, Herr General.’

‘That’s theft!’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

‘Your name?’

‘Colonel Horner, Herr General.’

‘Who is your commander?’

‘I am attached from Berlin, Herr General, OKW Operations Office.’

‘Oh, you’re a tourist, Colonel? Just here to try the schnitzels, I suppose. Well, you confine your damned criminal activities to the Bendlerblock. Perhaps that’s the way they do things there. But meanwhile, when a court of inquiry starts asking for compensation for those civilians, I’ll make sure it’s your head that’s on the block. Is that clear, Colonel Horner?’

‘Yes, Herr General.’ Behind this truculent general, one of his sides stood smirking at Alex’s discomfort.

‘What are you waiting here for?’

‘The maintenance section. A track has broken and we’ve no spare links, Herr General.’

‘They won’t need you to help them fix it. Get into my car, I’ll take you up to Divisional HQ if we can find them. Have you got any kit?’

‘No, Herr General.’

‘Go, driver!’ Even before the doors slammed, the general’s driver had let in the clutch and the car roared away. In the mirror Alex glimpsed the second car chasing after them.

‘And your name, Captain?’ shouted the general as the car bumped and skidded along the narrow road.

‘Captain von Kleindorf, Herr General.’

‘Kleindorf? Is General von Kleindorf your father? We were together in 1918. Is he well?’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

‘You give him my respects next time you write.’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

‘Look at these damned fools. Stop, driver!’ The car skidded to a halt, and again the one behind narrowly avoided a collision. ‘Where’s your commander, Sergeant? Get him immediately. Why are you stopped? Out of fuel? Good God, man, why don’t you get fuel as you go? Get motor spirit from one of these civilian service stations. If they won’t let you have it on signature, take it at gun-point. Do you understand? Good. Go, driver!’ and the car leapt forward again.

‘Stop, driver! Come here, Sergeant. Don’t you know that all vehicles must be garlanded with flowers or flags or, failing that, leaves? Haven’t you been told that all units are to have a joyful appearance? Get greenery and have it done right away. Smile, Sergeant. You heard me, smile! That’s right. Now, you keep that smile on your face until you’re in Vienna. We want those damned dumpling-eaters to celebrate our arrival. It’s better than fighting them. Carry on, Sergeant. Go, driver!’

It was the same all along the road, with the general chivvying his columns into action. But many of the breakdowns had mechanical causes too grave to be got moving by the general’s sharp tongue. This day Alex Horner saw broken tanks and trucks all along the road to Vienna.

‘And who is that civilian, Captain? An Austrian mechanic fixing your truck? Why can’t you fix it yourself? You’re a damned disgrace to your uniform, Captain. No, don’t stop him. If your fool of a driver can’t mend it, then let the Austrian do it. But don’t count on that kind of help from the Polacks when we invade Poland, Captain.’

‘Poland, General?’

‘Don’t look so worried, Captain. It’s just a joke. At least it’s just a joke until the Führer decides it isn’t a joke. Go, driver!’

With his head lolling back against the leather seat the general put a question to his passenger. ‘So what do you think of our big new army of conscripts, now that you’ve seen them in action, Colonel Horner?’

‘There are problems, Herr General.’

‘So! Even a man from the Bendlerblock can see it! That’s reassuring anyway. Yes, there are problems, colonel. From what I can see, about fifty per cent of our motorized and armoured force has suffered breakdowns. The machinery is second-rate, the maintenance is poor, and the army have had to promote competent private soldiers to be incompetent NCOs, and competent young subalterns to be incompetent captains. That’s what conscription has done to the army. The average young officer hasn’t got enough initiative to blow his own nose.’

‘The general is perhaps too critical,’ ventured Alex bravely.

‘Rubbish! Look for yourself. Did you see that sergeant back there? He couldn’t have been much more than nineteen years old, and he’s in charge of thirty men. What can a boy like that know about commanding soldiers?’

‘He might have served in Hitler Youth, Herr General,’ said Alex.

‘Don’t talk to me about Hitler Youth,’ said the general. ‘I’m always getting complaints about the way the little swines report chance remarks by their NCOs, and their officers too. I stamp on that! I’ll tell you – and I don’t care if you’re a Nazi or not – I stamp on it. I won’t have these little freshly recruited bastards snooping on my trained men.’

‘Of course not, Herr General.’

‘Nor will I give the conceited little Nazi tykes quick promotions.’

‘No, Herr General.’

‘Ah! You agree, Horner. So! Is that the official attitude of the Bendlerblock? Can I take that as being the official reaction of the OKW?’

‘No, Herr General. I have no idea what is the official attitude to such matters.’

‘Neither do I, Horner. That’s my dilemma, you see. You might say that’s the army’s dilemma. We wear these pretty little silver Nazi eagles and swastikas on our chests, and we are not our own men any more. Follow me, Horner?’

‘Yes, Herr General. I follow you.’

‘Don’t work too hard, Pauli Winter’

Damned German tourists: they were everywhere. They must have followed within hours of the soldiers crossing the border. Or perhaps the shrewder ones had contrived to be in Vienna already. Here they were: eating, eating, eating, as if they were starved. It’s true, the food was better than in the Reich, but only marginally so. Of course, the rate of exchange was good so the Reichsmark bought more. Even so, Pauli Winter disapproved of the way that the restaurants and shops were crowded with Germans. It was undignified and uncomfortably like the profiteers in Berlin in those awful days of 1919.

Nor did he like the way that so many of the German businessmen he knew wanted him to help them buy out Jewish businesses at knockdown prices. He’d upset some of them with his unequivocal refusals. He’d sent them packing with a few home truths ringing in their ears. He smiled to himself as he thought about it. No doubt those outbursts had made for him a few bitter enemies, but he was confident that they’d do nothing about it. That was one consolation about this rather dull job of his: no sane man wanted to get on the wrong side of a senior executive of the Gestapo.

Pauli Winter was enjoying this visit to the city of his birth. He remembered it well enough, even though he’d not been here for nearly five years. Past the Opera to the Ringstrasse. A bearded gypsy violinist was standing on the corner playing a sad melody. He should have been arrested as a vagrant, but Pauli put some coins into the tin. Though it was a chilly day, the sun was bright and there was a feeling of excitement in the air. Pauli’s enjoyment was somewhat marred by the sight of elderly Jews on their knees scrubbing the pavement, supervised by uniformed Austrian Nazis, while passers-by stopped to look and sometimes jeer.

The Jews were mostly harmless. They chose university professors and professional men to set to scrubbing the streets and cleaning out public toilets, because their respectable appearance made them look more ridiculous. Pauli knew they were harmless: anyone with a record of even the mildest anti-Nazi word or action had been rounded up and put under lock and key within hours of Pauli’s arrival.

Soon, when the new concentration camp at Mauthausen – on the Danube near Enns – was ready it would all be much easier. There would not be the long train journeys to take prisoners to camps in Germany. Furthermore, the prisoners would be able to work in the Mauthausen stone quarry. That could be said to be Pauli Winter’s idea. It was Pauli’s long analysis of the concentration-camp accounts that had ended with a suggestion that all the camps eventually become self-financing. In an appendix at the end he’d listed the sort of labour-intensive enterprises that the SS should obtain – perhaps by confiscation from Jewish owners – with a view to using free concentration-camp labour for increased profit. Quarries, any sort of quarries, and such firms as the Meissen porcelain works were especially desirable. The SS-Reichsführer had sent a letter of interest and appreciation, and Heydrich had suggested that Pauli resign his Gestapo post and work only for his Sicherheitsdienst. It was a great compliment, but Pauli had politely declined, pointing out that his job with the Gestapo (a state organization) carried the full state pension rights that were granted to such public employees, whereas the SD (a Nazi Party organization) had no such guaranteed longterm benefits. This was particularly unfair now that the concentration-camp guards – unemployable riffraff for the most part – were officially recognized as civil servants, with all the rights and privileges of that elite fraternity.

For Pauli the operation in Vienna had all gone smoothly. By this afternoon the men would have finished moving all the confiscated silver, paintings, furniture and carpets from the Rothschilds’ palace in Prinz-Eugen-Strasse so that the building could be used as offices for the Sipo and SD. Pauli wondered what would happen to all those priceless things he’d watched the SS men loading onto trucks. Judging by the care they’d taken, the antiques were already earmarked for some Nazi Party leader. Even more valuable plunder was going to Germans who knew the right people. The German company I. G. Farben was to be given Skodawerke Wetzler AG chemical work in exchange for a promise to replace all Jews in the management and bring this huge gunpowder works into the Nazi four-year plan. Rothschild’s steel rolling mills in Czechoslovakia had been promised to Field Marshal Göring. That would be the price for Baron de Rothschild’s freedom.

Now he had to stop and ask the way. Kärntnerstrasse. He knew it was near the boulevard, but it was a long time since he’d been in this part of the city. The woman who directed him there had a strong Viennese accent. She asked him if he was a German. ‘We are all Germans now,’ Pauli replied.

‘On the left,’ said the woman, ‘just fifty metres along the street.’

He went up to the fourth floor. The name tab on the bell had been peeled away. From the apartment upstairs he could hear American dance music – ‘Thanks for the Memory’. He pressed the bell, and after a long delay the door was opened by a youngish man in plain tie, white shirt and the sort of hard-wearing dark serge suit that employers furnish to domestic servants.

‘Yes?’

‘My name is Winter,’ said Pauli with careful politeness. He gave the man his visiting card. It bore only his name – Dr iur. Paul Winter – and his private Berlin address and phone number. His employer – the Gestapo – and office address were discreetly omitted.

‘Please wait,’ said the man.

‘Forgive me,’ said the woman who eventually emerged from behind the bead curtain at the end of the hall. In her middle fifties, she was very small, slim and still beautiful, even if she wore a little too much rouge and lipstick. Her hair was lustrous but it was too dark and too wavy and too tight against her head. She wore a wonderful old silk negligee patterned with fierce Chinese tigers. ‘I tell Boris he must always look through the peephole before answering the door.’ She’d never shed the Hungarian accent; for some it is difficult.

‘That’s sensible,’ said Pauli.

‘Come into the drawing room,’ she said. She looked down at Pauli’s card and fingered the name on it as if it were Braille. ‘We will have tea and we will talk.’ Then she looked at Pauli, trying to see his father in him.

Pauli was half prepared for the room. Once his father, in some uncharacteristic moment of revelation, had confided something of the wonderful things he’d bought when young. But he did not think it would be like this. ‘It’s magnificent!’

It was a museum, but far better than any museum could ever be: for this perfect example of Viennese Art Nouveau, complete with two small Klimt murals, some exquisite Schiele drawings, and Josef Hoffmann furniture, had never had to endure the ceaseless burden of uninvited visitors.

Soon Boris appeared with a silver tray and tea things. Pauli got a better look at him this time. Thirty-five, maybe younger. Dark hair. Not particularly handsome or attractive in any way. A boring sort of fellow. If he was her lover there was no sign of it. And yet there was no sign of anything. She hardly looked at the man. Was that because she was frightened of revealing their true relationship? Or had he worked for her so long that she no longer noticed his existence.

‘With lemon?’ Martha Somló fitted into the scheme perfectly. She sat in her favourite chair and poured tea, impaled slices of lemon on a silver fork and carefully positioned perfectly shaped pieces of cake upon the Art Nouveau plates.

‘Yes, lemon.’

‘Harry – your father – loved it, of course. Back in the old days we had dinner parties. Artists came. I met them all. The dining room is the finest example anywhere, Harry says. Mind you, people said he was crazy when he bought all this stuff. Me, too. I didn’t tell him, but I hated it at first. But after nearly forty years … Did he send you? Did Harry send you?’

‘He was worried.’

‘About me? That’s a surprise.’ She said it without rancour.

‘Does he still come?’

‘To see me? Sure. But not often. I love him, you see. Sometimes I even think that he loves me.’

Pauli picked up his tea and took his time squeezing lemon into it to avoid having to reply.

‘Does that offend you, Herr Pauli Winter?’

So she knew he was called Pauli. He wondered how much his father had told her about him. A lot, perhaps. He wondered if his father knew about the presence of the man servant. ‘No, it doesn’t. Of course not. Not at all.’

‘Did you ever see me before?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘I just wondered. You see, long ago, the year before you were born, your mother used to come and stand out there on the boulevard, looking up at the window. She was pregnant, I suppose. I felt sorry for her. I think she wanted to see what I looked like. One day I went down and crossed the road and passed near her. I looked at her and she looked at me. I didn’t see any hatred there. I suppose we both pitied each other in that insane way in which women are able to convince themselves that they have the best part of any deal. She never came again after that.’ She picked up her tea and stirred it and then let the tea leaves settle in the bottom of the cup. She looked down into the tea before drinking it. Pauli wondered if she was trying to read her fortune there.

‘I work for the German police,’ said Pauli tentatively.

‘Well, you’ll be kept busy,’ said Martha. She looked up at him evenly. There was no fear in her face, although Pauli knew somehow that she was frightened. He’d seen too many frightened people not to be able to recognize fear in all its guises.

‘My father asked me to give you my protection. I promised him that I would.’

‘What do you do for the German police that you can protect me?’

‘I am a Regierungsdirektor working in the Gestapo. I also hold SS-Standartenführer rank for my work with the SD.’

‘What a mouthful. It sounds very important.’

He was being mocked, but he didn’t mind that. He found her attractive, this little woman with her large eyes that challenged him and tried to see inside him. Until now he’d not realized that his father needed a woman like this, a strong, challenging personality who let you know she would fight back. And yet her assumed fearlessness was curiously disconcerting. ‘I might be useful, Frau Somló.’

‘I call myself Frau Winter.’

‘Frau Winter. Good. Yes, that is clear. It might be possible to find completely new papers for you.’

‘You are going to convert me from being a Jew?’

‘I will try. Do you see any difficulty?’

‘Difficulty?’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. My God, but people could be stupid when it came to the important things in life. ‘Are you registered or listed anywhere as a Jew? Do you go to the synagogue? Jewish societies? Do your neighbours know you as a Jew?’

‘Synagogue: no. Societies: never. Neighbours …The Bergers upstairs know. We talked about it one evening. Years ago.’

Pauli brought out his notebook and crossed his legs to balance it on his knee. ‘Bergers? One floor up? Number eight? What is the first name of the father?’

For a moment Martha Somló stared at him with her big eyes. Calmly and softly she said, ‘No, no, no, Herr Regierungadirektor-working-in-the-Gestapo Pauli Winter. I don’t want anything unpleasant to happen to my friends upstairs.’

‘They will simply be moved,’ said Pauli. ‘No one will be harmed.’

She was fishing the lemon from her empty teacup, apparently giving it all her attention. ‘I said no.’

He laid his thin gold pencil upon the open notebook. ‘Frau Somló – Frau Winter, that is – I came here to help.’

She looked up at him again, and, in a small theatrical gesture, she touched the wedge of lemon to her mouth to taste its sourness. She smiled and said, ‘You came here because your father asked you to come.’

‘That is correct.’

‘So don’t make yourself into an altruistic benefactor.’

Pedantically he said, ‘I came here to help because my father asked me.’

‘Not at the price of my neighbours, Pauli Winter. Do you think I could sit here waiting for footsteps on the stairs? Knowing I sent them?’

‘Not to hurt them.’

‘No, I said. You just get out of here and leave me alone.’

Pauli felt humiliated. His face went pale and he stood up to take his leave. ‘You misunderstand me,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I do.’ She looked at him. So this was the one who had come back so changed by the war. From where in the family did he get that wonderful blond hair. It made him look perpetually young. Still he was Harry’s boy. She could see Harry Winter in him – in the way he moved, the way he spoke and he had Harry’s touchiness – but it was a Harry Winter without that ruthless determination.

‘I’ll give you my office card…’ He got one from his waistcoat pocket. It had his rank and his Gestapo office on it. On the back of it, in his minute handwriting, he put ‘Frau Winter/Somló is under my protection. Contact with this office mandatory before action.’ Then he signed it and passed it to her.

She took the card without thanking him and put it into her handbag. ‘Is your mother well?’ She didn’t ring for the man, she went and got his hat and overcoat from the hall.

He took the coat and put it on. All the time he was waiting for her to change her mind. People often did.

‘She is. Thank you.’ He took the dark roll-brim hat that Inge had bought for him because it made him ‘look important’. When she’d opened the door he took Martha Somló’s hand gently, ‘Goodbye, Frau Winter.’ From upstairs came the same vocalist singing ‘Thanks for the Memory’. It was a gramophone record.

‘Goodbye, young Pauli. Don’t work too hard,’ she said.

It was another of her jokes, of course. She knew what he’d been sent to Vienna to do.

Once he’d gone her face fell. She went back into the drawing room and poured herself another cup of tea. Boris came from the kitchen and held up his cup. She poured tea for him too. ‘It’s cold. I’ll boil up more water,’ he offered.

‘This will do,’ she said.

‘So he came?’

‘Yes, he came.’ She sighed and sank down onto the chair. She wrapped the silk dressing gown across her knees, the tigers smiled contemptuously.

‘You shouldn’t have got angry, Mother. It never does any good.’

‘I know.’

‘He wanted to help.’

‘How can I be sure?’

‘Father asked him to come.’ He sat down beside her, wanting to comfort her but not being sure how to go about it.

‘I should have told him who you were,’ she said.

‘Perhaps it’s better he doesn’t know.’

She put an arm round him and kissed him on the ear. ‘Wonderful Boris. You never complain about your stupid old mother.’

He smiled and drank his tea.

‘Harry should have told him, and told Peter, too. Sometimes I wonder how Harry has kept you a secret for so long.’

1939

‘Moscow?’ said Pauli

‘Well, I said we’d do it and we have,’ said Fritz Esser rubbing his big hands together in glee. Today he was wearing another of his seemingly endless supply of new, beautifully tailored suits, but his hair was thinning so that he was almost bald at the front.

Pauli Winter faced him across the huge desk in the Ministry of the Interior, and poured out two glasses of schnapps. He seldom drank nowadays, but this was a celebration. ‘To the next Minister of the Interior,’ toasted Pauli.

Fritz Esser held his drink high. The August sunshine caught the cut glass and made it sparkle. ‘To the next Minister of the Interior,’ he said, ‘as long as it’s me.’

Both men laughed and drank. It was a good big room in the Interior Ministry. A corner room in one of the best positions in the city. From one of these two big windows there was a view of the traffic along Unter den Linden, and through the other they could see Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. Since Hitler’s fiftieth birthday in April, when the remarkable ‘East-West boulevard’ had been opened by a military parade that took four hours to pass through that gate, this had been the centre of a new, vigorous Imperial Germany. But inside the Ministry it all looked as it must have looked for many generations, with panelled walls, rich carpets and comfortable chairs. Only the formal sepia photograph of Adolf Hitler on the wall looked new.

‘The minister won’t last long,’ said Pauli, ‘and the Führer wants you in the job.’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Then the job is yours,’ said Pauli.

Esser looked round the room. ‘The Führer can’t always be relied on to say exactly what he means,’ said Esser cautiously. ‘He likes to play off one against the other. I can’t be sure he hasn’t promised the job to someone else … to Heini or Reini, for instance.’

‘They have enough on their plates,’ said Pauli. He’d got used to Fritz Esser’s calling people by their first names and knew that he meant SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich respectively. Sometimes Fritz Esser wanted everything formal: everyone addressed by rank and title. Some days, when visitors were present, Pauli was addressed as Dr Winter or just as Winter. On other days it was exactly the reverse, and Fritz would even refer to the Führer as Dolfo. ‘And now that we’re working together at last, we’ll show what we can do around here,’ said Pauli.

‘You’ll be back and forth to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, I’m afraid,’ said Esser. ‘They wanted you officially reassigned to Heydrich’s SD and given an office there in Wilhelmstrasse, but I said you’d prefer to remain as you were.’

‘I’ve been through all that with them,’ said Pauli. ‘The SD is still a party organization. Heydrich still depends on party funds. I wouldn’t like to have my future so unsure. I’ll stay with the Gestapo and get my state pension and medical insurance.’

‘Yes,’ said Esser.

‘I’m nearly forty, I have to be practical,’ said Pauli. And then, to change the subject, he said, ‘How did the meeting go?’

‘Shall I tell you something that always amazes me?’ said Esser, pouring another drink, and continuing without waiting for a reaction. ‘It’s the way everyone I meet has some secret desire to be a member of the army’s General Staff.’

‘Do they?’ said Pauli. Who, in his secret dreams, had that very notion.

‘Everyone bows and scrapes to the generals: it makes me sick.’

‘Not the SS-Reichsführer?’ said Pauli. Esser had just come from a meeting with Himmler.

‘He’s just as bad. They all treat the soldiers like little tin gods. And Heini’s latest obsession is to have his own soldier boys.’

‘He’s got them already.’

‘He wants a whole bloody army corps of his own. Then he says they’ll have to make him a member of the General Staff. “Why the hell do you want to be a member of the bloody General Staff?” I asked him.’ Esser pulled a mournful face and imitated Himmler’s high voice: ‘“You wouldn’t understand, Esser: you’re not an army man.”’ Esser laughed. ‘Silly old goat! I felt like saying he’d never been an army man, either, except for a few weeks of cadet school at the end of the war.’

‘He’s given them field-grey uniforms; the army is furious,’ said Pauli.

‘“Waffen SS”, he says he’ll call them. But that’s as far as it will get: a name. The army have already made sure that that stupid idea will come to nothing.’

‘Have they?’

‘Well, Heini can’t draft men, can he? Conscription has completely stifled any idea of an SS army. As Heini himself says, just as he gets his kids indoctrinated and trained, the army grabs them, and they’re lost to him.’

‘They can join the SS when they come out of the army,’ said Pauli.

Fritz Esser pulled a face at him. ‘When they get out of the army. If they get out of the army. Heini doesn’t want the army’s leftovers; he wants a proper army of his own. He’s quite crazy. You know how he gets these crackpot ideas, and then he can’t think of anything else.’

‘It shouldn’t be difficult to get round the problem,’ said Pauli.

‘How?’ Fritz Esser sniffed. ‘The army’s legal department keep screaming that they have the sole right to conscript men. And Heini’s been all through it with his best lawyers looking for loopholes.’

‘Best lawyers?’ said Pauli. ‘Those shysters in the SS legal department?’

‘But the army have the sole right to draft men,’ said Esser in that dogged way in which people say things they desperately hope will be contradicted.

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. ‘The army have the right to call fit men of military age into the army, but some men are exempt.’

‘Only the unfit,’ said Esser. ‘He’s been all through that.’

‘No, not only the unfit,’ insisted Pauli. ‘Policemen are exempt.’

‘You can’t run a country without a police force,’ said Esser.

Pauli smiled. ‘You’re right, but Himmler is the head of all German police forces. He could draft his policemen into this army he wants to set up, and then recruit more policemen to replace them.’

Fritz looked at him with a set expression on his face. ‘Would that be legal?’

‘More or less,’ said Pauli, his mind working on the possibilities. ‘And he could do the same thing with his concentration-camp guards. They sign up for twelve years, don’t they. He could make his five SS-Totenkopf regiments into the cadre, and form a division round that. Then he could recruit more guards for the camps.’

‘That would give him a large Totenkopf battalion plus a Polizeidivision?’ said Esser. ‘He’d almost have the SS corps he’s talking about.’ He was still doubtful. ‘You say it’s legal to do that?’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli.

‘Heini will kiss you if you’re right,’ said Esser.

‘Then tell him it’s your idea,’ said Pauli.

‘It would give him almost two divisions.’

‘Now that Czechoslovakia is no more, he could recruit in the new Reichsprotektorat and perhaps in the Slovak Republic, too. With the Volksdeutsche living there as well, he’d certainly get enough for two divisions.’

‘Volksdeutsche. That would be legal, wouldn’t it?’ Esser touched the top of his head, where his few remaining strands of hair were carefully arranged.

‘Yes, the army could hardly complain about that. The army is only permitted to recruit within the borders of Germany – they have no right to draft Germans who live in other countries.’

A sly smile had come over Fritz’s large moonlike face as he envisaged telling all this to the ambitious Himmler. ‘That’s wonderful, Pauli.’

‘Is it? I’m not sure we should be encouraging the SS-Reichsführer to encroach upon the army’s preserves.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Esser happily. ‘Let’s give him an army to organize; he needs something to do. Could you get these ideas of yours typed out into a short report, and have an appendix giving the necessary legal references. And seal it up and put it into my private safe? I don’t want some snooper reading it.’

‘If that’s what you want, Fritz, I’ll dictate it this afternoon.’

‘The end of the week will do. I’m going to the Obersalzberg for a meeting with the Führer and then, as soon as I return, I’m flying to Moscow with Ribbentrop and his gang.’

‘Moscow?’ said Pauli.

Fritz Esser winked.

Pauli smiled and decided that it was one of Fritz’s jokes, the sort of thing he said when he was going to disappear for a few days with a new girlfriend.

‘If I’m not back for Inge’s birthday, give her a big kiss and tell her that I won’t forget.’ It had always been something of a mystery to Pauli that Inge and Fritz always got along well together. She really seemed to like him, despite his rough accent, coarse manners and ribald jokes. I wish I’d seen you before Pauli here, he’d often say with a saucy wink, and give her a slap on the behind. ‘Tell her happy birthday.’

Pauli sometimes forgot the date of his wife’s birthday, so nowadays he arranged that the florist sent lots of flowers and a card every year on that date. Sometimes it proved inappropriate – for instance, the time when they went away to Italy and came back to a house filled with dead blooms. And there was another time when the flowers arrived while they were having a row.

But usually it worked well. This time he had arrived home to find carefully arranged flowers around the house and Inge in a particularly happy mood. They went to change to go out to dinner. Inge was sitting in front of the mirror in her petticoat applying make-up. She’d let her hair grow out so it was loosely curled over her ears and the nape of her neck, a more feminine style. It did need more visits to the hairdresser but they could afford such little luxuries.

Around the dressing-table mirror, birthday cards were arranged; birthday greetings from both sides of the family. The Winters always sent jewellery: this year a watch. Professor Wisliceny had sent a valuable antique vase filled with flowers. Pauli had paid the bill for her new dress, and Fritz had sent a kilo tin of Russian caviar. There were cards from everyone: even the Horners had remembered, and Peter and Lisl and Erich, too.

On the bed Inge had laid out her husband’s formal evening dress, complete with starched dress shirt and black silk socks. Pauli was searching through the chest of drawers to find all the necessary accessories: tie, pearl shirt studs, gold cuff links and the pocket watch that he’d bought after Inge told him that only waiters wore wristwatches with their evening clothes.

Inge was in her underwear – silk, black, lacy and expensive – sitting at her dressing table pencilling her eyebrows. She moved like a cat, sometimes Pauli wondered if she contrived these feline manners. On a hanger by the door was Inge’s new dress. Instead of the clinging bias-cut dresses she usually wore she had this latest fashion: double-tier full skirt with ruched bodice, low straight neckline and halter strap. Inge had spent two hours this afternoon trying on various jackets with it to see which she preferred. She was very happy. Pauli took advantage of her good will to ask a favour, ‘I’d like to invite my brother to dinner at the weekend, darling.’

‘Of course, Pauli, if that’s what you want.’

‘It might be the last time we’ll get the opportunity for some while. He’s got his cabin booked: he’s going to America.’

‘When?’

‘Next week. Grandfather sent the tickets. First class: promenade deck. The Bremen, I think it is.’

‘Is it something about Lottie?’ said Inge. It would have to be about Lottie. Peter had never adjusted to Lottie’s going to prison. Inge stood up and smoothed the petticoat over her hips while looking at her reflection. She was forty-two and regretted that her prayers about having a baby had not been answered, but at least she had a good figure, better than her younger sister Lisl, who was getting plump. ‘America. Yes, well, he’s pestered everyone in Germany about her.’ It was a cruel little jest, and she felt self-conscious as soon as she’d said it. But Inge had never really forgiven Peter for choosing Lottie in preference to her. Even though she’d got over her love for him, that feeling of injured pride and resentment remained.

Pauli said, ‘I talked with him about it last week. Grandfather will be eighty-nine this year. He still has all his faculties. He was a personal friend of Herbert Hoover. Peter is hoping that he can get the State Department to petition for Lottie’s release, on condition that she returns to live in America.’ He struggled into his stiffly starched dress shirt and started pushing the buttons through the buttonholes. It wasn’t easy.

‘Would Peter live there?’ Inge had never been able to cope with foreign languages, and the idea of living anywhere other than Germany was appalling to her.

‘If Lottie was there, yes. I encouraged him. He stands a better chance of doing things at diplomatic-corps level. Getting someone out of prison through regular channels is impossible. The Ministry of Justice will never cooperate with us. I told Peter even the SS-Reichsführer can’t get prisoners out of prison. I know, I’ve seen him try.’

‘Who did the Reichsführer want to release?’ said Inge always keen for the latest gossip.

Pauli had the shirt on and the cuff links done up. He began trying to get the stiff collar onto the back stud. The effort, with his arms twisted round his head, made him puff. He was terribly out of condition. He decided to take more exercise, starting next Monday. ‘Release? No one. I’m talking about when we’ve tried to get people out of prisons to send them to concentration camps. People the SS particularly dislike.’

Inge nodded gravely before lifting the dress above her head and letting it slide down over her, careful not to disarrange hair or make-up. ‘Is he taking Helena?’

‘Yes, I arranged the travel documents.’

Inge’s head emerged from the dress and she said, ‘She’s only twelve: thirteen in September.’

‘Lottie’s mother and everyone will want to see her. And the sea voyage will do her good. She’s not been too well, lately. She’s never really got over having her mother taken away.’

‘Poor child,’ said Inge. ‘How could Lottie have been so irresponsible. And the way Peter sits around moping all the time doesn’t help anyone.’

‘Peter works hard,’ said Pauli.

‘He’s in that apartment playing the piano half the night. He doesn’t eat properly, and his work is neglected. The other directors only keep him on the board because your Papa founded the company.’

Pauli corrected her. ‘They keep him on the board because Peter knows more about running those companies than all the others put together.’

‘He’s lucky they didn’t force him to resign when he married Lottie.’

Pauli laughed, sometimes his wife got carried away. ‘They’d hardly do that, darling. That’s years before Hitler came to power.’

‘Isn’t he frightened there might be a war?’ said Inge. ‘He’d be trapped in America.’

‘There’ll be no war,’ said Pauli. ‘Peter knows that: everyone knows that.’

‘The Poles will never give in about the corridor,’ said Inge. ‘I know what the Poles are like.’

‘Leave it to the Führer,’ said Pauli. ‘The Austrians gave way, the Czechs gave way. We occupied Memel. Who will help the Poles if they fight us?’

‘The British.’

For the fourth time he tried to do up the bow tie and again it was uneven. He tugged it undone again. ‘Don’t be silly, Inge. How can the British do anything? Look at the map and see for yourself.’

‘And France. France could attack the Western Front, as they did last time. Look at the map for yourself,’ she replied rudely, she hated to be treated as if a woman’s opinion was of no account.

‘Come here, Inge, and I’ll tell you a secret. A real secret this time.’ He went to the door and looked to make sure that the maid’s room was unoccupied. It was her evening off but you couldn’t be too careful. ‘Fritz just flew back from Moscow. He was a special plenipotentiary from the Führer, sent to keep an eye on that fool Ribbentrop. A pact will be signed: Stalin has agreed to everything. Poland will be split down the middle, one-half for Russia and one-half for us.’

‘A pact with Stalin?’ Inge almost dropped the earring she was holding.

‘You’re surprised, aren’t you. And think how surprised the French and the British will be. The Führer will announce it just before our troops move across the frontier. The Western powers will all be too terrified to do anything. They are worms! The Führer said that himself. “Our opponents are little worms,” he told the generals. “Close your hearts to pity. Proceed brutally.”’

‘What did he mean?’ said Inge.

‘I don’t know,’ said Pauli, ‘but he knows how to talk to the generals. Someone has to put some guts into them.’ He abandoned the bow tie and took the shoe horn to put his patent-leather shoes on. It was such a business dressing up, but Inge liked it.

‘With Stalin? A pact?’ said Inge. She simply couldn’t come to terms with the idea. Everyone knew that the Russians were bestial sub-humans and that Stalin was the devil incarnate.

‘Fritz said they were received in Moscow with open arms. Not just the usual diplomatic exchanges – such celebrations that he could hardly believe it. Drink, caviar, wonderful food. Parties going on until the morning, and the Russians embracing our people like long-lost brothers. Stalin toasted the Führer’s health. Fritz said the Russians were wonderful: it was just like being with old Nazi Party comrades.’

‘You didn’t tell Peter all this?’

‘Fritz only got back last night.’ He loosened the laces fully and slipped the shoes on.

‘Did you ask Fritz about time off in September?’

‘Our vacation on the Obersalzberg?’ He stood up and stamped, first one foot, then the other.

‘If we leave it too late, the Führer won’t be there. It’s so much more exciting when he’s there.’

She meant, of course, that she wanted another of those invitations to tea. Usually Bormann would arrange for the Winters to be included, but last year Bormann had taken Pauli aside and asked him about buying his house. He said the Führer wanted to acquire the whole hillside, which was now being referred to as the Führergebiet. The process had been going on since 1933. Bormann was ruthless: some of the houses had been obtained by threats, and others had been seized. Inge was appalled at the idea of losing their holiday home. She had decided to take the Führer aside and talk to him about it, and Pauli dreaded the thought of such a conversation. Inge sometimes went too far. And on the subject of their country house – and its proximity to the Führer’s Berghof – Inge felt passionate. How would she ever be able to tell Lisl that they no longer had that wonderful status symbol?

‘I can’t see how I’ll get my desk cleared, darling. The Führer has sent this damned note about euthanasia to Philip Bouhler – head of Chancellery – and it’s landed on my desk.’

‘Why your desk, darling?’ She lifted her skirt very high to adjust her suspender belt. Pauli watched her. She saw him looking at her and smiled.

‘Fritz was with Reichsführer Himmler. He offered to take it over. And when Fritz takes on some task, I do it.’

‘How tiresome.’ She stroked her silk stockings and straightened the seams.

‘There’s no one to help.’

‘It can’t take the whole month, Pauli. If we could get away by Saturday September 9…’ She let the new dress fall properly, and it looked fine. She twisted her head to see the back in the mirror.

Speaking to Inge’s reflection, Pauli said, ‘Darling, be reasonable. The Führer’s ordered that all the chronically insane and incurables in Germany must be put to death. And it’s to be done by SS doctors. Can you imagine how much work that’s going to make for me?’

‘Not a whole month.’ She went to him and kissed him on the tip of his nose – or, rather, almost kissed him, so she didn’t leave her lipstick mark. Then she effortlessly did up his bow tie.

Pauli was indignant. His wife didn’t seem to understand how hard he worked. He reached for his jacket. ‘Just for a start: I’m going to have to draw up some sort of legal definition of what is incurable, and what is insane.’

‘Surely it should be obvious,’ said Inge petulantly.

‘It’s no good my telling the doctors that it should be obvious,’ said Pauli. He shook his cuffs out of his jacket and then straightened up to look at himself in the mirror. He could do with a new dinner suit: a bigger one. ‘They’ll want me to put a definition in writing. How do I do that? I’ve had no medical training.’

‘I didn’t think of that,’ said Inge.

‘No, exactly,’ said Pauli somewhat mollified. ‘People say these things without realizing what’s involved at the administration end. Incurable – what’s that mean? Someone might have a pain in the ass that’s incurable: does that mean I get Fritz to sign an order for the man to die, just because some doctor says he can’t cure it? And there is the task of setting up euthanasia centres. The first one will be at Schloss Hartheim, near Linz, but one won’t be enough. It will be a lot of work finding suitable buildings and equipping them. Someone will have to do a lot of travelling. I just hope it won’t be me. Then we’ll have to explain it carefully to the SS doctors, so they don’t start complaining. These damned doctors stick together. Suppose they all said they didn’t want to do it?’

‘Poor darling,’ said Inge, going to him to put an arm round his waist and hug him. ‘The doctors won’t mind doing it if it’s what the Führer wants.’ She could see he’d become agitated and decided to return to the subject of his annual leave after dinner. He would be in a better mood after dinner. Perhaps she’d wait till they were in bed.

Pauli grunted and studied himself in the mirror.

‘So how long will Peter be gone?’ she said to change the subject.

‘He’ll have to go to California and see Lottie’s mother. And Mama has made him promise to make the rounds of all the Rensselaer family. She feels guilty about not going back herself, I suppose. Papa insists that Peter take a good long rest, because he hasn’t had a break for so long. I doubt if he’ll be back much before Christmas.’

‘Do you think he’ll really get her out of prison?’

‘I didn’t think so at first. But you know what Peter is like: he’s been writing to Grandad and Uncle Glenn. Uncle Glenn has good contacts in the State Department. They both seemed quite hopeful, but they say they can’t do anything without more details. They insist he go in person. They say that a personal approach to the right people in Washington would make a lot of difference.’

‘And Peter speaks good English.’

‘Oh, yes, no problem there, completely fluent. Much better than mine.’ He smiled as he remembered something. ‘Grandad used to dislike Peter. I remember Peter kicking him when we were tiny. But now the old man has decided that Peter is the one he likes. I’m the bad Nazi.’ He chuckled at the thought of it. ‘Bad Nazi. He actually said “bad Nazi”.’

‘Peter told you that?’

‘Peter’s mail is intercepted, Inge darling. All of it is opened. Anyone with a wife in prison for crimes against the state can’t write letters to overseas addresses without our seeing what it’s about.’

‘Did you arrange that?’ She held up to herself first the earrings and then the gold necklace. One or the other, she decided, not both.

‘No, a wretch named Steiner, an old cop, arranged that I saw the interceptions. He’s the one who arrested Lottie. He does me a favour every now and again, but he makes sure that for every favour he does for me, I do two or three for him. I thought I’d got rid of him when I went into Fritz’s new department, but he still comes and finds me.’

She decided on the necklace. Gold always looked good: it was rich but discreetly so. ‘What sort of favours?’ She looked at Pauli. He seemed to be ready, too. For once they’d arrive at the restaurant on time. They were going to Medvedj, her favourite Russian restaurant; it seemed an appropriate choice after hearing Pauli’s amazing news.

‘Nothing that takes me more than a moment. I shouldn’t complain, I suppose. Signatures on protective-custody orders and that sort of thing. Usually things he couldn’t get past his own superior. He waits an opportunity and then brings them up to me.’ He shrugged. ‘They settle old scores that way. People they don’t like disappear.’

‘You should send him after Brand,’ said Inge flippantly. She twirled to let Pauli admire the lovely new dress he’d bought her.

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. ‘I should send him after Brand.’

1940

The sound stage

‘Folks around these parts said I was nuts…’ said Mrs Nita Danziger. She let the sentence tail away. She obviously wasn’t nuts, there was no need to say so. She’d been relating the story of returning alone to California from Berlin after the Wall Street crash had impoverished her. ‘Simon’s stockbroker advised me to do exactly the opposite. He said to sell my shares in the movie company and hold on to the house. My lawyers said the same thing. But I’d had enough of their advice by that time. From here on I play things my way, I told them, and…’

‘And you did,’ said Glenn Rensselaer. Like so many people talking to Nita Danziger, he felt the need to finish her sentences for her. ‘But you’re still living here,’ he said. He moved his shoulders to get some air on his body: his lightweight clothes were sticking to him. He’d never get used to this sort of weather. Her ‘ranch house’ was on a hill, but on windless days like this the thermometer soared.

She smiled and got up to close the flyscreen and wedge open the door so that there would be a movement of air. There were two large electric fans going, but her visitor was obviously uncomfortable. It was September, the first heavy rainstorms had come out of the Pacific Ocean and passed, leaving clear skies and hot sunshine. Nita Danziger seemed unaffected by the heat. She was dressed in a brown shirt and an English wool sweater with pearls. Her hair was perfectly arranged, as if she’d just come from the hairdresser. ‘Sure I bought the old place back again. I paid nearly double for it, but it was worth it. This house holds a million memories for me. Memories like that…’

For a few minutes they didn’t speak. They’d known each other a long time. Her late husband – Simon Danziger – had known Glenn’s father for ages, but for a very long time there had been an insurmountable barrier between them. The Danzigers had set their minds on Lottie’s marrying a Jewish boy. They blamed Glenn for encouraging the marriage with Peter Winter. Now Nita, although only a stepmother, and despite her affection for Peter, still felt bitter about the tragedy that had come of that marriage. Perhaps that’s why she persisted in calling him ‘Mr’.

‘Your hunch was right,’ said Glenn.

‘I’ve always been crazy about movies, Mr Rensselaer. And those young fellows at the studios were making the kind of movies I like. My lawyer called them “trashy” and maybe he was right but folks have a right to see trashy movies if they like them. And I like them.’

‘So you sold the house and bought more movie shares.’

‘They were so cheap. One of the partners took a beating in the crash, the way so many of us did. He preferred to sell his holding to me….’

‘You did everything right, Mrs Danziger.’

‘There were some tough decisions. Remember that trip on the Graf Zeppelin? That day we sat talking? I’m glad I didn’t know what I was about to go through.’ She tried to pour coffee for him, but the pot was empty. ‘More coffee?’

‘No thanks, Mrs Danziger.’

‘I guess you didn’t visit with me to hear all this old family history. You came to see Peter.’

‘It’s good to see you again,’ said Glenn. He’d called on Mrs Danziger before going to see Peter. There was something he wanted to find out.

‘Like I told you on the phone, he’s settled down real well now, but it hasn’t been easy for him.’

‘It’s a year since he left Berlin.’

‘No one could have figured on little Helena’s being sick.’

‘Has the war made a difference to him?’ asked Glenn.

‘The war with England? Sure. It shook us all, didn’t it? But now that France has surrendered they say it will soon be possible to get to Germany via Portugal.’

‘The British navy have a blockade,’ said Glenn.

‘Peter went through all that with the German consul. He said it wasn’t something Peter should try along with a sick little girl.’

‘I’d say that’s good advice,’ said Glenn.

‘The German consul said he should wait until the British surrender, too.’

Glenn would not be drawn into that kind of speculation. He said, ‘I’m hoping that Peter will stay on here. Do you know his plans?’

‘He’s reconciled to staying here through Christmas. The doctor said Helena wouldn’t be fit to travel before then.’

‘You see,’ said Glenn, having decided to enlist Mrs Danziger’s aid. ‘I’m hoping he’ll stay longer than that. Lottie will be released from prison in 1942, and the American ambassador in Berlin has been told – unofficially – that she’ll certainly be deported. Where will that leave Peter? He’s a German citizen: I can’t imagine the Nazis will let him go with her. They might even draft him into the navy; he still has a reserve commission, I guess.’

‘He worries about Lottie. He worries about her all the time.’

‘He must stay here in America,’ said Glenn. ‘Even if Peter goes back to Berlin, he won’t be with Lottie.’

‘That’s easy to say, Mr Rensselaer. But it’s only natural that Peter should want to be near her. He loves her to distraction. It’s pitiful to see him sometimes. It’s only work that’s helped him through the last few months.’

‘I need to know if he expresses any opinion about the Nazis. Don’t think I’m snooping on him. But if I’m to help him I need to know his state of mind. Does he feel he should be back in Germany fighting the British? That’s what I need to know.’

‘He doesn’t like Hitler and the Nazis. That’s something I am sure about.’

‘Are you, Mrs Danziger?’

‘Yes, I am sure.’ He’d never heard her so resolute. She stood up to adjust the fan. ‘I’m a Jew, Mr Rensselaer. I’ll do anything you suggest that might prevent my little Helena from going back to Nazi Germany.’

Glenn Rensselaer looked at his watch. ‘Peter is giving me a tour of the studio so I mustn’t be late.’

‘Peter Winter is a fine man, Mr Rensselaer.’

‘I know.’ He indicated the parcel he’d been carrying. ‘I brought a little gift for Helena. She probably has enough dolls already, but…’

‘No little girls have enough dolls,’ said Nita Danziger. ‘I’ll get her.’

While Mrs Danziger went to get Peter’s daughter, Glenn looked round the room. It never changed. After buying the house for a second time, she’d restored it to exactly what it had been like before. There was a certain absurdity in such dedication, for the house had never been tastefully arranged or even very comfortable. It was a gloomy place, built for a silent-movie star back in the days when any Hollywood star living out here in Ventura County was considered an eccentric recluse. The house had a Western motif: leather bar-stools, like saddles, arranged down a long counter that was said to have come from an authentic cowboy bar in Deadwood City, or some such remote place that the movies had invested with a mythological significance. On the walls were paintings depicting scenes from the Old West and half a dozen dusty decapitated heads of longhorn steers. They glowered myopically across the room, as if resenting the prospect of being castrated and cut into steaks.

‘You remember your uncle Glenn,’ Mrs Danziger prompted.

Helena was almost fourteen years old, a shy little girl with Peter’s pale-blue Rensselaer eyes and her mother’s wavy jet-black hair. ‘Of course I do,’ said Helena confidently. She came to him and kissed him sedately.

‘I brought you a doll. Do you still play with dolls?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I hear you’ve been sick.’

‘I’m going to school again now,’ she said. She had the careful almost accentless voice of the language student, and her phrases seemed to have been adopted whole from the speech of the grownups around her.

‘Well, that’s great,’ said Glenn.

‘Just three mornings a week,’ said Nita Danziger. ‘Next month maybe she’ll start dancing class.’

‘Do you like dancing?’ said Glenn.

‘I want to be a dancer,’ said Helena.

Glenn smiled. Nita Danziger had been a dancer in her younger days. He suspected that the motivation came from her. He gave Helena the doll. It wasn’t much of a present: a blank-faced ballerina he’d bought hurriedly in a downtown department store. And it was obvious that she considered herself too old for such things.

‘It’s perfectly lovely,’ she said politely and cuddled the doll.

‘Your English is wonderful,’ said Glenn.

‘My accent is swell, but my grammar needs working on.’

‘She studies very hard at it,’ said Mrs Danziger approvingly.

‘Have you been to Europe lately?’ Helena asked.

‘Yup!’

‘Did you see my mommy?’

‘Maybe next time,’ said Glenn awkwardly.

‘She’s serving a sentence in prison,’ said Helena.

‘That’s a kind of misunderstanding,’ said Glenn.

‘She’s a victim of the Nazis,’ said Helena. ‘That’s what I told the girls at school.’

‘What did they say?’ said Glenn.

‘They said she was a spy.’

‘What did you tell them.’

‘I said yes, she was,’ said Helena and in a sophisticated aside added. ‘It was better to say that. The girls at school thought that was exciting.’

‘Well, keep working on the English,’ said Glenn, looking at his watch again. ‘I have to go and see your father now.’

‘Thank you for the doll, Uncle Glenn. It was very thoughtful of you.’ She gave a stately bow.

‘Sure,’ said Glenn.

To anyone who’d not seen a movie studio before it was all quite staggering. Right in the centre of the San Fernando Valley, amid orange groves that seemed to reach as far as the San Gabriel Mountains, there were these three great buildings, each as high as a city block and almost as extensive. These were the sound stages, and each had cost half a million dollars. Behind them were almost a hundred acres of land: ponds, hills, a Western street and the derelict rear half of a gigantic Spanish galleon complete with sails that were now shredded and stained. On the back lot, the filming that had been abandoned because of the rain was now resumed, and a posse of bandits galloped through the street there for the mute camera.

The big red lights on the wall went out, and two men emerged from the building upon which the words ‘Stage Two’ had been painted in huge letters. Despite the arc-lit stage from which they’d come, the two men were blinking in the even brighter sunlight. Glenn Rensselaer had not changed much over the years, but a year in the United States had completely transformed his nephew Peter. He’d spent a couple of weeks with Cy Rensselaer and Dot, but it was when he got to California that he felt reborn. Forty-four years old, he looked at least ten years younger. His hair was short, trimmed close to the skull the way the local college boys liked it these days, with a short-sleeved open-neck white shirt and bright-blue-and-white-striped trousers with white canvas shoes. Peter’s face and arms were tanned, and he no longer seemed so self-conscious about his crippled hand.

‘I certainly am glad you showed me around, Peter. I’ve never seen a movie being shot before.’

‘This will be the studio’s first large-scale Technicolor musical,’ said Peter. ‘It’s a big investment and we don’t want too many people in the industry knowing exactly what we’re doing.’ He looked at his uncle. He’d guessed that Glenn was bringing news about Lottie, but he didn’t press him. Glenn had this strange need to get himself prepared for important conversations, and Peter knew that.

‘You already talk like a movie executive,’ said Glenn.

‘That’s what I am,’ said Peter. ‘Thanks to my father-in-law. I wish I’d known poor Simon Danziger better. He must have had an amazing business brain.’

‘Really?’ said Glenn.

‘He sold these orange groves to the movie company, and kept a large piece of the equity. How many people saw what profits were going to come from movie-making? And that was back in the days of silent films. What foresight! Mrs Danziger is a very rich woman now.’

Glenn looked at his nephew and decided that there was nothing to be gained from telling him how his father-in-law’s fiscal recklessness had led to despair and suicide, that his ownership of the stock in the movie company was due only to the buyer’s lack of liquidity. ‘Yeah,’ said Glenn. ‘It worked out real well for her.’

A small electric tractor went buzzing past them, towing a train containing racks filled with eighteenth-century costumes: crinolines, naval uniforms and other gorgeous garments of doubtful historical accuracy. ‘Some of the studios are switching to war movies,’ said Peter, ‘but we’re sticking to what they call “escapism” here.’ He laughed at the strange word.

‘So I see.’

‘When they asked me to become a vice president, I knew it was only because of Mrs Danziger’s holdings,’ said Peter. ‘But since then I’ve saved them from some bad mistakes. They were going to sell the old studio in Culver City, but I persuaded them to lease it to a company that will build offices there. We did very well on the lease. I believe that real-estate values in the Los Angeles region will soar in value one day. And I went into the contract department and found that no one working there speaks any foreign languages. No one! So I sorted out their European distribution contracts. Can you believe that when the war began they were talking about cutting their losses and withdrawing from the European market? In fact, of course, the war has meant more and more people going to the movies. Soldiers, factory workers, refugees and evacuated people – the movies are their only entertainment. And the Rensselaer brothers have been wonderful. Having the support of the bank made me indispensable.’ Peter smiled.

‘And now you’re writing tunes.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Nita Danziger. She showed me the publicity with your name on it.’

Peter smiled modestly. ‘They let me try my hand when they needed music urgently. One or two numbers have been popular.’

They looked up at the sound of aircraft engines. Overhead four brightly painted naval biplanes flew in a wobbly formation. ‘Trainers,’ said Glenn.

‘That’s why the sound stages were built,’ said Peter. ‘Planes didn’t matter in the old days of silent movies.’

‘I’d say you’ve become an American,’ said Glenn.

Peter answered literally, as he always did. ‘I am going to take out papers. Helena is at school. She has private English lessons and she manages the language very well. It has taken her a long time to learn that English has so few rules. One of the Rensselaers has a son born the same year as Helena, and they seem to like each other. When Lottie comes out of Germany we’ll live here. I haven’t said that to anyone but you, Glenn. But I have made up my mind.’ It was fitting that he should confide his secret first to Glenn Rensselaer. During the time they’d spent in Washington they’d become very close. Peter had been touched to discover how hard and how long his uncle had worked trying to get Lottie released.

‘But you’re happy?’

‘If Lottie was with me I’d be in paradise.’ He looked at Glenn. Now surely he would tell him what was happening about getting Lottie released.

‘The reason I’m asking you, Peter, is because I’d like you to come to Washington.’

‘What is the latest news about Lottie?’

‘This isn’t about Lottie exactly. Except that it’s about thousands of Lotties, I suppose.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You saw the newsreel of the German army’s victory march through Paris. The news agencies say a German invasion fleet is massing along the Channel coast. There are people in Washington, plenty of people, who are convinced that the British are not going to be able to last much longer.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you feel about that, Peter?’

‘Hitler will have to be stopped. He’s a madman.’

‘Stopped or defeated?’

‘What do you mean, Glenn?’

‘We all want to see Hitler stopped, but now it looks like the only way to stop him is to defeat him. That means defeating Germany: shooting bullets, dropping bombs, sinking ships and killing Germans. What I mean is, how far will you go in stopping him?’

‘I have already given your question a great deal of thought. I want Hitler stopped. You tell me that the only way to stop him is to defeat Germany. I think you are right. My poor Fatherland will have to suffer defeat all over again. I cry for them.’

‘There are people in Washington who think that the U.S. will have to fight, too. Soon, perhaps.’ They moved well aside for a truck delivering fully grown trees for the next sequences of the western being shot on the back lot.

‘Against Germany?’

‘Yes, against Germany. Our intelligence-collecting organization is more or less useless. We know nothing about Germany except what the embassy sends us, and that’s not much. The President has now authorized the formation of a secret intelligence outfit. Even Congress doesn’t know about us. Our state of ignorance is such that only by employing people like yourself, who’ve recently come from Germany, can we be ready to train our youngsters.’

‘And you want me to join?’ They’d arrived at Glenn’s car, a big V–8 Cadillac with air conditioning and all the extras that only Cadillacs have.

‘There’s not much money in it. No uniforms, badges, or medals. We’d probably be able to get your citizenship through more quickly – although even that I can’t promise – and I can offer you only the salary of a U.S. army major. But we are a rather informal group of warriors. If you wanted to take the American bar exams, I could get you tuition and time out. I might be able to arrange for you to come back here and dabble in your movie-making every few months. And we’d give you travel expenses: airplane, not that damned train.’

‘You Americans are a strange people, Glenn.’

‘Yeah, so I’ve heard.’ He got in the car and brought down the electric window so they could talk. Now he would tell him about Lottie. This was the way Uncle Glenn always did things.

Peter leaned down to him. ‘And I am very German. The idea of being an officer in an army run in such a fashion that its officers are civilians when they prefer it, is more than I can comprehend.’

‘So what do you say?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Peter.

Glenn let in the clutch so that the car started to move. It was only then that Peter finally realized there was as yet no news of her. He felt physically sick with disappointment.

1941

‘It was on the radio’

Lottie had fought the system. She’d not been insolent or disobedient: she’d fought the prison routine by not submitting to it. She went out of her way to be friendly and helpful to the other prisoners. She laughed and joked and kept smiling in the way her father had said you keep smiling in the face of rudeness or hostility. But she’d been in prison a long time now and she was getting tired. And today it was hot; damned hot. The sort of day to go sailing, swimming or sunbathing on Berlin’s wonderful lakes.

‘You get used to it. That’s the trouble,’ said the plump woman.

‘No talking!’ The loud voice of the prison guard echoed across the cobbled yard as the four prisoners walked smartly and quickly, as regulations prescribed, towards the kitchen. It was hot and humid; the women felt sticky in their clothes. Everything was tiring.

Once they were delivered to the warder in the kitchen, and the door was locked behind them, discipline relaxed. The big kitchen was like nowhere else in the whole prison. Only here was there daylight in abundance; sunlight streamed down through the skylight and made all the spotlessly clean wooden tables and the steaming pots gleam and shine. But even with the skylights wide open, the air was hotter and wetter here than anywhere else in the whole prison.

‘What do you mean?’ said Lottie to the buxom woman who’d been reprimanded in the yard.

‘Prison. You get to depend on it. You never have to think for yourself: just obey orders.’

‘But that’s just what it’s like outside,’ said Lottie.

The woman did not smile. She was an enthusiastic Nazi and did not hold against them her imprisonment for being an abortionist. The fact that her last patient had died from infection was bad luck. It was something to be blamed on fate or God or the careless young soldier – nothing to do with the police, the court, or the Nazis.

‘Which of you two made the goulash yesterday?’ This woman was a Female Police Auxiliary, a neurotic, fidgety individual who took great pride in her smart police-green uniform with the small side cap that she wore perched on her forehead.

‘I did,’ said Lottie.

‘Come with me.’ She was a stern-faced woman of about forty but she was not unfriendly. She’d told Lottie the previous day that her husband was a tank gunner with a division stationed in occupied Poland, far away from the war against England, and she thanked God for that.

She took off her uniform jacket and arranged it on a hanger before putting on her white apron. Then she led Lottie into the bread store and started her weighing up the ingredients for 1,220 Leberknödel. ‘Half these girls in here can’t read or write,’ she complained.

Lottie smiled and said nothing. The woman’s eyes were reddened, as if she’d been crying.

‘I can’t trust them to weigh ingredients.’ She watched Lottie putting breadcrumbs into a box to weight them on the scales. There would not be much liver in the ‘Bavarian liver dumplings’, they’d be bread and garlic with some chopped fat, the way they’d been since the war began in 1939.

‘Is everything all right for you at home?’ said Lottie in her fluent but imperfect German.

The woman corrected Lottie’s grammar, in a flat, fast automatic way, without seeming to notice she was doing so. ‘Yes, everything is in order,’ she added.

Lottie continued the weighing in silence. Then the woman looked round the storeroom furtively and said, ‘We’ve invaded Russia!’

‘What?’ said Lottie.

‘They told us not to tell the prisoners.’ The woman picked up a measure and started shovelling the crumbs.

‘Are you sure?’ Lottie wondered if she’d misunderstood the German. She did sometimes.

‘It was on the radio. Fanfares every few minutes. Dr Goebbels read the Führer’s proclamation over all stations this morning. It’s the biggest offensive in the history of the world.’ The woman had been dying to tell someone; you could tell that by the way she said it.

‘Russia!’ said Lottie, trying to understand what it meant.

‘At dawn this morning. My Karl will be in the thick of it. The tanks always are.’ Her fears were tinged with pride. The propaganda service had singled out the Panzer divisions for special praise since the victories in France the previous year.

‘I’m sure he’ll be safe,’ said Lottie.

‘We have four children,’ said the woman. There was sweat on her brow. ‘Four, seven, ten and thirteen. I couldn’t manage without Karl.’ She kept on shovelling the crumbs, working fast, as if trying to set Lottie a good example.

‘You mustn’t worry,’ said Lottie.

‘Army Group Centre,’ said the woman mechanically. ‘Second Armoured Group. By Christmas they say they’ll be in Moscow.’

Lottie looked down and saw that the distraught woman had been tipping the breadcrumbs onto the floor.

‘Yes, Heil Hitler, Colonel Weizsäcker’

It was December. The isolated little farm was half buried under deep drifts of snow, and yet still more snow came. Inside the dark farmhouse a small group of staff officers stood round a kitchen table, stamping their feet and slapping themselves to keep warm while they awaited the arrival of their Divisional commander. It was daylight outside, but the windows had been boarded up in an attempt to keep out the cruel Russian winds. The talk was about the 258th Infantry Division, which had got a reconnaissance battalion as far as the Moscow suburb of Khimki.

‘One of the soldiers went to the streetcar stop and picked up a ticket. He’s been showing it to everyone.’ The signals captain spoke loudly because of the noise of the wind.

‘There’ll be plenty of streetcar tickets for everyone when we get there,’ growled Colonel Weizsäcker, who after the recent casualties had become the senior officer of this detached ‘battle group’.

‘They weren’t there long,’ said a captain from the panzer regiment showing a perverse pride in his weaponry. ‘The Russki tanks pushed them out right away.’ He touched his nose. It was frostbitten. He must find the doctor immediately the conference ended. He hoped he wouldn’t lose it the way some of the frostbitten soldiers had lost toes, fingers and noses. There was something not suitably heroic about going home with a nose missing due to frostbite.

‘This is Moscow,’ said Weizsäcker. ‘They’ll fight harder for Moscow. We all know that.’

They heard the sentry shuffle to attention in the snow outside, and then there was a flash of light as the door opened and the general appeared, like a demon king in a children’s pantomime.

The officers came to attention and saluted. They were all a little afraid of General Alexander Horner. He was tall and slim, an intimidating figure with a tight-skinned skull-like face, and a sabre scarred cheek. The sort of Prussian officer they used to see depicted in political cartoons in the time when such cartoons were permitted.

The general had been off somewhere in his half-track vehicle. God knows where he went on these jaunts, he took no one with him, and asking his driver was useless. Young Winkel was the son of one of the general’s first war comrades, and treated everything the general did as a military secret.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. Have we received the situation reports yet?’ He took off his helmet and fastidiously knocked snow from the shoulders of his greatcoat.

‘The radio is kaputt, Herr General!’ The frightened young boy who was crouched in the far corner looked up at him as if terrified of being blamed.

‘Have you tried other crystals?’ Horner had to shout: the wind was louder now, screaming like a thousand banshees, and there was the steady thump of the generator, too. The light was inadequate but there was enough to see the maps, the throbbing generator and the cables linking it to the lights and radio. And enough light to see the splashes and stains along the wall where animals had been tethered, and the dirt floor that probably stank when it wasn’t so cold. It was hard to believe that humans lived in such squalor alongside their animals, but there was a rough wooden rack on the wall, bunks in which six Russian peasants had slept.

‘I’ve tried most of them, Herr General.’

Horner glanced down at the blank message pad. Only the date had been filled in there. December 6 1941. Not much chance now of fulfilling that toast – Christmas Day in Moscow – that that fool Weizsäcker had proposed back in June, when the German armies moved forward. ‘Keep trying.’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

General Alex Horner turned back to the other officers who were standing round the table. They were all bundled up into every stitch of clothing they possessed. Some of them had also found, bought, or stolen civilian clothes – scarves, knitted gloves and sweaters. What a sight they were, more like a rabble of refugees than German officers. Horner looked at the map and continued to stare at it for a long, long time. He closed his eyes. He was becoming hypnotized by the map, obsessed with it. He’d seen the same thing happen in the first war, commanders just staring at maps, frozen as a driver or pilot freezes at the controls, incapable of thinking a rational thought or giving a sensible command. He pushed the map aside angrily. Without proper reports from his headquarters, and contact with the front-line positions, the map was useless.

‘Do you have despatch riders who know the HQs, Colonel?’

‘Yes, Herr General.’ Of course he did – he wasn’t a complete blockhead.

‘We’ll pull back as far as the river.’

‘Everyone, Herr General?’

‘No, not everyone. A rearguard will remain. One of your rifle regiments should be enough.’

‘Yes, Herr General.’ Colonel Weizsäcker was too inexperienced. He’d thought that they’d be marching into the Kremlin by now, the way – as a captain – Weizsäcker had led his company into Paris, smiling at the pretty girls and keeping an eye open for a suitable restaurant to eat in that evening. Well, this one wasn’t like that.

Horner went to the window and found a narrow gap in the boards through which to squint. The artillery fire continued all the time, and the flickering light of it made the dark-grey sky lighten along the horizon. Yesterday the thermometer had gone down to thirty-two degrees below zero, but today was even colder. It was damned dark; he looked at his watch hardly able to believe that it was eleven o’clock in the morning. The whole landscape was grey with snow. It wasn’t like the snow he’d known as a child in East Prussia, or like the snow he’d pushed down Pauli Winter’s neck at Lichterfelde on the day when they went up a class and received their bayonets. This wasn’t the sort of snow he’d galloped Pola through at Bernau near Berlin. This snow was grey: ask any of the thousands of German soldiers who were out there frozen to death under that stuff. Ask the pinched, blue-faced sentry standing here at the farmhouse door with his feet wrapped up in huge bundles of straw in the hope that his toes wouldn’t come off with his boots. Ask any of the shivering men who were still in their summer uniforms, because winter uniforms were in short supply, or the luckier ones nearer the supply depots, who were now discovering that the German-issue winter clothing was never intended for these arctic temperatures.

He came back to the table and tried to see the map with a fresh eye. Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch had suffered a heart attack and had requested that he be relieved. Well it wasn’t difficult to see why. The armies round Moscow were in a damned perilous position, and German soldiers were simply not trained or equipped for fighting, or even existing, in these conditions.

‘Supply troops first, Herr General?’

‘No,’ said Horner. He paused as the reciprocating engine of the generator missed a beat or two and the bulb went dull yellow and then orange and red before going out completely. For a moment it was dark, the interior lit only by slatted beams of light that came through the boarded window. Then the engine picked up and the light brightened. Horner said, ‘We must assume we’ll have to fight our way through.’

‘Fight to our rear, Herr General?’

‘Look for yourself,’ he said tonelessly. ‘No radio messages from the second panzer regiment or from the engineers. Then the rifle-regiment headquarters also goes silent. What do you make of it? Look for yourself, Colonel.’ It all made sense. He’d felt the front tightening over the last few days. All patrols and reconaissance units had been repulsed with unusual promptness: he should have guessed what was coming, and might have done so, except that Fourth Army intelligence kept insisting that the Red Army had nothing left to fight with. Nothing!

‘Damn these radios,’ said Colonel Weizsäcker. He was puzzled. Had the Russians used some secret weapon to render the radio useless, or was it this terrible weather.

‘Don’t you understand?’ said Horner. ‘Look, man. Look!’ He lifted his arm and slowly brought it down upon the map so that all the silent positions were covered. They were silent because all the units, including the headquarters troops were on the move. The alternative explanation for their silence was too terrible to contemplate.

‘My God!’ said the colonel. The other officers said nothing. They were youngsters, except for a couple of old men from the Reserve. Perhaps they didn’t fully understand what it meant. But Weizsäcker understood: he’d been in France in 1940. That’s what Guderian had done to the French.

To eliminate any possibility of a misunderstanding, Horner said, ‘The Russians have launched an attack and sliced right through our front.’

‘In this weather? It’s not possible.’

‘They’re probably using sledges: sledge-borne infantry, sledge-mounted artillery and ski troops reinforcing Cossack divisions.’ Weizsäcker made no response. ‘Making for the river,’ said Horner. He had no evidence to support this assertion, but he knew it was right.

‘Jesus Christ! Begging the general’s pardon.’

‘The Almighty is fully occupied right now,’ said Horner grimly. ‘We must save what we can, and try and reform along the riverbank here.’ He shouldn’t have used the word ‘try’. He must be positive, assertive and confident. ‘Reform along here, fight and die holding the line.’

Colonel Weizsäcker glanced at his general, surprised by this dramatic prose style. ‘The bridges are here …and here,’ said the colonel, pointing to another section of the river.

Horner nodded. ‘Yes, we’ll send the Feldgendarmerie to the bridges.’ He paused. He had no military police. He was exhausted. He’d forgotten for a moment that he wasn’t with von Kleindorf at Divisional Headquarters, he was with these idiots at the headquarters of his ‘battle group’. On paper it comprised a rifle regiment, a panzer regiment plus engineers, some signals troops and an artillery battalion. In fact it was a collection of military oddments suffering fatigue, shock, frostbite, frozen diesel oil and cracked engines, and it was scattered over too large a front, with its radios giving frequent trouble. ‘Organize a company of infantry to block the bridges. No one will cross either bridge. No one, whatever his rank, his injuries or his written or oral authority. No one. They will shoot anyone who comes within one hundred metres of the ridge this side of the riverbank. Get on to that immediately. Send someone reliable.’ He paused. ‘Make it two companies. Some bloody fools might be desperate enough to try the ice floes.’

‘I have just the right man, Herr General.’

Horner turned back to the staff. ‘Infantry first, of course. If there are not enough half-track vehicles serviceable, the rest must go on foot. The tanks will keep to the roads, such as they are. Keep visual contact. Von Kleindorf will probably start pulling back, too, as soon as they realize what is happening. Tell the commanders that movement on the northeast might be our own people. Although in this damned weather God knows how close you have to get to see anything properly.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The infantry must start at 1300 hours.’ He looked at the colonel. ‘You’re in command, Weizsäcker.’

‘And the general?’ Colonel Weizsäcker wet his lips.

‘I’ll take my chance to the north,’ said Horner.

‘As the general chooses,’ said Weizsäcker, ‘but surely that will lead you straight into the centre of the Red advance.’ He was nervous, thought Horner. He didn’t want to take the battle group back to the river line. He didn’t want to take anyone anywhere. Was that because he had no confidence in Horner’s plan, because he didn’t believe Horner’s diagnosis, or because he was shit-scared.

Horner looked at the battle-group commander trying to decide. Should he relieve him? It was a terrible thing to do to an officer. Weizsäcker’s military career would end there and then. And which of the others would do better? He looked at the faces: eager young men with amazing reserves of energy and enthusiasm. But now they were bewildered. Not demoralized yet, but bewildered. None of them had ever faced this sort of war, or even dreamed what it might be like. Neither had Horner. No one had, except the Russians. ‘I don’t think so, Colonel. If I was the Red commander I’d leave my centre weak and put everything on the flank, to break right through to the river. He doesn’t want to push our centre back or try to capture Divisional HQ. By now von Kleindorf should have begun to pull back. And that means he’ll bring Divisional HQ through the crossroads where we lost all those tank destroyers that would be so useful now. There is no other way for him to go.’

‘Except cross country,’ said the Colonel.

‘I hope to God he doesn’t try that with HQ transport,’ said Horner. ‘You’ll hold to this side of the river, Colonel Weizsäcker. When I find Divisional HQ, their communications will enable me to re-form and reinforce you. Whether I succeed or not makes no difference to your task. Is that clear?’ He looked at the colonel and then at the rest of them. ‘No man of this division will retire across that river, under the penalty of death.’

‘Heil Hitler!’ said Weizsäcker nervously. He raised his arm in the Nazi style salute, but no one responded.

Was the man mad? Horner gave one of his rare smiles. ‘Yes, Heil Hitler, Colonel Weizsäcker. And may God be with you.’

‘Just discussing strategy’

It was the enterprising Obergefreiter Winkel who found the place for General Horner’s next Divisional Headquarters. Winkel had joined the army expecting to be able to use the expertise with horses that he’d learned in his father’s riding stables. But, typically, the army had sent him to a panzer division, and he spent all his time driving General Horner’s half-track command car.

The place he found was a very large country house. It was easy to visualize how magnificent it must have been in Tsarist times, but it had been abandoned by the owners during the revolution, and since then become progressively more derelict. Recently artillery fire had razed most of the main buildings. But Winkel had discovered the cellars: huge, rambling and relatively dry, they provided somewhere for the whole staff to disappear. The only problem was disguising the telltale footmarks from the Red Army’s reconnaissance aircraft that buzzed over whenever there was a break in the weather.

Miracle upon miracle, the engineers had demolished an underground wall and discovered a wine cellar. The false wall must have been erected at the rear end of the wine cellar back in 1917, to hide the finest vintages from the advancing Reds.

It was Christmas, and the abstemious General Horner had given orders that the wine be distributed to all units for consumption in small amounts. Not that large amounts made much difference in this sort of weather. A drunk had only to raise his head above ground level, and be exposed to the subarctic winds, to become stone sober.

‘Happy Christmas, von Kleindorf.’

‘A Happy Christmas, Herr General.’ The two men were sitting in a long, narrow, cobwebbed cellar on two delicate little chairs that someone had found in the barn. Between them was a table upon which von Kleindorf had arranged a dozen of the most amazing vintage wines. Some of them had spoiled, but the sound ones were magnificent.

‘I’m giving you the division: it is a good present.’ It was an odd way to transfer command, sitting in a cellar drinking wine. But von Kleindorf was the only one he revealed himself to, and, beyond sometimes using first names, he didn’t unbend very much with von Kleindorf. This was one of the penalties of command.

‘Indeed it is, Herr General.’ Although he looked much older, General Horner was only forty-two years old. If eventually he got a promotion to go with his corps command he’d be one of the army’s success stories.

‘And Colonel Weizsäcker comes with it,’ Horner told von Kleindorf. ‘All in all, he did reasonably well when the attack started. But I’m glad we didn’t have to leave him too long holding the river line. If men had started crossing the river, the whole division would have disintegrated. You realize that, von Kleindorf?’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

‘And in any case, in our present state, you can ill afford a detached battle group.’

‘No, Herr General.’

‘First rifle regiment is overworked,’ said Horner. He rummaged through the array of bottles, studying the wonderful labels and the venerable vintages. Choosing one, he drew the cork and sampled it.

‘Because they are fully motorized,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘It’s inevitable.’

‘Don’t wear them right down,’ said Horner. ‘You’ll need them, and the combat engineers, more than ever now.’ He tasted the wine and looked at his second in command. He would, of course, prefer to take him to Corps HQ but he must be given a chance at his first general command. Getting a division was the most coveted step in an officer’s career.

‘There is all the paper,’ von Kleindorf reminded him dutifully. ‘Some of it you perhaps would like to look at before you go.’ He’d brought it back from his visit to Army HQ. It was stacked in the grey painted steel boxes to which the German army consigned its treasured paperwork. Special orders, supplementary orders, revisions to standing orders, intelligence summaries, all the waste-paper with which the rear echelons fought their war. Almost all of it had been written before the Red Army launched its momentous counter-attack on December 6 and had become irrelevant except to the men who lived on paperwork.

‘I will of course recommend that you continue to command the division but it will not be in my gift.’ Horner put his booted feet up on the table. He did this with some difficulty, getting first one foot there, and then – with agonizing slowness, and awkwardness – the second.

‘I will be content to work with whoever the army sends.’

‘I know that, von Kleindorf, and I appreciate your loyalty to me and to the division. What else did you hear at Corps HQ?’ Horner asked. ‘Apart from von Bock’s taking over the Fourth Army.’

‘General Hoepner has been dismissed, stripped of his rank and forbidden to wear army uniform again.’

‘Hoepner got closer to Moscow than anyone did,’ said Horner. He tipped back on the little chair. Von Kleindorf thought he was going to overbalance but he recovered.

‘And Guderian has been cashiered.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Horner. ‘This is the end of the army as we knew it, von Kleindorf. Eventually, we’ll fight our way into Moscow, and beat the Russians, because our soldiers never let us down. But the army will never be the same again; we have lost too much. And the Russians have got our measure. They know the terrain and they are prepared for the weather. We might sit here for weeks, even months, before we break into the city.’ He wiped his nose. He had a cold; he was surrounded by a desolation of snow and ice. His wife, Chrisi, kept writing to ask if he was safe. There was a patent medicine that he would dearly love to have right now – in Berlin he’d found it unfailingly effective against these runny noses – but could he seriously write and tell her he had a headcold.

‘I have never congratulated you on getting the corps, Herr General.’

‘Save your congratulations until we see how long I last,’ said Horner. He drew the cork from a famous Burgundy and tasted it. It had gone sour or corked or something. He spat it on the floor and selected another.

‘You saved the division, Herr General.’

Ah, this was better. He ran it round his mouth before swallowing it. ‘We serve in an army that does not usually reward commanders who withdraw from captured territory, no matter what is otherwise gained.’

‘Intelligence have now revised their enemy battle order assessment. They say that they are not sure how many Red Army divisions were employed in the offensive of December 6. They have identified eighteen divisions the Red Army used. I have the latest bulletins.’

Horner smiled. ‘I saw them at close quarters back in the 1920s, when we were teaching them how to drive tanks. They proved apt pupils, eh Kleindorf?’

‘What were they like, Herr General?’

Horner swirled the burgundy in his glass just for the pleasure of looking at it. ‘Moody,’ he said at last. ‘Either they are desolate and melancholy and incapable of doing even the simplest thing right, or they are jubilant and indomitable.’ Horner reached for another bottle of wine. ‘So far we’ve only encountered a sad and shocked Ivan but a successful battle in front of Moscow could transform the whole nation into a far more formidable enemy.’ Horner sniffed at the wine. What was this fine old medley of half-forgotten smells? A Médoc. His father used to let him open the wines when he was small. Once he’d got up out of bed in the middle of the night and went round the vacated dining room trying the unfinished drinks. They found him in the morning, drunk and snoring. His father had been furious. Why did he care so much what his father thought? He’d always known that the estate would go to his elder brother. And yet … Did second children always spend their lives looking for reassurance and approval? Was that why he’d joined the army, and why Pauli Winter was working for those dreadful people in the Ministry of the Interior? ‘You weren’t at Lichterfelde, von Kleindorf?’

‘Alas, no, Herr General.’

‘It made me into a man.’

‘Indeed, Herr General.’

‘I went past the old barracks a couple of years ago. There are fellows in black uniforms using the place nowadays: “Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler”, they call themselves.’

‘I heard the LAH were there,’ said von Kleindorf.

‘Scoundrels,’ said Alex Horner.

Von Kleindorf noticed that his commander was getting progressively drunk. He’d never seen Horner drunk and was undecided what he should do about it. His general had to be on his way before dawn, to take up his new command back at corps headquarters. He wouldn’t want to do that journey with a hangover. And yet von Kleindorf didn’t feel that he could mention his concerns. ‘Yes, Herr General.’

Horner went quiet and drank some more of the wine. ‘We’re facing a new Russki commander; I feel it in my guts.’

‘The monitoring service heard Radio Moscow announce that Marshal Timoshenko has been replaced. A general named Zhukov has been named commander of their Central Front.’

‘Aha! So heads roll on both sides of the line, von Kleindorf. Mark that, my lad!’

‘Yes, Herr General, I shall.’

Horner belched but seemed unaware that his second-in-command might have noticed it. ‘The bridges, for instance. It’s interesting, isn’t it?’ General Horner had been attacking the next bottle of wine with the corkscrew, but finally he gave up and passed bottle and corkscrew to von Kleindorf.

‘In what way, Herr General?’

‘They’ve not bombed those damned bridges, von Kleindorf.’

‘Some strafing attacks,’ said von Kleindorf, who’d narrowly missed being killed in one such attack.

‘I mean serious attacks – bombing raids to destroy them.’

‘No, sir, that’s true.’ He passed the open bottle back to his commander.

Horner poured the wine carefully. ‘Why? Tell me why?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it, General.’

‘Think about everything, old lad. Everything. Why haven’t they tried to destroy those bridges? Because they want us to run away over them when they attack? No, they’ve enough strength to fight us, they don’t have to chase us away. Because they hope to come through so fast that they will capture the bridges and not have to build their own? I don’t think so. The Ivans are not opportunists: they work to plan. Why, then?’

‘Do you have a theory, Herr General?’

‘Suppose they attacked in a pincer movement: both pincers coming down the other side of the river?’

‘That would be a very big pincer movement, General.’

‘I estimate the December 6 offensive must have used about one hundred divisions.’

‘One hundred divisions?’ Von Kleindorf shifted in his seat. The general was not a man who made reckless estimations. But one hundred divisions was a gigantic force for the Russians suddenly to produce out of nowhere. Germany’s momentous assault on Russia – ‘Barbarossa’ – had used only 153 divisions.

‘On a two-hundred-mile front. With air forces and artillery and everything Comrade Zhukov asked for. We do not, unfortunately, have a monopoly on encirclement tactics.’

‘Where would they get them?’

‘From their eastern provinces. Divisions manning the frontiers with the Chinese and Japanese.’

‘That’s quite a thought, Herr General.’

‘Enough for a big pincer movement, eh?’

‘Indeed, General.’ Von Kleindorf looked at his chief. He didn’t look drunk. If it wasn’t for those occasional slurred words, he wouldn’t have even guessed the general had been drinking.

‘We are to blame. The army is at fault. General Marcks, our chief of planning, said we could conquer Russia in nine weeks … seventeen weeks at the most. I saw the report. The Soviets, it said, would not have time to deploy their reserves. The Führer believes us when we tell him such things.’ Horner belched.

‘Indeed he does, Herr General.’

Horner drank more wine, an old Burgundy this time, and handed the bottle to von Kleindorf. ‘Is there any news about who will become C in C when Brauchitsch goes?’

‘Yes, the Führer,’ said von Kleindorf. He pretended to drink but only let the wine touch his lips. He’d decided that one of them must stay sober.

‘C in C of the army, I mean.’

‘Yes, the Führer has assumed that command, too.’

Horner could hardly believe it. ‘He’s Head of State, Minister of War, and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. And now you say the man has made himself commander in chief of the army too?’

‘Oh, and there was something else, General. The Americans and the Japanese are fighting each other. On Sunday morning, Japanese naval aircraft flying off carriers attacked American naval bases in the Pacific. I haven’t got any better details, but the reports sound accurate. All the news services have been carrying them.’

‘So the whole world is at war,’ said Horner gloomily.

‘That’s right. And on Thursday the Führer declared war on America, too.’

‘What?’ said General Horner, spilling his drink down the bright-red lapels of his greatcoat.

‘In a speech to the Reichstag.’

‘Declared war on the U.S.A.?’

‘Yes, it’s official.’

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ said General Horner. He laughed so much that he spilled his drink again and very nearly fell off his chair. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ The tears came to his eyes as he laughed. ‘The British are bombing our cities, and our armies are stretched from Africa to Norway’s North Cape, and we are stuck in the Russian snow facing a hundred fresh divisions on this front alone. And the little Austrian corporal has chosen this moment to declare war upon the greatest industrial power in the world. Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!’ He clutched his stomach and laughed until von Kleindorf joined in, too.

They made so much noise that Obergefreiter Winkel, Horner’s driver, came down to see if there was something wrong.

‘No, it’s all right, Winkel,’ said General Horner. ‘The chief of staff and I were just discussing strategy.’

1942

‘I knew you’d wait’

The night was dark. It was February, and East Prussia was covered with its regular blanket of snow and ice. The German railway system, burdened by the ever-growing needs of the war against Russia, was showing signs of strain. Trains were crowded, dirty and late.

The railway-station platform at Königshof was illuminated only by gas lamps and some of these were not working. Inge Winter rubbed condensation from the window, and cupped her face with her hands, to see in the darkness.

‘Is this Königshof?’ she asked the young Stuka pilot dozing in the seat opposite her. He jumped to his feet and opened the window to lean out. Cold air, smelly with soot from the locomotive, came into the compartment.

‘Hey you!’ shouted the officer. ‘Is this Königshof?’

‘Königshof,’ called the woman railway official obligingly. And then, just in case any passengers from the Berlin train wished to alight at this rural town, she called more loudly: ‘Königshof! Königshof!’

Inge stood up and put on her fur coat while the young flier got her leather bag down from the rack and opened the door for her. He smiled and said goodbye reluctantly, for Inge in her mid-forties was a very attractive woman. She was slim, with a pale face and naturally wavy hair. But most of all he’d remember her for those deep, luminous grey eyes that seemed to be for him alone.

Inge was cheerful and self-sufficient, almost defiant of the world about her. It was this wonderful confidence that so many people, such as Pauli, saw and admired. That was what had made Pauli want to marry her, and that was what made casual acquaintances, such as the Stuka pilot, her willing slave.

By the time Inge had stepped down from the train, the handsome young pilot was forgotten. Her mind was on other things, not the least of which was the speech she’d be making to the local RADwJ – young women enlisted as an agricultural labour force and factory workers. This would be the biggest audience she’d ever addressed.

She began to pick her way between the heaps of snow. It was dark; a thick layer of cloud obscured moon and stars. Whistles were blowing to announce the train’s departure, and the signals were green. There were no porters, so she carried her own bag: she was used to it by now, it was the war.

‘All blackout blinds down!’

Steam enveloped her, and the train jolted forward, its wheels screaming and groaning upon the icy metals.

She seemed to be the only passenger getting off at this remote place. The passengers were all soldiers, or civilians on official business like her. There were no spare seats nowadays on the express trains. People stared out the windows as the train clanked past, reluctant to close the blackout blinds. In another hour or so these men would be in Königsberg, East Prussia, and transferred to trains that would take them to the fighting front.

She pushed her way through the heavy sprung doors and then put her bag down for a moment. It was warmer inside the station building, and the air smelled of wartime cigarettes and unwashed human bodies. The concourse was crowded with people waiting for the local trains. Civilians of one sort or another, going back to their little towns and villages after a day’s shopping. Farmers and agricultural workers from the huge estates that made up this part of Prussia. All of them were prosperous nowadays, benefiting from the boom that had come with German’s assault upon the U.S.S.R. The German army needed food, fodder and all kinds of horses, in ever-increasing amounts. Whenever possible they favoured German suppliers. So here, in that part of North Germany closest to the fighting, the hotels and restaurants were kept full by army procurement officials being fêted by those with something to sell.

Yet it was amazing how many of these civilians had contrived to wear a uniform: forestry and falconry officials, brownshirts, women auxiliaries, Hitler Youth and part-time SS men in their forbidding black uniforms.

Inge looked around expectantly. ‘Under the clock’, the message said, but there was no one there except two steely-eyed Feldgendarmerie sergeants, with their metal gorgets, and two men of the railway police, who were questioning two flashy young girls.

She looked at her watch. The train was late. She hated to be kept waiting, especially in public places like this. Already some of the soldiers sitting on a mountain of kit were appraising her and smiling invitingly. Any moment now those policemen would turn their attentions to her. Not because she might be a whore, a spy, or a fugitive, but just to pry and be officious. Military policemen were all bastards; Pauli had told her that and he knew.

It was five minutes before a pot-bellied brownshirt came huffing and puffing and apologizing abjectly.

‘Frau Winter?’

She stared at him and said nothing. The man, a red-faced fellow too old for the army, picked up her case and, using his free arm, pushed a way through the crowd. She followed him.

In the station forecourt was a superb old Mercedes: shiny black paintwork, with an official pennant affixed to the front. The brownshirt opened the luggage compartment and put her case inside. Then he opened the door for her to get in.

‘Did you have a good journey?’ said the man sitting in the back seat.

‘No. I bloody well did not,’ said Inge. ‘And you’re late.’

‘I knew you’d wait,’ said the man. He grinned. He liked to annoy her.

‘Go to hell,’ she said. No one who knew her as the self-confident girl who needed nothing and no one would have recognized her now.

The man laughed.

‘You’ll regret it, mark my words’

Lothar Koch knew that there was always an array of drinks in Fritz Esser’s corner cupboard and that Pauli had a key to it. Lothar would never have dared to drop in and ask the deputy minister for a drink but recently, on his regular visits from Gestapo Headquarters, three blocks away, he’d call on Pauli to see if Esser was out and suggest that they have a schnapps. Pauli found it irritating sometimes, but he never said so. He wished Lothar would go. He looked out the window. In the street below, the linden trees were in full leaf, and the windows were open to let in the warm, sweet-smelling air.

Today the usually melancholy Lothar was excited and outgoing, wearing a new suit. He stood in the middle of Fritz Esser’s large office, gesticulating and pulling appropriate faces. Lothar liked to go into Esser’s office when it was unoccupied. He pretended to himself that he was the deputy minister. Lothar was like that. ‘So the Führer went out in the street to ask passers-by what they think of Hitler. He is disguised with a false beard and so on.’

‘Lothar, you are quite hopeless at telling jokes,’ said Pauli, whose mind was on the work that he should be catching up with.

It was no use: Lothar thought he was rather good at telling stories. ‘Listen,’ said Lothar. ‘The Führer goes up to the first fellow he sees, and says, “What do you think of this chap Hitler?” The man grabs the Führer by the arm and takes him to the Tiergarten. He goes across the grass until they can be quite sure that there’s no one in earshot. Then the fellow leans close to the Führer and whispers, “For myself, I don’t too much mind him!”’ Lothar cackled loudly and slapped his thigh.

‘I heard it before,’ said Pauli.

‘“I don’t too much mind him!”’ said Lothar, repeating the punch line and smiling enough to show his gold teeth.

‘They arrested the comic at the Admiralspalast last week,’ said Pauli, who was drinking Apollinaris water.

‘So I heard. What was he saying? Was it funny?’ Lothar asked.

‘He came on the stage and looked at the audience in silence for several minutes; then, when everyone was getting nervous, he’d say “Well, that’s enough of the political discussions; now we’ll tell the jokes.”’

‘And for that they arrested him?’ said Lothar. ‘That’s rough.’

‘There was a group of party leaders there with their wives after dinner. There were complaints. Fritz thought we ought to do something.’

‘Did he go to a camp?’

‘It would never have stood up in court,’ said Pauli.

‘I suppose not. It’s rough, though. And he wasn’t even Jewish.’ Lothar took his glass over to the cupboard, where there was a sink and a glass rack. He rinsed it off and put it in the rack. He never had a second drink. That was part of his training as a cop: one free drink was a perquisite; two was corruption.

Suddenly, while Koch’s back was turned, Pauli said, ‘By the way, Lothar, is it true that Jews are being systematically killed in the camps?’ Lothar always seemed to know what was going on.

Lothar Koch looked at him for a long time before answering. ‘Yes, it’s true. At certain camps.’

‘Systematic killing?’

Again Lothar Koch paused. ‘It was a top-level decision. Heydrich chaired meetings at Wannsee in January. Endlösung – a final solution to the Jewish problem – it’s being kept very secret. How did you hear?’ Koch had become more composed now. He was back to being his old mournful, wary self.

‘I didn’t. But I’ve had the lawyers from I. G. Farben up here. They’ve been supplying one of their patent chemicals to the camps. Now there’s an argument about it.’

‘Lawyers?’

‘Fritz had been handling it, but once Farben brought their lawyers into it he dumped it on me. You know what he’s like.’

‘A legal opinion about chemicals?’

‘It’s a poison gas: a vermin exterminator called Zyklon-B. Now, there is a very big order for it, but the camps want it supplied without its “indicator” – that’s some kind of noxious smell that warns humans of its presence in the air. Farben won’t supply it until they’re sure that omitting the indicator won’t endanger the company’s rights to the patent. I’ve been in and out of the Patents Office on Gitschiner Strasse so many times, and read so many specifications, that I found myself wondering what the hell it’s all about. I started wondering what the camps are doing with all that odourless poison gas.’

‘Why not ask Fritz Esser?’

‘I did. He laughed and told me to buy some shares in Degesch.’

‘Degesch?’

‘That’s the Farben subsidiary that manufactures the stuff.’

Lothar Koch turned away and said, ‘Esser knows all about it.’

‘What do you know about it? Look at me, Lothar. What do you know about it?’

‘Not much. Except that I heard that the wife of a German officer was pushed into one of the death-camp trains by mistake. When she got to the other end, the senior officer said she must go with the others. That’s how secret it is.’

‘Could it be true? Good God, what would she have witnessed? Is there killing on such a scale?’

Lothar shrugged. ‘I hear stories like that, and I know what I’m told by men who take prisoners to the camps. But it’s better not to know too much, and my people don’t see the extermination camps. They’re too far away?’

‘Where?’

‘Always outside the borders of the Reich,’ said Lothar. ‘Fritz Esser settled all that – you must have been in on the meetings. There was a man handling it for the insurance companies. I saw him in your office.’

‘The insurance companies were complaining about how many life-insurance policies they were paying out because of deaths in the camps.’

‘Exactly. And you told Fritz Esser that under the present law people emigrating from Germany lost all their civil rights. Fritz Esser told everyone how clever you were.’

‘I didn’t know that had anything to do with killing prisoners. Fritz said that there were a lot of old, sick people in the camps. I thought he was talking about natural deaths.’

‘Well, now they make sure all these special extermination camps are outside the Reich. They transport them to Poland mostly. Then they die across the border and the insurance companies don’t have to pay anyone anything.’

‘What bastards they are.’

‘The insurance companies?’

Pauli didn’t answer the question. ‘Lothar, my sister-in-law is being released next month. What do you think will happen to her?’

‘Next month? Let’s see, she’s serving her sentence here in Berlin, so that means the women’s prison in Barnimstrasse. Probably she’ll be picked up at the prison gates by one of our people with a protective-custody order. That’s the usual procedure nowadays.’

‘And taken to a camp?’

‘Where else?’

‘Could you find out the day and time of release, and get the number of the protective-custody order from Registry in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse?’

He offered Pauli one of his stinking little cheroots. Pauli took one. ‘Forget it, Pauli. It’s too dangerous.’

‘It’s very conspicuous for me to make inquiries over there, because she’s a Winter, too. People notice I have the same name. And I’m not over there as much as I used to be. For you it’s easy.’

‘She’s an enemy alien, Pauli. Convicted of a crime against the state.’

‘She’s Peter’s wife.’

‘Forget it, Pauli. Listen to the advice of a friend. This is not like the old days, when we forged signatures and got extra overtime or shuffled paperwork to suit ourselves. It’s different now, and it’s all done on orders from the top, Pauli. The very top. If you get yourself into this and upset someone, you won’t get out alive.’ He paused while the truth of that got into Pauli’s head. ‘You haven’t seen what happens at the other end of all this paperwork. It gets very rough. I’m serious.’

Pauli seemed not to have heard his urgent warning. ‘Just type it on one of my daily sheets: prison, date and time. Then delete the custody order on the register. If I go in there they’ll wonder why, but you’re in and out of Registry every day. Okay?’

‘No, it’s not okay.’

‘Please Lothar.’

Lothar Koch lit his cheroot and blew some smoke before responding to Pauli’s plea. ‘You’ve got this nice office on Unter den Linden. You don’t come over to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse so much these days, Pauli. And when you do come, you go up to the third floor and smoke a nice cigar with one of the top brass and look out at the gardens and talk about the finer points of the law. Let me take you down to the basement sometime.’

‘What’s in the basement?’ said Pauli. He sank down into the soft leather chair that Fritz kept for visitors.

‘You know what’s in the basement as well as I do.’

‘I’ve never been in the basement.’

‘No, you make sure you keep your hands clean. You stay over here in the Interior Ministry, where the basement is full of archives and the only thing that happens to people in the basement is that they get their hands dusty. In Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse they have rooms in that basement where they torture prisoners when you, or people like you, are in a hurry for a statement. It’s not pretty down there, Pauli. A lot of prisoners don’t survive that sort of interrogation. I stay clear as much as I can, so I don’t blame you for doing the same, but don’t look me in the eye and say you don’t know what goes on. And I’m not going to get a protective-custody order so that you can tear it into shreds and hope it all goes unnoticed when your sister-in-law Mrs Winter isn’t delivered to Oranienburg at the stated date.’

‘I’m sorry, Lothar. I shouldn’t have asked.’

Pauli’s soft apology made Lothar Koch feel ashamed of letting his friend down. ‘I might be able to get the order and the delivery sheet, but I can’t delete anything in Registry. Falsifying such a document in wartime is probably treason. People are being executed for that kind of thing, Pauli. Plenty of them.’ He smiled nervously. ‘Better that she gets into trouble in prison and gets her sentence extended. Tell her to hit a prison guard; it’s common enough nowadays, when people guess that they’ll be picked up at the gates and taken to a concentration camp. Hit a prison guard, that’s the best thing for her to do.’

‘Get the order and the delivery sheet. What will it say – Mrs Winter, Jew, non-German by race and nationality?’

‘I don’t know what the hell you’re up to Pauli, and I don’t want to know anything about it. When your Mrs Winter doesn’t arrive at the Oranienburg camp on time they will raise hell. Believe me, I know what they’re like. You can’t get away with releasing a prisoner.’

‘Thanks, Lothar.’

‘You’ll regret it, mark my words.’

‘Couldn’t Inge work in Berlin?’

Pauli loved his father and his mother, he loved them with all his heart, and yet he had never been able to convey this to them. Now that his father was not well, he visited them almost every day, but still he wasn’t able to voice his innermost thought.

This Sunday afternoon in early June he’d taken his oldest friend, Alex Horner, there to tea. Horner was in the magnificent uniform that the German army has traditionally provided to its generals. His collar had the patches that only generals wear, and his trousers bore the coveted wide red stripe. But General Horner had paid a grim price for his rank, his authority and his medals. Alex Horner’s service on the Russian Front had aged him beyond his years.

Pauli sat beside his friend, and opposite them sat Harald Winter. Pauli’s father had had his favourite armchair brought into the drawing room and, despite the bright sunshine that fell across the carpet on this wonderful June afternoon, he sat there swaddled in blankets. The chintz-covered wing armchair looked incongruous amid the jazzy chrome Bauhaus furniture, mirrors with shiny black-lacquered frames, and on the wall not paintings but old advertisement posters, one of them for the Graf Zeppelin’s service to South America.

Harald Winter was too stubborn to obey his doctor’s orders and remain in bed. He was only seventy-two, he kept reminding the doctors, not extreme old age. In these days of modern medicine, seventy-two was no more than advanced middle age.

‘Your Field Marshal Göring made the greatest mistake of his life when he destroyed the airships in 1940,’ said Harald Winter, noticing his younger son looking at the zeppelin poster on the wall.

Pauli noted that Göring was his field marshal, a sure sign that the old man was feeling argumentative. Perhaps that was a good sign. Perhaps he was on the mend. ‘The Luftwaffe needed the aluminium alloy,’ said Pauli.

‘Ha!’ said his father. ‘My factories were supplying the aircraft manufacturers with more than they could use until the Air Ministry appointed all those tame Nazis to the boards.’

‘That was the reason given,’ said Pauli, who didn’t care either way.

‘Göring couldn’t make the Zeppelin companies dance to his tune; that’s the truth of it, and good for them! Göring’s the worst possible man for that job. That fat clown is still living up in the clouds, flying his Fokker Triplane in 1918.’

‘You’re right,’ said Pauli. His father hated Göring. This aversion had come from dealing with the incompetent bureaucrats in Göring’s vast Air Ministry, which now filled a whole city block in Wilhelmstrasse – ten times the size of the other ministry buildings.

‘Rouge and powder on his face, and painted fingernails.’

‘I know,’ said Pauli. He glanced at his friend Alex but didn’t smile in case his father saw it.

‘Disgusting!’ said his father.

‘It’s better not to talk about it,’ said Pauli, who knew that people were in prison for saying less than that.

‘Better for whom?’

‘Better for you,’ said Pauli. ‘We’re at war, Papa. Such talk can be misconstrued as treason.’

His father said, ‘And a thousand RAF bombers attacked Cologne last Sunday. It’s terrible, they say. Ask Göring about that!’

‘Thirty-seven British planes were shot down,’ said Pauli, who’d had an internal SD memo saying the raid had caused ‘serious fear’ among German civilians.

‘Rouge and powder. It’s disgusting, disgusting!’ said his father again, like a petulant child who’d been told not to swear. ‘And this fat fool likes to be called the Iron Man.’ He gave another little laugh and repeated it: ‘Der Eiserne!’

Veronica Winter returned from the kitchen, carrying a large silver tray upon which were cups and saucers, cakes and tea. ‘Let me take that, Mama,’ said Pauli, jumping to his feet. He was shocked to see his mother engaged in such domestic chores. ‘Where are the servants?’

Veronica didn’t give Pauli the tray. No matter that he was now a middle-aged man – Veronica still thought of him as the awkward, clumsy child who had dropped and broken her precious china. She said, ‘The parlourmaid’s fiancé is home on leave from the Eastern Front. I had to give her the time off. And the young one is sick, and Cook is at the market lining up for things off-ration. I can’t ask Hauser to work in the kitchen – it would be like telling him to take orders from Cook. Servants are so touchy. And it’s not easy to get staff nowadays. Girls prefer to go into factories; I don’t understand why. Thank you, Pauli dear. Put the flowers on the side table – it will make more room. That’s better. Give Alex a cup and I’ll pour.’

‘But, Mama, you mustn’t do housework. I never let Inge fetch and carry.’

‘Lucky Inge,’ said Veronica, pouring tea. ‘It’s very weak, I’m afraid. Do you know, I was having tea with Baronin Munte last week, and she had lemons. A relative had brought them from Greece or somewhere. I’d almost forgotten what a lemon tasted like. Do you get lemons in Russia, Alex?’

‘No, Frau Winter, we don’t.’

‘The tea we get on the ration is not real tea, it’s herbal-leaf tea, and it doesn’t taste of anything much without lemon. I’ve started putting milk in again, the way they do in England.’

‘You could have Ostarbeiter working in the house. There are lots of them now,’ said Pauli.

Veronica said, ‘Your father won’t have Polish people in the house; he says they smell.’

‘It’s nonsense,’ said Pauli. He looked at his father and said it again. ‘Nonsense!’

‘I know it is, dear,’ said his mother, ‘but I can’t go against your father’s wishes.’ In fact, Veronica Winter had decided that she couldn’t have a Polish girl in the house because it would make her uneasy. Now that the United States was fighting against Germany, the Poles were de facto allies. It wouldn’t be right to have a Polish girl assigned there, working for little or no pay like a slave. Technically Veronica was German now, but she remained American enough to believe that labour must be hired for a negotiated wage. She changed the subject: ‘Is Inge back yet?’

‘She’ll be back on Sunday night,’ said Pauli.

‘She’s away a lot lately.’

‘She hates the travelling, but she insisted upon doing something to help with the war effort.’

‘I don’t know exactly what she does,’ said Veronica. She went to the window and closed it, despite the heat. There was so much noise from the street nowadays: cars, trucks, horses, marching men. It was a pandemonium.

‘It’s a party job. She works for the central office of the League of German Girls and coordinates their work with other women’s organizations.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better if she stayed at home and looked after you, Pauli?’ his mother asked.

‘We all have to do something for the war, Mama, and we have no children. Inge wanted to do it.’

‘But the travelling …Silesia, the Rhineland…Couldn’t Inge work in Berlin?’

It was impossible to explain such things to his parents. They remained relatively unaffected by the war, except for the hardships of rationing and a bomb now and again. And his mother was always delighted by a chance to criticize poor Inge. ‘Fritz explained all that, Mama. Though there was a job in Berlin available, it wouldn’t have been suited to someone with an education like Inge’s. I miss her when she’s away, but it won’t be forever.’

Veronica turned to their visitor and said, ‘What about your little son, Alex? How old is he now?’

‘Our Christian will be four years old on Saturday.’

‘Is it four years?’ said Pauli. He knew that Alex was remembering the day he’d waited for him in the stables at Bernau. How could he ever have expected Alex to warn Fritsch? What a stupid idea it had been to try to do anything to stop it all from happening. Now he knew better. Now he kept out of trouble …or at least he tried to.

‘How wonderful that you are on leave. Your wife is surely delighted. You must bring her along to see us before your leave is up. Did you specially arrange to come home for the little one’s birthday, General Horner?’ said Veronica rather archly.

‘Don’t be silly, Mama. I told you, Alex is here for the state funeral on Tuesday.’

‘The funeral of Heydrich, the SS leader. Of course.’

‘Alex is an official representative of the Wehrmacht,’ said Pauli proudly.

If Alex Horner imagined that the eccentricities of Harald Winter were those of a senile man, he was now to think differently. Winter leaned forward and said, ‘What happened to Heydrich, then?’

‘He was shot, Herr Winter,’ said Alex, who felt no sense of loss at the death of the SS leader.

‘I know that, Alex, I’m not in my dotage. Who shot him and why?’

‘It’s a bit early to be sure, Herr Winter, but the Abwehr say the assassins were Czechs, dropped by parachute.’

‘So the newspapers have got it right. From Russia?’

‘No. Not from Russia. The Soviets do not have the right men or the right aircraft for such an operation.’

‘From England, then?’

‘Yes, London. They think the Czechoslovak government in exile under Eduard Beneš was getting worried about Heydrich’s popularity.’

‘I thought he went there to crush all resistance,’ said Harald Winter.

‘At first he took the stick to them,’ said Pauli. ‘But after he’d rooted out the troublemakers, he reorganized the social-security system for Czech workers and peasants. Heydrich became remarkably popular. There is no terrorism against us in Bohemia and Moravia.’

‘There will be now,’ said Alex Horner dolefully. ‘There’s bound to be a crackdown, and that’s just what the British want.’

‘It’s started already,’ said Pauli. ‘They’ve rounded up thousands of Czechs, and hundreds have been shot.’

‘How dreadful,’ said Veronica.

‘It’s the way war is,’ said Harald Winter. ‘Am I right, General Horner?’

‘I’m afraid so, Herr Winter. We lose a lot of soldiers killed by the Russian partisans. In the rear areas there are special SS units that do nothing but fight the guerrillas. It’s a messy, bloody, repugnant business, and not the sort of war the army wants, I assure you.’

‘When do you return to the Eastern Front, General Horner?’ said Harald Winter.

‘I am to be reassigned,’ he said.

‘I do hope you stay in Berlin,’ said Veronica. ‘Children grow up so quickly.’

‘Mama had a letter from Peter,’ Pauli told his friend. ‘Did I tell you?’

‘Yes, but is it possible?’ said Alex. ‘He’s in the U.S.A., isn’t he?’

‘There is a mail service to enemy countries through a mailbox in Lisbon,’ said Veronica. She put her teacup on the glass-topped table and produced the letter from her handbag, took it from the envelope, and unfolded it carefully. It was fragile now, for she’d read it over and over again, and kept it like a lucky piece. ‘It takes ages. I suppose everything has to be checked for invisible inks and codes and so on. But it was wonderful to hear from him. Can you read English, Alex?’

‘I’m afraid not, Frau Winter.’

‘Then there is no point in showing you.’ She was grateful for an excuse to read the letter yet again. She spread it on her knees and bent over it. Peter’s small, neat writing was unmistakable; across the page there was a yellow diagonal stripe of some chemical that would detect secret inks. ‘He says only that he is well and that little Helena is at school in California. He saw his grandfather, who is ninety-one years old; isn’t that remarkable?’

‘There you are,’ said Harald Winter. ‘People live longer nowadays. We eat better food and take care of ourselves.’

Veronica paused long enough to be sure that her husband had finished and then went on about Peter. ‘He says he plays the piano a lot and has a job with a film company. It’s all very general, of course. I suppose he was afraid the censor’s office would intercept it and stop it from getting through if he said anything specific. He asks us to look after his wife, Lottie. She’s in prison, you know.’ Veronica looked up.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Alex Horner. She looked at him; he looked so much older than Pauli, his contemporary. From what she’d heard about Russia, nothing could be worse than fighting there, except perhaps sending other young fellows off to do so. What terrible stroke of fate had sent this poor man – and the rest of his generation – twice into the slaughteryards of world war?

‘But the prison authorities haven’t answered my letters, so I can’t find out when she’s to be released.’

‘Leave it with me, Mama,’ Pauli told her. ‘I told you to leave it with me.’

‘But if we don’t know…’

‘I’ll see to it.’

‘Now, don’t get yourself into trouble, Pauli,’ said Veronica.

‘Don’t fuss, Mama.’

‘Pauli is such a darling,’ Veronica told General Alex Horner.

‘People need cheering up these days’

The big house off Kant Strasse was not the glittering showplace it had been when Frau Wisliceny’s ‘salons’ attracted the greatest artists, musicians, writers and intellectuals of the city. With America’s entry into the war, and the departure of the Latin American diplomats, too, Berlin’s sparkling social life guttered and died. Even here in the heart of the capital the war had brought drab austerity.

Professor Wisliceny had died, but the Hennigs remained in the house. Inge had not pressed them to sell it, for such Berlin properties were fetching very poor prices nowadays. Berliners were dispersed across the world battlefronts. Some people were moving out of the city to avoid the air raids that they said would inevitably come to Berlin next winter, and those who nowadays crowded Berlin’s streets didn’t buy houses.

Even if Erich Hennig had still been earning his fat performance fees, it would have been difficult to keep up the interior. Ordinary items, such as paint, were in short supply, and the craftsmen who might have redone the beautiful ceilings, cleaned the carpets, or repaired the valuable chandeliers were all in the army or in the war factories.

Besides, Erich Hennig was not earning any performance fees at present. He had trouble with his arm. He couldn’t lift it above his head, and the wrist sometimes pained him. The doctor was optimistic, advising rest, a set of exercises that took two hours, hot baths containing some foul-smelling crystals, and a noxious ointment that had to be rubbed into his arm muscles every night before bed.

‘In six months – perhaps less – Erich will be fit and well again,’ said Lisl. ‘It’s good for him to have a rest. It was going round the war factories that started his trouble. Sleeping in damp sheets – that’s what I think it was.’

‘Do you still practise, Erich?’ Pauli asked him. They were sitting round the scrubbed kitchen table after one of Lisl’s Eintopf dinners. The big dining room next door was dark. Pauli wondered if he’d ever again see it the way it had been for Frau Wisliceny’s formal dinner parties.

‘Every day without fail,’ said Erich Hennig.

‘And he’s teaching our little Theo to play,’ said Lisl proudly. ‘Erich says he has real talent.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Pauli. He liked the Hennigs’ twelve-year-old son and had become a beloved uncle.

‘Erich could give a recital, but the doctor says it would be bad for the arm.’

‘I’m not sure I could,’ said Erich, ‘unless it was of short pieces. I couldn’t manage a long work.’

‘Erich was in Warsaw,’ said Lisl proudly. ‘Six concerts for the soldiers. He met General Steflea, the Rumanian chief of staff.’

‘How wonderful,’ said Pauli, who had never heard of the fellow.

‘And all the top field marshals and generals,’ added Lisl when she saw that her brother-in-law wasn’t very impressed.

Pauli pushed his plate away. Clearing a space on the table before saying something important was a mannerism he’d had since childhood. ‘I hear you’ve converted the top floor into an apartment,’ he said.

‘Now, wait a moment, Pauli,’ said Erich defensively. ‘It’s just until I’m back at work again.’

‘It’s not for the rent,’ said Lisl. ‘I needed someone living in, now that Erich has to have someone to look after him.’

‘I haven’t come to ask you for a share of the rent money,’ said Pauli. ‘I want you to find a bed for someone. I’ll pay you if you wish.’

‘It wouldn’t be possible,’ said Erich hastily.

‘Of course it would,’ said Pauli. He drank the water in his glass and reached for the jug to pour more.

‘Won’t you have a glass of wine?’ said Erich. As he was pouring some for himself, his hand shook.

‘I don’t drink,’ said Pauli.

‘I wish Erich wouldn’t drink,’ said Lisl. ‘The doctor said it’s not good for him.’

‘The doctor knows nothing,’ said Erich bitterly. ‘He doesn’t even know what’s wrong with me.’

‘The apartment is occupied,’ said Lisl. She looked at Erich and then Erich looked away and drank his wine.

‘They’ll have to move out,’ said Pauli. He was determined to have the matter settled the way he wanted it, and his tone of voice revealed that determination.

‘They can’t move out,’ said Lisl. ‘They are refugees – they have no proper papers and nowhere to go.’

‘Ostarbeiter?’ said Pauli.

‘Dr Volkmann and the Frau Doktor are living up there,’ said Lisl, blurting it out defiantly. And yet Pauli didn’t miss the fear in her voice. He was the Gestapo man to them, and to many other people, too. People were frightened of him. No matter how he tried to reassure them, it was no good.

‘Volkmann? The dentist?’

It was Lisl who spoke. Her husband kept a discreet silence. Erich had never been noted for his heroism. After the zeppelin crash, Erich Hennig had run for his life. He’d run nearly two kilometres before falling into a ditch and breaking his ankle. But Lisl had mettle enough for both of them. Defiantly she said, ‘They had nowhere to go. Men went to arrest them, but they weren’t at home. The girl who worked for them ran to his surgery to warn him and they never went home again.’

‘I didn’t know about that,’ said Pauli. ‘I started going to another dentist a long time ago. I lost touch.’

‘If we put them out on the street they’ll be picked up. Is that what you want?’ Lisl asked.

‘Whatever made you take the Volkmanns in?’ Pauli asked, still trying to get used to the idea.

‘He was always so kind and patient with Papa,’ said Lisl. ‘I couldn’t say no to them.’

What an amazing reason for putting yourself in jeopardy, thought Pauli, but he wasn’t surprised. Most such reckless courses were started upon for small personal reasons rather than for moral or political ones. His time with the Gestapo had demonstrated that over and over again. ‘Do they never go out?’ said Pauli.

‘Dr Volkmann goes to work at the Jewish cemetery at Weissensee,’ said Erich. ‘He says he’s safe there. Is that true, Pauli?’

‘Yes, he’s safe. They certainly won’t allow Aryans to dig graves for Jews, so as long as there are Jews to be buried they’ll let the Jewish cemetery-workers and undertakers continue in safety.’

‘Frau Volkmann helps me in the house,’ said Lisl.

‘Working in the house? Cooking and washing, Frau Volkmann?’ said Pauli. She’d been so delicate and ladylike.

‘Things change,’ said Erich, having decided that Pauli was not going to report them for harbouring the Volkmanns. He didn’t look at them. He was getting very drunk.

‘They’ll have to make room for another person,’ said Pauli. ‘Lottie is coming out of prison. She’ll have to be hidden.’

‘Lottie is coming out?’ It was Lisl’s turn to be surprised.

Pauli nodded. ‘I have to find somewhere she can hide. I didn’t know about the Volkmanns, but perhaps that makes it easier for everyone.’

Erich was still staring at nothing in particular and sipping his wine. Eventually Lisl said, ‘And Peter is still in America?’

‘Yes, Mama had a letter. It was posted months ago, but it got through. She was very excited.’

‘Poor Peter,’ said Lisl. ‘I suppose he worries about Lottie.’

‘She’ll be all right if you let her stay with the Volkmanns.’

‘They haven’t got much room up there, Pauli.’

‘They’ll have to manage,’ said Pauli. ‘It’s better than being in a camp, isn’t it?’

‘What about rations?’ said Lisl. ‘It’s difficult enough with the Volkmanns.’

‘I’ll see what I can do about that. I know someone who works in the department that deals with rationing. We might get some emergency cards, like they give to air-raid evacuees. It would help out.’

‘And I’ll need some extra blankets,’ said Lisl. ‘It’s all right for the time being, while the weather is warm, but it gets cold at the top of the house in winter, and we can’t keep the heating on all the time.’

‘We have lots of blankets,’ said Pauli. ‘And sheets and things, too. I’ll talk to Inge when she gets back.’

‘You’re going to tell Inge, then?’ said Lisl.

‘Of course I am. Why not?’

‘We never told her about the Volkmanns,’ said Lisl. ‘She’s my own sister, but she can be unpredictable about this sort of thing.’

‘What sort of thing?’ said Pauli.

‘The regime,’ answered Lisl without hesitation. ‘Inge won’t hear a word said against the regime; you must know that, Pauli. I told her a joke once, a silly joke about the Führer. …She flared up and gave me a lecture about the war effort. For a moment I thought she was going down to the People’s Court to report me!’ Lisl laughed. It was a joke, of course: she didn’t really think her sister would report her to the notorious Volksgericht.

‘I’ll talk to Inge when she gets back,’ said Pauli, although in the back of his mind was the notion that it might be better not to talk to her.

‘What I’d really like to do,’ said Lisl, leaning forward as if to demonstrate her carnestness, ‘is to start a tea room.’

‘Not again,’ said Erich, without turning to look at them.

‘Tea room?’ said Pauli.

‘It would be perfect. We’re only a step away from Kant Strasse and not far from Ku-damm. It wouldn’t cost much to make it look really grand.’

‘A tea room?’ said Pauli again. ‘Here?’

‘Downstairs.’

His back still turned to them, Erich said, ‘Not being far from Ku-damm won’t help. People don’t stroll past here the way they stroll on the Ku-damm.’

Pauli realized that his presence was providing them with an excuse to argue through him. It was a device that married couples sometimes resorted to; he remembered doing the same sort of thing himself at times.

‘They would come if it was a nice place. There are so many people walking about aimlessly – soldiers and their girls, war workers on vacation and foreigners. A tea room wouldn’t be much work: afternoons and early evenings. And I’d use the two downstairs rooms that we never go into now. I’d enjoy doing it, Pauli, and it might bring in some money.’

Erich turned round to face them again. He’d finished the wine in his glass and now he poured himself more. It was French wine, Pauli noticed. The Hennigs might have been short of money, but they lived well nevertheless. ‘What will people say when it gets round that Erich Hennig the concert pianist is running a tea room?’ he said.

‘Be reasonable, Erich darling,’ Lisl said. ‘You won’t let me take a job, and a little extra money would solve all our problems.’

‘You’d need a licence,’ said Erich. He was bent very low over the table, so that he only had to lift the glass a tiny way to his lips.

‘Leave all that to me,’ she said. ‘Will you let me try, Erich?’

He pulled a face. ‘The rooms downstairs are in a terrible mess.’

‘The Volkmanns would help me. Dr Volkmann is good at decorating, and Lily will help me clear it all up.’

Erich Hennig was softening. ‘You mustn’t put the best furniture in there. Certainly not those valuable dining-room chairs.’

‘Do you think I’m stupid, Erich darling? Of course I won’t put the dining-room chairs in there – they were Mother’s dearest possession. I can rent or borrow what I need. Or there are places where they sell furniture from places damaged in the air raids. Some of it is very good.’

‘Where will you put that old upright piano?’

‘I thought of leaving it there, Erich. If things went well, I might get a pianist, or even a trio, to play. People need cheering up these days.’

‘What do you think, Pauli?’ Erich asked.

‘It’s worth a try,’ said Pauli. ‘I’ll bring Fritz Esser along. If he started bringing his girlfriends here, you’d become famous.’

‘I don’t want Fritz Esser and his girlfriends,’ said Lisl. ‘It’s not going to be that sort of place.’ Though she smiled enough to make it a joke, there was an underlying sincerity in her voice. Pauli wondered what she meant, but he didn’t ask.

‘You’re an old man now, Peter’

‘You look the part, Peter,’ Glenn Rensselaer told him as they walked along Baker Street, London. Rensselaer, sixty-two years old, wore a well-cut English herringbone-weave three-piece suit, a brown felt hat and brogues. There were crowds on the street, mostly in uniform of some kind or other: Women’s Royal Naval Service officers with their schoolgirl-style brimmed hats, bearded Norwegians, Australian airmen in their special dark blue, Canadians with their green-tinted khaki, Polish officers in their spiky caps and, looking in the shopwindows, pretty girls in fur coats, who always lingered where the soldiers passed.

‘I feel like a fraud,’ said Peter Winter, who was dressed as a colonel of the U.S. Army. ‘And everyone treats me like a fraud. Or at least the Americans do.’ They stopped, waiting for a break in the traffic before they crossed the road.

‘It’s your accent,’ said Glenn. ‘If you spoke stumbling English with a heavy German accent you’d be immediately accepted. Army intelligence, as you well know, is filled with German emigrants. But you speak excellent English with a very British accent. That’s darned difficult for a GI to reconcile with an American colonel’s uniform.’

‘I’ll have to take elocution lessons,’ said Peter. ‘And why don’t you wear a uniform? Tell me that, Uncle Glenn.’ There was a break between a red double-decker bus and a transporter lumbering under the weight of a Matilda tank, and the two men dashed across the road, narrowly avoiding a woman despatch rider on a powerful motorcycle.

‘Cut out the “Uncle”, will you Peter. Uniform? Well, I learned my lesson about uniforms back in the old days. If we sent a lieutenant to a meeting, the British sent a captain, and so on and so on. Finally I decided to drop my honorary rank and revert to civilian. That way the British don’t know how much authority I have, and I don’t get brass hats breathing down my neck.’

‘I wish you’d told me,’ said Peter.

‘You’ll be all right, Colonel. You’ve got me to back you up: I’ve got no one to back me up.’

‘I thought you were the big boss.’

‘Yes, but I’m the boss of nothing. For the time being we are the poor relations here. We have to use RAF planes to drop our agents, and that means we have to line up, cap in hand, along with the Free French, the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch and all the governments in exile.’

‘Why don’t we use American planes?’ Peter asked.

‘Hallelujah! Walking into that RAF group captain’s office and telling that toffee-nosed SOB what he can do with his airplanes is a pleasure I’m much looking forward to. But the RAF are flying over Germany every night. They have all kinds of magic boxes, so they can find a map reference and put an agent down right where he must be. Our flyboys are trained to fly in daylight. And they fly in formation, which means only the formation leader has to know where he is – and even then he can use the maps to help him find his way. No, Peter, agents have to be dropped in the dark, and for the time being that puts us into the hands of the British, including that pretentious goldbrick we just talked with.’

They came to a small, rather smart block of flats, its windows covered with the sticky net cloth that was supposed to prevent glass from flying when bombs exploded. They went up the short flight of steps – each bearing a strip of new white paint to help in the blacked-out streets – and pushed open the doors. From outside, the building looked like many of the other small blocks of expensive apartments in Saint Marylebone, London, but like most of the others this one had been taken over for official use. Inside the door were two armed U.S. military policemen in white webbing belts and white gaiters. One of them was sitting with his feet up on a chair listening to the radio playing ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’. He jumped to his feet and saluted, then turned the radio down, looked at their identification cards, and got them to sign the book.

‘How are you doing, Sergeant?’ asked Glenn amiably.

‘Not bad, Mr Rensselaer,’ said the cop. ‘Not bad at all.’

‘We won’t wait for the elevator,’ said Glenn. ‘It’s only two floors up.’ As they started up the stairs, ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’ got suddenly louder.

They passed through a room where three large metal Type H containers were being packed with guns, radios and rations before being parachuted into occupied Europe. They walked down a narrow corridor to a door marked ‘G. Rensselaer. Operations Staff Only’. Once inside Glenn’s poky little office, they sat down. Peter looked out the window onto Seymour Place.

‘Want a drink? Coffee? Tea?’ Glenn asked.

‘No thanks. It’s exciting to be in London again. And to be here! It’s odd to think that we’re only round the corner from Grandfather’s house,’ said Peter. His hair was no longer cut very short, but he was still tanned from the California sun. They’d flown him over the Atlantic. That was a measure of high importance in these days of priorities.

‘Yes, this section of town has been chosen by most of the exiled governments,’ said Glenn. ‘I guess they want to stick close to the British Special Operations Executive in Baker Street.’

‘How much do the British know?’ asked Peter.

‘Officially they know nothing. The deal we made with them is the same as that made by the others. The Dutch and the French don’t want to reveal anything about the men they ask the RAF to drop into Europe, and we have the same arrangement. But the British are not stupid. They know that we have no underground movement over there, the way the French and the Belgians and the Dutch do. So they must guess that we are parachuting in German Americans for our own purposes. Tomorrow you’ll meet a man named Piper – Sir Alan now, they gave him a knighthood last year – he’s one of the top British intelligence people. You met him once. I brought him to Travemünde back when your grandmother was still alive. It was the year you had the sailing accident that made your mother go grey.’

‘Mama, go grey?’

‘Sure, you must have noticed that.’

‘No, I never did. Is that the man Mama fell in love with?’

‘So you knew about that?’

‘Not at the time. Pauli told me many years later. I can’t clearly remember him, except that he was tall and spoke German with a funny accent.’

‘That’s the guy. He fell for your mother. I would never have taken him there if I’d guessed what was going to happen.’

‘Did it affect Mama so much?’

‘I don’t know. I was thinking of Piper. You know, he still has a photo of your mother in a frame.’

‘After all this time?’

‘It’s together with other pictures of friends and acquaintances, but I know him well enough to know…’

‘And you approve?’

‘Don’t be such a…’

‘A stuffed shirt?’

‘Right. Don’t be a stuffed shirt, Peter. Boy Piper loved Veronica, and maybe it would have been better if she’d gone off with him.’

‘Is that what you told her?’ There was a note of displeasure in Peter’s voice.

‘She’s your mother, but she’s my sister,’ said Glenn doggedly. ‘Maybe you should remember that. And Boy never married.’

‘And he’s a friend of yours.’

‘He’s a good guy. You’ll see that. There are plenty of wrongos in this town, but when the British get it right, they get it really right.’

‘I’ll look forward to meeting him,’ said Peter.

‘Well, don’t upset him. Just about everything we have right now, from thumbtacks to parachute training, is because of Boy Piper’s say-so.’

‘I won’t upset him.’

To change the subject Glenn said, ‘How are your guys coming along?’

‘One of them will never be good enough, but the best three are ready. I can’t teach them anything more. What are their chances, Glenn? Of getting back, I mean.’

‘I wouldn’t start thinking like that, Peter. You can’t play God. These guys are all volunteers. They want to do something for the war, and this is the job they’re best suited to do. Some of them have lost relatives – all of them have stories to tell.’

‘They don’t talk much.’

‘That’s good, but we’re going to have to tighten it up even more. The next batch will be known only as code names, and they’ll be confined to quarters from the time they arrive, in case we get another rumpus like the guy who got drunk in the pub and started telling the barmaid his life story. We can’t risk that – it’s too dangerous for the others. And by the end of the month the British have promised us better quarters. I want a place out in the sticks with a lot of space around it, somewhere we can build our own training course, complete with primary parachute training – just a tower and a rail to give them the idea. That would shorten the time at Manchester. The less time our guys spend with foreigners the better.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Last month we had a guy beaten to a hamburger by a couple of Poles. They figured he was a German, and that was enough for them to start taking him apart. What could the poor kid do? We’d told all our people they were for the high jump if they told anyone who they really were.’

‘I didn’t hear about that.’

‘Damn right you didn’t. One rumpus like that could wreck our whole programme. Suppose a newspaper man got a whiff of it. This lousy town is filled with reporters hungry for stories.’

‘I wish I could go,’ said Peter.

‘Are you crazy? You’re an old man now, Peter. You’d never get through the physical, let alone the training. You leave this tough-guy stuff to the youngsters.’

‘One of my people is forty years old.’

‘Müller. Sure, but he’s a special case. I can’t train one of these kids to be a Bavarian chemist – it takes years to learn enough chemistry. So I have to take a chemist – Müller – and use him.’

‘Müller’s German is Berlin German, and Müller…’

‘And Müller is Jewish and looks Jewish. Yeah, I know. I’ve been through this a dozen times with people from Washington. He’s not exactly a perfect choice but he might make out.’

‘I don’t think he will. He’s been away too long. His German is dated and he forgets things.’

‘Did Müller give any sign of not wanting to go?’

‘None at all, he’s very keen.’

‘Then he’ll go.’

‘But, Glenn…’

‘Look, Peter. Müller saw his parents killed. I don’t want to go into it, because it’s Müller’s personal business, and it’s against standing orders to reveal an agent’s background. But this is Müller’s war. He knows the risks and he still wants to go. That’s great with me. I need him and I’m fixing for him to go as soon as the nights get long enough.’

‘Müller wants to go because he’s been told that the office failed to find any other person with his qualifications.’

‘Don’t lecture me, Peter; I’ve got a hundred Müllers on my hands. I can’t start worrying about them. And you can’t, either.’

‘I’m just saying that if Müller is suitable, I’m suitable, too.’

‘Jesus, Peter, you’re forty-six years old and you wear eyeglasses and you’re out of shape. If we get a sudden strategic need to drop an agent with a degree in company law and a talent for boogie-woogie piano, I’ll keep you in mind. Meanwhile, Colonel Winter, just keep to your assignment.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Peter, but he was offended. He thought that his uncle was not giving proper attention to the fact that Lottie was in Berlin somewhere and that there was no news of her. In fact, Glenn Rensselaer worried about Lottie and Veronica as much as Peter did.

1943

‘Happy and victorious’

January 1, 1943. It was a celebration for Pauli’s forty-third birthday. His parents were there. Alex Horner was there, and so was Fritz Esser. Inge had saved up enough ration coupons to make a wonderful cake, and Harald Winter allowed them to have a couple of bottles of French champagne from the almost empty cellar. As Pauli said in his brief welcoming speech, had Peter been there it would have been as near perfect as anyone had the right to expect in these difficult times.

They held the party in the Winters’ family home. This was the only practical way to arrange things if Pauli’s seventy-two-year-old father was to be present. It was difficult for him to get around nowadays, and his elaborate wooden wheelchair wouldn’t fit into the elevator at Pauli’s apartment building.

Peter’s enforced absence in America seemed to affect Harald Winter even more than it did Veronica. Pauli had tried to fill the place in his father’s life that Peter had left empty, but it was no use. He said the things that Peter used to say and tried to talk intelligently about things that Peter used to take care of. But Pauli’s efforts seemed only to irritate and annoy his father, and it was as if Pauli’s presence seemed only to emphasize the absence of his favoured son. From time to time Pauli and his father found again the wonderful warm relationship that both strove for. But each time this gold turned back to base metal and they were as distant as ever. But tonight Pauli had new hopes that his father would love him again as he used to love him, for there was nothing Pauli wanted more than the love and respect of Harald Winter.

Dinner was served in the smaller of the two dining rooms. It was a fine room, still decorated in the old Gründerzeit style. Four columns with elaborate tops were surmounted with carved wooden angels that supported, upon their outstretched wings, each corner of the ceiling. From it an amazing glass centrepiece hung down low over the polished table and reflected in its thousand cut facets the light of the candles that made the only illumination. The Bohemian crystal glasses, Irish linen napkins, Meissen tableware and antique silver cutlery were Mama’s very finest. And she hired extra staff so that the evening would be perfect. It was a birthday to remember. Just as well perhaps, for it was to be the last such formal dinner ever served in that room.

After dinner the ladies withdrew while the men remained to smoke and talk. ‘You’ve been travelling a lot lately, Alex,’ Fritz Esser said to General Horner. Since Horner’s assignment to the Benderblock in June, Fritz had cultivated a friendship with him. Esser was a power in the highest echelons of the party, a valuable contact for an army general, and Horner knew what the army was thinking. General Horner had survived the Führer’s displeasure over his corps’s failure to occupy impossible objectives that had been assigned to them during one of Hitler’s tantrums. But Horner had almost worked the miracles demanded of him, and because the army always found ways of looking after its own, the Knight’s Cross now hung from Horner’s collar, and the medal of the German Cross was fastened on his pocket. Regularly they lunched together at the best Berlin restaurants and guardedly exchanged points of view. Fritz Esser, a peasant’s son, got a profound sense of pleasure at calling a general by his first name, and Horner enjoyed the outrageous things that Esser said about the party and the regime.

Esser puffed smoke. Always able to provide himself with the good things of life, from powerful cars to complaisant young women, Esser had brought the cigars this evening. A friend of his in the Foreign Ministry brought them from Vichy, France, whenever he went there for meetings with the Pétain government. Now that the German army had occupied the southern part of France, the supply would probably come to an end. The soldiers would get them, the way they always did. Esser decided to speak to Horner about it: he must have contacts in the occupation army.

Horner, who’d also got his cigar going, breathed out and nodded approval. A Havana – there was no mistaking the flavour of it. ‘Travelling too much for my taste,’ said Horner.

‘Chasing Der Chef,’ said Esser, looking round the table at Harald Winter, who sat at the end of the table in his wheelchair. Winter was not permitted to smoke, and he sniffed the air enviously.

‘The Führer moved everything to the Berghof in the middle of November,’ said Horner. ‘I had to go there. I was disappointed. I was expecting to go to the HQ in East Prussia. Wolfsschanze is not so far from my family estates. I was hoping to visit my brother, and see the house again.’

‘The Chief moved to the mountains. I told him not to do it,’ said Esser, ‘but that damned Dr Morell has him in the palm of his hand. From one side of Germany to the other. What a mess! What a muddle. I was there. I saw it.’

‘Everything?’ said Harald Winter. His voice was hard and rasping.

Fritz Esser turned to him. ‘The whole damned Führer-hauptquartier packed up and went down there.’

‘That was just the beginning,’ said Horner. ‘A skeleton staff from the “small Reich chancellery”. And the special train complete with personnel from the Wehrmachtsführungstab went, too. There was no room for them, of course, not even at Berchtesgaden, so the train was parked in a siding at Salzburg. I went down there for a conference chaired by Jodl. It took hours to find the people we needed to talk to.’

‘Were you with Der Chef on November 22?’ Esser asked.

‘When the news came that the Red Army pincers had joined at Kalach? No, that’s what made him take the whole headquarters back to East Prussia. That was the absurdity of it – they were only down there for a few days.’

‘They say he was in one of his blackest moods,’ said Fritz Esser.

‘He was, until Göring arrived and got him in a good humour again and persuaded him that the Luftwaffe was going to supply the Stalingrad pocket by air. The Führer cheered up then, cheered up enough to reject General Paulus’s request that the Sixth Army should fight westwards and break out.’

‘Will the Luftwaffe be able to do it?’ asked Harald Winter. ‘What do they need, five hundred tons a day?’ Pauli looked at his father respectfully. The old man’s brain was still as active as ever. Pauli smiled at him and Harry nodded.

‘They could probably manage on three hundred,’ said Horner. ‘I saw the Operations Staff estimates. But the Luftwaffe won’t be able to do that, even if the Sixth Army keep the airfields going. We’re only flying at night, or with heavy cloud cover. As soon as the Russians see what we’re trying to do, they’ll bring in fighter planes from other fronts. I dread to think what might happen.’

‘But they won’t be besieged for long, now that von Manstein has been given Army Group Don,’ said the always optimistic Pauli. He knew that Alex Horner adored the old general. ‘He’ll fight his way through and lift the siege.’

‘And all living Germans have him in their hearts,’ said Horner. ‘But he can’t work miracles. The Russians have encircled an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men, and they’ll hold on tenaciously. I know these people. Forget what Dr Goebbels’s propaganda machine says about the Russian Untermensch. The Russian soldier is a peasant, but not unintelligent. And he is hard, very hard. Manstein’s soldiers are finding a wall of steel as they try to rescue their Sixth Army comrades.’

‘And then poor Rommel arrived at Wolfsschanze,’ said Pauli. He was prompting them on behalf of his father. Pauli had heard it all before.

‘Not so much “poor Rommel”,’ said Fritz Esser. ‘The man is an intriguer. He always was. Back before the war, I remember him when he was liaison officer with Hitler Youth. He was always trying to get the Führer’s attention. I never liked the fellow.’

‘I wasn’t there,’ said Horner, ‘but it obviously was not a good time to suggest that we evacuate North Africa. And Rommel was crazy to arrive unexpectedly with such a suggestion. Whatever the military requirements, a withdrawal of the Africa Corps now would be a terrible blow to the nation’s morale.’

‘Will it be better to withdraw from North Africa after a débâcle at Stalingrad?’ asked Fritz Esser provocatively.

‘Let’s see what happens,’ said Pauli.

‘Shall I tell you what will happen?’ said Harald Winter. The others had moved closer together, as men do when the ladies withdraw. But Harald Winter, trapped in his wheelchair, was at the far end of the table. The candles were guttering, and Winter’s bloodless face was almost lost in the gloom. ‘The Russians will do everything they can to destroy Paulus and the Sixth Army by January 30. It will be Stalin’s way of celebrating the Führer’s tenth anniversary.’

There was a silence round the table. Erich Hennig reached for the wine bottle and poured himself a big glassful. He’d contributed nothing to the conversation. As always lately, he sat brooding and silent and got more and more drunk. Everyone had heard of this year’s preparations for the tenth anniversary of the seizure of power. Each year Hitler came to Berlin and made a speech at the Sportpalast. It was the most important date in the Nazi calendar, and this year was especially important, for it would mark a decade of Nazi rule.

Finally Fritz Esser broke the strained silence: ‘He won’t speak.’

‘The Führer won’t speak?’ said Pauli.

‘He must,’ said Horner. ‘It would be terrible if he failed to come to the Sportpalast. It would be delivering a moral victory to the enemy.’

‘It’s decided,’ said Esser. ‘He’s told Göring to speak instead. Goebbels will probably read a statement from the Führer over the radio.’

‘Something must be done,’ said Horner.

‘Have you suddenly become a convert to the aims and ideals of the party?’ Esser asked him mockingly.

‘It’s not a question of politics,’ said Horner. He thought for a moment before continuing: even in such private company an army general had to remain circumspect. ‘The army did not seek this war, nor did we encourage it. But the nation required us to fight. We are fighting with all our strength, and the cost is terrible. But we live in an age when the morale of the people is a part of the weaponry of war. If the Führer fails to deliver his annual speech at the Sportpalast it will be like losing an army corps.’

Fritz Esser put his cigar in his mouth in order to clap his hands. ‘Well said, Herr General. The Propaganda Ministry lost a star turn when your father decided to make you a soldier.’

Horner smiled dutifully. He’d grown used to Esser’s sarcasm but he didn’t enjoy being the butt of it. The fact was that he could never reconcile himself to the idea that an uneducated Kerl such as Esser could be a member of the Cabinet. But most of the Nazis were such simple peasants; even Waffen-SS generals he’d worked alongside on the Eastern Front often turned out to be men without any proper schooling. Some of them had difficulty reading a map.

Fritz said, ‘You don’t know the Führer, Alex. I’ve known him a long time. Goebbels likes to build him up as a superman and Himmler thinks the sun shines out of his ass, but really Der Chef is a simple man with wonderful gifts of intuition. But the Führer’s intuition works best when things are going well. He is not a man well equipped to sail in bad weather.’

‘Well, who is?’ said Pauli, who hated this sort of pessimistic conversation. If the Führer hated bad weather, Pauli knew the feeling well.

‘Winston Churchill,’ croaked Harald Winter from the other end of the table.

‘Yes,’ said Esser somewhat doubtfully. Erich Hennig closed his eyes. He had a nasty feeling that the conversation was turning near to treason. Men had felt the weight of the executioner’s axe for talk no more ‘defeatist’ than this.

‘Churchill took over when things were at their worst for England,’ persisted Harald Winter. It was all right for Winter to speak treason: he was so old and sick that he had nothing much to lose.

‘Yes, well, let’s see what he’ll be like when they start winning,’ said Esser. There was a deathly silence. No one knew whether it was Esser’s idea of a joke or a foolish faux pas. No one laughed.

There was a light tap at the door. Hauser, a sprightly grey-haired fellow in his mid-sixties, came in and said, ‘The coffee is served, Herr Winter. And Frau Winter would like the Herr Doktor to cut the cake.’ He looked at Pauli.

‘Good!’ said Pauli’s father. ‘Let’s join the ladies.’ Pauli jumped to his feet and grabbed the handles of his father’s wheelchair. ‘Let Hauser do it,’ the old man shouted. ‘Push me, Hauser, and mind the carpet. It got caught in the wheel yesterday.’ Pauli watched Hauser push the chair out of the room. It was Pauli, of course, who yesterday got the carpet’s corner jammed into the brake and the wheel.

The ladies were waiting for them in the drawing room. This was Harald’s favourite room. Since being confined to his chair, he spent a lot of time here. It was a light, modern room with a newly fitted white carpet with huge zigzag patterns that crossed the room from corner to corner. There was a big chromium-and-glass construction that held some small modern sculptures – a Rodin and an Epstein – and the walls held big abstract paintings. It was everything the Nazi regime condemned as ‘degenerate’, and rumour said that Harald Winter had bought them at bargain prices for that very reason, but there was no mistaking how much he adored his collection.

In the corner of the room was, as always at this time of year, a Christmas tree. And, in keeping with another old tradition of the Winter family, Pauli’s birthday presents were placed under it.

It made a wonderfully happy scene. The women had all made special efforts to overcome the austerity of wartime. Veronica Winter had had a lovely old pink silk dress remade. Lisl Hennig wore a gown Erich had got when he entertained German troops in Paris. Inge looked radiant. She was wearing a low-cut gold satin dress she’d had since 1934 – the dinner party that Fritz Esser had missed – but it still fitted her perfectly. Chrisi Horner still showed that engaging shyness that was unexpected in a ‘Frau General’. And when the men arrived, even the rather doleful blonde girl Fritz had brought with him cheered up.

Pauli cut the cake with great ceremony. It was as superb as cakes could be in this time of rationing, when butter was seen only in tiny cubes, and cream and chocolate seldom glimpsed. And although the coffee served from the big silver pot was ersatz – malt with some kind of fig flavouring – it tasted almost as good as the real thing.

Now came the time to serve the French champagne while Pauli opened his presents. And if these offerings were not as grand as could be remembered on other birthdays, there was no sign of it in Pauli’s reaction to the gifts.

His mother and father had given him a diamond tie pin, Alex Horner gave him a leather document-case, Esser a dozen bottles of old cognac, the Hennigs some records of Erich playing Schubert piano sonatas, and Inge a gold cigarette-case engraved with his name and the date.

Even today Pauli kept to soda water, but he relished another chance to make a speech. He loved to make little speeches and tell his jokes, and he had something prepared for this occasion. They laughed and applauded the things he said, for he said nothing alarming, surprising, or revealing. This was why people all liked Pauli: he did nothing disturbing, he liked things the way they were. He kissed his mother. She was such a wonderful woman; how odd it was to think that she was a foreigner. She would be sixty-eight this coming birthday, but she was still as beautiful as anyone in the room, except – he hurriedly added – perhaps for Inge. There was laughter.

And how lucky he was to have his closest friends, and dearly beloved family, around him at a time when so many people, all round the world, were separated by circumstances of the war.

They drank to Pauli’s health. And he replied with this toast: ‘I give you a happy and victorious 1943.’

They drank to that.

But the evening was marred by the tiff that Inge and Pauli had after they’d got back home. They were walking up to their apartment on the fifth floor.

Inge insisted on walking up. Lately she’d complained of claustrophobia and could no longer endure the cramped lift car. She nagged Pauli to walk, too: it might help reduce his weight.

It was while they were walking upstairs that Pauli said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t act the fool with Fritz.’

Loudly she said, ‘What do you mean?’ She stopped on the fourth-floor landing and looked at him.

‘Those silly jokes … winking and patting his behind when you kiss him goodnight.’

Inge giggled. She’d had too much to drink. ‘Has your mother been complaining?’

Now that he’d stopped drinking, intoxicated people seemed intolerably silly and noisy. Patiently and quietly he said, ‘No, but the old people don’t understand those jokes you make about Fritz. Telling him to change his underwear more often….’

‘It’s only meant in fun, Pauli. Don’t be such a prude.’

‘Well, Fritz doesn’t like it. I can tell you that.’ He got the keys from his pocket and went marching up the final flight of stairs to the apartment. ‘It makes him look a fool, and no one enjoys that.’

‘For resettlement in the East’

The train lurched to a stop. Colonel Rudolf Freiherr von Kleindorf, who’d been asleep while the train had roared through innumerable stations and rattled over countless crossings, now came awake in his narrow bunk. He turned over, but it was too narrow, and the sides of the bunk trapped his arms. When he put an arm out and hung it over the high wooden side of the bunk, his blood supply was constricted and his hand started to go dead, so he had to move again. He looked at his watch. There was only a very dim red bulb in the ceiling, but eventually he made out the time: two-twenty-five in the morning. Ugh!

He’d been dreaming about Moscow again, about his brief time as a division commander. Suppose he hadn’t pulled back? Suppose he’d given the order to fight to the last man, the way the Führer said every unit was to do? Well, in that case he wouldn’t have been disciplined and demoted to the adjutant of a rifle regiment until getting this regimental command. No, he would be dead, together with every last man of the division. Perhaps seven months as adjutant of a rifle regiment was a cheap price to pay for the lives of so many fine young men. General Horner thought so – he’d sent von Kleindorf a letter saying exactly that – but it didn’t entirely make up for commanding a division. He’d give almost anything for that pleasure and privilege.

Colonel von Kleindorf, a prematurely aged man in his late thirties, tried to get back to sleep, but he was unable to do so, and the train still didn’t move: it remained where it was except to judder and shake. Every time he dozed off, there was some mechanical noise of the sort trains made: the clanking of the coupling link chains or the sudden hiss of air in the brakes. After what seemed like hours but was really a little less than thirty minutes, he swung out of his uncomfortable sleeping space and put his feet on the floor. The floor was cold. This was an army train and its furnishing didn’t extend to carpeting, not even for the little sleeping cabinet provided to the officer in charge. And if the floor was cold, the air outside would be freezing. He had on underwear with long sleeves and long legs. Some of the others slept fully dressed – boots, too, in some cases – but on a journey like this Rudi von Kleindorf slept in his underwear. It was a compromise. Quite a lot of things in Rudi’s life were compromises. Even going into the army had been a compromise, back in 1920.

He put the clear light bulb on. It didn’t provide much more illumination: these trains were designed to go right up into the army’s railheads, some of them uncomfortably close to the front line. He slipped his elastic braces over his shoulders, buttoned up his flies, and got an arm into his jacket while he was stepping into his high boots. It was all second nature to him. He could dress, and even shave, before becoming fully awake. There was a folding sink in the corner. He splashed water on his face and ran a hand back through his closely cropped hair. He rubbed his face. He needed a shave, but his hair was light and he’d probably not meet anyone who mattered. He was the regimental commander and senior officer on the train.

He was reaching for the handle on the door when a knock came. It was the duty officer: Leutnant Uhl. The young officer was surprised to find von Kleindorf fully dressed. ‘Herr Oberst! How did you know?’

‘Commanders know everything,’ said von Kleindorf. It was what Horner used to say to him in the old days. He wondered how often he’d credited Horner with such prescience in similar circumstances.

Leutnant Uhl – a spindly young man with eyeglasses – said, ‘There’s some obstruction on the line. I have put out pickets, in case it’s a guerrilla ambush. The train commander has gone back to find a signal box to telephone and find out what’s wrong.’

‘A signal box to telephone?’ said von Kleindorf with a grim laugh. ‘Does he think he’s on the S-Bahn to Wannsee?’

‘He thinks he’ll find one,’ said Uhl.

‘Where are we, Uhl?’

‘I don’t know, Herr Oberst. Poland, I suppose, by now.’

‘Not many signal boxes and telephones in Poland, Uhl. You might make a note of that for future reference.’

‘I will, Herr Oberst.’ Von Kleindorf liked the kid. He was not much more than twenty years old. He’d got into medical school at some absurdly young age and then, within a year of graduating, thrown it in to join the army. What a fool.

‘And no partisans this close to home. But you did the right thing, Uhl. It’s good practice, and I want to keep the men alert and ready. Let the guards stay there. Men on the roof?’

‘Yes, Herr Oberst. A machine-gun team, too.’

‘Let’s go and see what the holdup is, Uhl.’ Von Kleindorf put on his heavy winter overcoat and turned up the fur collar.

Cautiously the two officers climbed down from the train and moved forward in the darkness. No moon tonight: such a night would be entirely suited to an ambush. But surely it couldn’t happen this far in the rear areas. On the other hand, there were such curious stories. In the rear areas SS-Einsatzgruppen did nothing except summarily execute partisans and irregulars who threatened the lines of supply, and according to what he’d heard they were slaughtering people by the thousand, so it must be dangerous. Men didn’t execute suspects without good reason, did they?

There was a cold wind, especially biting up here on the railway embankment. On each side of them the land was flat as far as they could see, which was not far on this dark night. As they walked past the locomotive, they felt the warmth from its boilers and looked up at the footplate, where the driver and firemen were rimmed by the orange light of the fire. Lucky devils: they’d be the only ones warm this freezing-cold night. ‘They’ve done nothing about finding out what’s wrong,’ complained Leutnant Uhl.

‘Standing orders, Uhl. Drivers and firemen have to remain on the footplate while a train is stopped. There were too many cases of loco crews being lured away and killed. Then the whole train is at the mercy of attackers.’

‘That’s clear, Herr Oberst.’

‘A foul smell in the air,’ said von Kleindorf.

‘The fields perhaps, Herr Oberst. Human fertilizer.’

‘At this time of year? You must be a town boy, Leutnant Uhl.’

‘I am, Herr Oberst.’

‘What a stench! It’s like a battlefield.’

They continued walking. The train track was roughly fashioned. By the light of his torch he could see the sleepers: rough balks of timber with patterns of holes to show that they’d been shifted and reused many times; crude wedges to hold the rails, and a total absence of the gravel fettling that ensured that wooden sleepers could be nicely adjusted for height. These were not like the railway tracks in Germany, so elaborate and well made. This was the East.

Blocking the way ahead of them was another train. A long train, perhaps a hundred freight wagons. Painted dark green and marked with the eagle insignia of the Reichsbahn.

‘What’s wrong?’ called von Kleindorf.

‘The bloody axle, that’s what’s wrong!’ It was the voice of an ill-tempered man dragged out of bed in the middle of the cold night.

As the two officers got closer to the men, the speaker said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Herr Oberst.’ He was a hoarse-voiced man with a Silesian accent.

‘You’ll have to get it moving,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘There are other trains close behind us.’ The stench from the boxcar was almost overwhelming. He wondered if the whole train was like this.

A bearded man who seemed to be in charge consulted his clipboard, flashing a light upon it to see the typed sheet. ‘You’re the HZ 1489? Advance party, Regimental HQ of the Panzer Division, Herr Oberst?’ His voice was softer and authoritative.

‘Yes: seventy-two trains close behind us,’ said von Kleindorf, although he had no doubt that the railway workers knew how many trains it needed to move an armoured division.

‘Can you tell me where the armour is loaded, Herr Oberst?’ said the man, who then cupped his hands together and blew into them to warm them.

Von Kleindorf hesitated. The disposition of the tanks and tracked artillery on their flatbed cars was not something to be revealed to the first person who asked. These men were undoubtedly Germans, despite their thick Silesian accents, but why would they want to know?

As if reading his mind, the man explained in more detail: ‘I can work ordinary freight cars, or passenger coaches, past this broken box-wagon. But your tanks will overhang their flatbeds. In the old days the smaller tanks permitted two-line working, but I can’t work your large modern armour through without both up and down lines clear.’

‘There is armour right behind us,’ said von Kleindorf. There was a sound from inside the car – animals, he guessed, horses or cattle.

‘And we’ve got more armour on the train in the siding, so I can’t shunt it over there,’ said the bearded man and sucked his teeth reflectively. ‘Then we’ll have to get rid of this broken wagon,’ he said. He turned to his loud-voiced companion. ‘Any ideas, Andi?’

‘The nearest crane is in the yards, but if you don’t mind about salvaging it, we might bring up a winch and topple it off the track and down the slope there.’

‘I’ve got two hospital trains due,’ said the bearded man. He’d taken his gloves off to write. Now he put them on again. ‘That’s the first one coming now, if I’m not mistaken. Battle casualties. That one should get priority.’ The sound of a train could be heard very faintly. The man’s hearing was tuned to such sounds.

‘We can’t wait for cranes or winches,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘I’ll bring up one of my combat pioneer officers and we’ll put a couple of sticks of dynamite under it.’

‘Without damaging the track, Herr Oberst?’

‘My Pioniere can crack an egg without breaking the yolk,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘But you’ll have to empty it first. Your boxcar will be no more than matchwood. What are its contents? Livestock?’

The two railway workers exchanged glances. What an odd question. Did these army officers really not know? Couldn’t they smell the whole train? Didn’t they know that Reichsbahn trains like this were a major part of the rail traffic eastwards now adays, and that they returned empty? ‘Jews, Herr Oberst.’

‘Jews?’

‘For resettlement in the East.’ He shone his torch at the Reichsbahn docket clipped to the wooden side of the boxcar. Upon it was printed ‘To Auschwitz-Birkenau’ in large black letters.

Von Kleindorf could hear them now. What he’d thought was animals was the restless movement of people, humans who must be packed together so tight that some of them could not breathe.

‘Get your saw and take the locks off,’ said the bearded man.

‘What will we do with them?’

‘Can you provide us with an army sentry, Herr Oberst?’

‘I can’t leave him behind, if that’s what you mean,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘Better you get a local man.’

‘We don’t need a sentry,’ said the man called Andi. ‘They’ll give us no trouble. They can go into the empty boxcar on the sidings.’

It was only a two-minute job to saw through the locking bolt. But it needed the strength of both railway workers to heave the door open. And then the people spewed out, to crash onto the hard, cold ground with sickening thumps.

The sudden stench of urine, excrement and death came like a blow. ‘Good God!’ said Leutnant Uhl, and jumped back in alarm. Even the battle-hardened von Kleindorf gasped at the sight. Women, children, old men, young women clutching babies, all tumbled out stiff, like dressmakers’ dummies, with the cold. One tall fellow in a black suit hit the ground with such force that he folded up and rolled down the embankment into the ditch.

And yet these wretched creatures nearest the door were the strongest ones. They were the men and women who’d fought and elbowed their way, or pushed their children, to where there was sometimes a crack of daylight and a thin draught of air.

‘Raus! Raus!’ shouted the bearded man. He shone his flashlight into the dark confines of the boxcar, and there was the glint of frightened eyes. More people were there, dozens of them. ‘Out! Out! Out!’ But some of them couldn’t get out. Some of the old people were dead. Children, too, of course. Men and women had slipped down in the crush of bodies and suffocated there. Others had fainted and gone all the way to the floor of the car, trampled underfoot until they were unrecognizable as anything but sticky, bloody bundles of old rags.

Von Kleindorf felt physically sick. He turned on his heel and marched away. The young subaltern followed him. So that was the sort of resettlement the regime was offering the Jews. He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket. Anything to get rid of the sight and the smell. But the memory was a thing he’d never escape.

Boris Somló was just losing consciousness as they began to saw through the locking bolt from the door. He was pinned in the corner of the car. He’d always hated crowds; even when his mother had taken him to the big Vienna department stores, he’d hated being crushed close to other people. But this was hell. For a long time he’d tried to hold a small boy up, too, but that was many days ago. It was before the day they gave them water and bits of bread. That was before the first time he’d lost consciousness. Where was the child now? He could have been no more than five or six years old, a solemn little fellow who had never replied to anything. Boris rubbed his face and tried to judge from his beard how many days they’d spent locked up in the cold, dark boxcar. But his beard had never been very heavy and he couldn’t guess.

Boris heard the railway workers’ voices, too, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying, and he didn’t much care. He was so weak that even his hunger had abated. Nothing mattered any more. Nothing. So – like the rest of them – he was totally unprepared for the opening of the door.

As the door crashed open, everyone in the wagon moved, and Boris suddenly found himself swept to the doorway, watching people on each side fall into the darkness. He breathed the air, so cold it hurt his lungs, and then someone pushed from behind and he, too, was falling into the bottomless black space.

He hit the ground with a thump that took all the breath from him, but the force of landing sent him rolling down the dark embankment. At the bottom of the slope was a shallow ditch of stagnant water, its top frozen into a thin layer of ice that broke like sugar icing as he rolled over in the cold water.

Suddenly he was fully conscious, but he had very little strength left, and no determination except to scramble out of the water into the field beyond it. The warmth of the packed bodies had been keeping them all alive, and now the effect of the cold wind upon his wet clothes chilled him enough to make him gasp. He stifled a cough with his hand and crawled on.

He looked back up the railway embankment to where the men with torches were shouting into the half-empty boxcar. He got to his feet and walked very slowly away into the darkness.

Boris dragged one foot after the other until he’d walked the whole length of the ‘resettlement transport’, his body aching with cold. Beyond it there was another train. It would be sensible to get away from the railway, and into the open country. The lines of communication were always heavily guarded – you didn’t have to be a soldier to know that. But Boris could not face the open countryside in his wet clothing. He was hungry, thirsty, tired and very weak. He knew that he couldn’t survive more than another half-hour or so in this weather.

He stumbled along, without thinking of what he was doing or where he was going. He got to the second train without knowing why he was heading towards it, except that he could see its twinkling lights and it looked warm and inviting. It was an army train, and on the side of it there were big Red Cross signs. He approached it carefully. He’d learned now the danger that sentries represented, but there were no sentries except for two armed men on the roofs of the carriages. He supposed that hospital trains did not have manpower enough to supply sentries every time the train came to a stop.

Some of the windows had open blinds and he could see soldiers inside. The train was jammed full of men; grey-clad men were strewn everywhere, like broken soldiers thrown into a toybox.

Many of them were bandaged; most of them were sleeping. There was no movement anywhere. He walked along, staying away from the locomotive. The locomotive would have men who were on duty and awake. The next carriage was fitted with bunk beds for casualties who couldn’t walk. This was as crowded as the previous one, with soldiers packed together as close as possible. All the men were wrapped in grey blankets and crammed into the bunks together, looking curiously like tinned sardines.

The door of the third carriage was open, and the light spilled out. Two medical orderlies were seated on the steps, both smoking with the dedication that comes after lengthy denial. In the doorway behind the orderlies, Boris could see an open cupboard, its shelves filled with army blankets. He coveted one of those thick, warm blankets more than anything he could think of in the world.

He waited for a long time, the icy wind cutting through him like a thousand knives. Eventually the orderlies finished their cigarettes and went back into the train. He could see them through the windows, moving along the train. This was his chance, and he got up on the steps and tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it carefully and stepped inside and up the steps. To his right was a toilet, and behind him the communicating doors to the next carriage. From here he could see right down into the train. He felt the warmth of the heating and heard the snoring, soft moans and restless movements of the injured men. No one was looking this way. He stepped into the soft yellow light and opened the cupboard. He pulled a blanket out slowly, holding the others back with his free hand. It fell out and opened. He dragged it back into the space provided by the doorway. But as he did so the train gave a jolt. From the floor nearby he heard the couplings clatter and there was a hiss of steam from the locomotive as the train jolted twice and started to move.

‘Orderly! Orderly! This man needs help! He’s bleeding again.’ It was a shrill voice, the frightened voice of a young man.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ An orderly had opened the communicating door from the next carriage. He stood there for a moment, and Boris could recognize him as one of the men who’d been smoking outside. The train groaned and rolled forward, clattering over the steel rails of a junction. Boris stepped back into the shadow and pulled the blanket round him to completely cover his black suit, stinking now and soiled with vomit and excrement, his and other people’s. The orderly passed Boris with scarcely a glance at him. Even his disgusting smell attracted no attention here, amongst the sick and injured.

‘Bleeding?’ said the orderly when he got to the frightened young man. ‘Where is he bleeding?’ The train was picking up speed now. It would soon be going too fast for him to jump without the possibility of a damaged leg or foot. He looked out the window. They were passing another train: a troop train filled with soldiers. They stared at him, as they stared at all the wounded, wondering if this was the way they would come back.

Blood had come from the bunk above and made a spotty pattern on the young soldier’s face and the blanket. ‘That’s nothing,’ the medical orderly said. ‘I’ll change his dressing in the morning.’

‘I want to move,’ said the frightened boy.

‘If you can find a place, move,’ said the orderly. He smoothed the blankets in the fussy little movements that come automatically to trained nurses.

‘You’ve shit yourself again, haven’t you?’ said the orderly.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ said the frightened boy.

‘You’d better get yourself fresh pyjamas. But this is the last change you get, understand?’

‘Yes,’ said the boy.

The orderly came back past Boris, but before he opened the communicating door he paused to look at him. Boris met the orderly’s eyes and his stomach churned in fear. ‘I know your damned tricks,’ the orderly said angrily. ‘You’re not allowed to smoke there. Get back to your bed or your compartment or wherever you’re from. You know the regulations.’

Boris nodded.

The orderly slammed the heavy connecting door and disappeared into the next carriage.

Boris watched the boy getting out of the bunk to get fresh pyjamas. If Boris could get army pyjamas, and hide his black suit, perhaps they’d feed him along with the rest of them. If he could get something to eat, he’d be able to think more clearly.

He looked out the window. There was another army train waiting on a siding. This one consisted of tanks chained down upon flatbed wagons. His train rumbled past them slowly, hundreds of them. It was as if the whole world were nothing but tanks.

‘You’re the only real friend I’ve got, Lottie’

Pauli Winter could cheer people up. It was a magical gift. Now that he came to the Hennigs’ house two or three times a week to visit Lottie, she found life much more endurable. Pauli told her jokes, Pauli provided her with stories and gossip and scandal, and Pauli showed her silly magic tricks that made a coin disappear and then come out of his ear …or her ear! And it was Pauli who’d sent most of the books, especially the ones in English, which (unknown to Lottie) had been confiscated from their previous owners in police raids. And Pauli had sent the cushions and a red velvet armchair with a built-in footrest, two framed van Gogh prints, and some dance-music records and an old windup gramophone. These things had helped to transform Lottie’s two cramped garret rooms at the top of the Hennigs’ house into a reasonably comfortable little apartment.

When Pauli came, he liked to sit in the red armchair and put his feet up. The gramophone was playing ‘Jeepers Creepers’. Lottie was at the little electric ring making eggless pancakes to go with their ersatz coffee. She had become rather good at cooking in prison, where they had, for a spell, allowed her to work, and even to do some cooking, in the kitchens. Sometimes she had a meal with the Volkmanns, who occupied the adjoining rooms and shared her bathroom. And sometimes she was invited downstairs to eat with the Hennigs, but most of the time Lottie was alone. She liked to sit near the dormer window and stare across the crooked roofs and identify the spires and the shapes of the taller buildings on the Ku-damm. It gave her a lot of time to think. ‘I sometimes wonder if there are any other Americans here in the city,’ she said as she tipped the pancake onto a plate. The music stopped and she turned the record over, but she didn’t start it going again.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Pauli, although he knew from the ministry records that there were some. The chances were that they were foreign nationals classified as friendly by the Gestapo, or they were German emigrants who’d returned to Germany because of Hitler’s New Order, and they were not the sort of friends he wanted Lottie to make. He didn’t want her to start thinking about contacting any other people in the town. The Hennigs were sworn to secrecy, and the Volkmanns knew how to behave like fugitives. Even Mama saw Lottie only twice a month. It was better that way. No alert, much less a custody order, had been issued for her – there was that to be thankful for. But the identity card that Pauli had given her bore a big ‘J’ mark across the front and certainly wouldn’t bear up under the sort of close scrutiny that German policemen gave to cards with ‘J’ on them. Perhaps it didn’t matter that her first name was given as Martha instead of Charlotte Sarah, but her age was given as sixty instead of forty, and the photo was of a much older woman who bore no resemblance to her.

If she stayed inside she’d probably be safe, but if she went out walking there was always the danger of her being rounded up in the street and bundled off to a camp. The fate of the Jews had become a subject of argument and rivalry amongst the various SS factions, but the dispute was only over whether they should be done to death immediately in an extermination camp or worked to death in a labour camp.

By now Pauli’s ideas about the camps’ becoming self-financing had been extended so that the SS had become the owner of a great industrial empire that, in its concentration camps, used slave labour to manufacture everything from cheap furniture to forged foreign paper money. Prisoners quarried stone, made synthetic rubber and sewed army uniforms. The SS owned the Meissen porcelain company, and was on the way to monopolizing the manufacture of soda water, starting with the Apollinaris concern.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Lottie. ‘Imagine if I was the only one here. Why, I could write a book, The Only American in Wartime Berlin – can you imagine that? I’d be famous.’

Pauli knew she was only joking, so he laughed. But he added, ‘I wouldn’t write anything down, Lottie. Not for the time being.’

From downstairs came the sound of the Hennigs’ child practising the piano. Erich said the boy was musically talented, but it was not easy to believe it when listening to his performance of ‘Für Elise’.

‘There hasn’t been another letter, I suppose?’

‘From Peter? No, nothing. But he’s safe in the U.S.A. The Americans won’t make him go into the army. He’s probably sitting in California with your mother, wondering what we’re doing.’

‘I suppose so. It seems so long since I saw him. And Helena will be seventeen in September. I can hardly believe it. She was only ten when I went to prison. I have missed all those years of watching her grow up. I wish I had a more recent photo of them both.’ She put the pancake and coffee at Pauli’s side and he thanked her warmly. ‘Seventeen. She was a beautiful little child.’

‘And now she’s a beautiful young woman,’ said Pauli.

‘Yes, I’m sure she must be, Pauli. She was always so perfect. She never cried the way some babies do. She was so…I don’t know…so adult, so mature.’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. Lottie liked to talk, so he drank his coffee and let her talk. It must have been very boring for her, sitting here alone for so much of the time. And it amused him to hear her speak in fluent German that came complete with all the Berlin slang and underworld argot.

‘If I hadn’t got pregnant we would have gone to America,’ said Lottie. ‘Uncle Glenn advised against it, but Peter would have taken that job. Think of that – another year and Helena would have been born an American. I wish Dad could have seen her.’

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. He watched Lottie with some apprehension. On his last visit she’d asked Pauli to put some flowers on her father’s grave. She’d asked about the other Jewish cemeteries and he’d had to tell her that the Old Jewish Cemetery in Grosse-Hamburger-Strasse, that had been there since the seventeenth century, was now no more. Bodies had been dug up and disposed of, and the cemetery was declared judenrein, cleared of Jews. Lottie had been terribly distressed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her, but he’d been frightened that she might make an expedition there and be questioned. ‘It was lucky that Peter took her with him,’ said Pauli.

‘I think about that a lot. Could Peter have guessed?’

‘Guessed that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor and that the Führer would follow up by declaring war on the Americans? I don’t think anyone could have guessed that, Lottie.’

‘No, I suppose he couldn’t have.’

‘He took Helena with him so that Grandad, and your mother, could see her.’

‘And now she’ll be an American. I can just imagine her at her high-school dances. But what about Peter? What must it be like for him?’

Pauli drank some coffee. ‘Peter will be all right. I suppose people will treat him badly because he’s a German, but from what I read in the Foreign Ministry intelligence bulletins, there’s been no large-scale internment of Germans there.’

Lottie was scornful. ‘People won’t treat him badly simply because he’s a German. It’s only you Germans who have that deep-down fear and mistrust of foreigners that makes you treat strangers so badly. That’s how this whole Hitler business got started. It’s people like Hitler who hate foreigners, and too many Germans supported his hate programme. Americans like Europeans. The U.S. is a place where Europeans went to get away from pogroms and prejudice. My dad was never treated badly in the first war. I was a teenager then; I remember it well. We never had any problems.’ She stopped. How could she make dear Pauli the butt of her anger. Pauli had risked everything for her.

‘We had a Scottish nanny,’ said Pauli. He smiled. He took no offence at her scolding; he supposed it was justified. Most of the scolding he’d suffered throughout his life had been justified. ‘You remind me of her sometimes. “You Germans,” she used to say, “you think only of making wars.” She was a wonderful woman. She packed up and went home when the first war began. I never even said goodbye to her properly, but when I looked back afterwards I saw how much of her life she’d given up for us. I wonder what makes a woman sacrifice so much to look after other people’s children.’

‘Perhaps she couldn’t have children of her own,’ said Lottie, and then regretted saying it as she remembered how much Pauli and Inge had wanted children.

‘Perhaps,’ said Pauli. ‘Lisl told me that Mrs Volkmann is having a baby.’

‘Yes, the Volkmanns are very excited. It will give them something to live for again.’

‘So miracles happen,’ said Pauli. ‘How old is Dr Volkmann? He must be nearly fifty.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. But Lily is much younger than him. I do hope it all goes well for her.’

‘How will the Hennigs manage without her?’

‘The tea room, you mean? Yes, she makes most of the cakes and breads for the tea room. I will help out as best I can – I told Lisl that. It’s been a tremendous success. Lisl is so pleased that Erich plays the piano there now.’

‘Erich Hennig plays in the tea room?’ Pauli was surprised. Erich had been so scornful about Lisl’s new enterprise.

‘As of last month. Didn’t you know? They were paying the other pianist much too much money, and he wasn’t even reliable. Then Lisl fired him for arriving late, and they had no one for three weeks. But business fell off so much that Erich finally consented to play for the time being.’

‘I must drop in and have tea one afternoon.’

‘Erich says it’s just for the time being, but his arm has got worse. I don’t think he’ll ever give a recital again.’

‘He didn’t mention it to me,’ said Pauli.

‘He still doesn’t like the idea,’ said Lottie. ‘But they need the money, and Lisl loves running the place. She doesn’t open until noon and closes at six-thirty, so it’s not too much of a tie. Anyway, she doesn’t have to go out and visit people: all her old friends come here. And she goes table-hopping and exchanging all the latest gossip. Dr Volkmann says it’s one of the most fashionable places in Berlin.’

‘Here? The most fashionable place in Berlin?’ said Pauli. ‘Is that what he hears from the people he works with in the Weissensee cemetery?’

‘Don’t be awful, Pauli,’ said Lottie, laughing. ‘He’s exaggerating, of course. It’s not like the Kaiserhof or the Kempi, but Lisl has worked wonders. Oh, I just remembered, your mother sent some brownies for me. Would you like one?’

‘No thanks. I’m getting too fat.’

‘Even when I was in prison she sent them. Not real chocolate, of course, but it’s wonderful of her. A taste of the U.S.A., she calls them. I love your mother.’

‘She wanted to come and see you more often,’ said Pauli, ‘but I told her to make it no more than twice a month. For the time being I want you to be extra cautious.’

‘Whatever you say, Pauli.’ In prison she’d heard what happened to certain categories of prisoners when they’d finished serving their sentences. But instead of an SS man with a custody order, it was Pauli whom she found waiting in a car outside the prison in Barnimstrasse. He’d brought her straight here to the Hennigs’ house. She’d never asked him how he’d arranged things so that she wasn’t taken to a camp. She just did as he suggested and thanked God for the miracle.

‘Things are tightening up. The war is not going as well as was expected. The whole of the Sixth Army perished at Stalingrad: twenty-four German generals surrendered to the Reds. Some of the boys I knew at Lichterfelde were there. It must be the worst disaster in German history. Fritz Esser says that in the final days Hitler got the message that his nephew, Leo Raubal, was amongst the injured, but he refused to evacuate him by air. God knows what will happen to the man if the Russians discover who he is. Then, in May, a quarter of a million more German soldiers surrendered to the British and Americans in Tunisia. More friends gone, Lottie. Will I ever see them again, I wonder?’

‘But no invasion?’ said Lottie.

‘Of France? I don’t think that will ever happen. Think how many ships they’d need, and the whole coastline is heavily fortified. I saw the defences on the newsreel last week. But Dr Goebbels has decreed “Total War”, whatever that means, and everyone from sixteen to sixty-five has to register for service. Even poor old Hauser has to register. More registrations means more spot checks.’ Pauli finished his ersatz coffee and got up. He hoped the mention of the spot checks would be enough to keep Lottie inside. He knew from Lisl that she’d taken little Theo out shopping, and for walks in the Tiergarten. This reckless behaviour appalled Pauli, but he didn’t know how to persuade Lottie to stay indoors.

‘You’re not going already, Pauli?’

‘I’d better. I walk to work nowadays. I’m trying to cut my weight down, but it means I have to leave home earlier.’

‘Poor Inge. So she has to get up earlier, too.’

‘I’m on my own at present.’

‘Inge works too hard, Pauli.’

He looked at her for a moment. ‘Inge spends most of her free time with Fritz these days.’

‘What do you mean, Pauli?’

‘She sleeps at Fritz Esser’s apartment.’

She looked at him. Did he really mean what she thought he meant? ‘Pauli! You can’t be serious.’

‘Yes, I’m serious. I suppose I should have guessed what was going on when she was out of town so much. But it never occurred to me that she was always away at the same time that Fritz was on a trip. Why should it?’

‘Oh, Pauli!’

‘I accused her, and she laughed and said that they’d both wondered how much longer it would be before I guessed.’

‘Oh, Pauli,’ she said again. She couldn’t think of what else to say. He looked so pathetic. How could anyone do that to Pauli? His face was tight – the face of a little boy whose world has come to an end. She put her arms round him, and he embraced her tightly.

‘She laughed,’ said Pauli, still holding her tightly. ‘I asked how long had it been going on, and she said for years. She laughed. I told her that I’d never been unfaithful to her, and she just said, “Then you must be a fool.”’

‘But Inge…’ Lottie’s mind went spinning. She’d not seen Inge for many years. ‘I thought she adored you. I’m sure she did.’

‘Perhaps if we’d had a child…’

‘How could she be so cruel?’ said Lottie, still holding him. She could feel his heart beating.

‘She loved me once, she said, but Fritz Esser is more of a real man. I don’t know what she’s talking about, Lottie.’

‘Sit down again, Pauli. You can’t leave like this. You look awful. There’s some schnapps…’

‘I never drink alcohol.’

‘You need a drink, Pauli.’

‘Perhaps just one small measure.’ He sat down.

‘Does Lisl know?’

‘Good God, no. She’d tell absolutely everyone.’

‘Who else knows?’

‘No one,’ said Pauli. ‘Alex is not in Berlin, and apart from him you’re the only real friend I’ve got, Lottie. I mean, you’re family, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Pauli, I am.’

He smiled. ‘I feel better, now I’ve told someone. I was bottling it up…’

‘Come and see me more often, Pauli. I love to talk with you.’

‘Yes, I will, Lottie.’

‘I’ve never been able to please you, have I?’

Pauli Winter’s deep and solemn love for his father had always been tinged with a trace of fear. If he ever had children he would do everything possible to liberate them from this feeling of anxiety that he always had when face to face with his father. Even now, with Harald Winter an invalid in a wheelchair, and Pauli, forty-three years old, a senior officer in the Interior Ministry of which the universally feared Heinrich Himmler had recently become head, he still found himself nervous in his father’s presence. It was ridiculous.

His father had said very little during this Sunday outing in the Tiergarten. He sat, a wizened figure hunched inside a large blanket, his hat slightly askew, as hats are when put on by a wife. He stared at the world disapprovingly. Pauli was pushing him; his heavy wooden wheelchair was too heavy for Veronica, who walked alongside Pauli, enjoying the sunshine and the greenery. The Tiergarten was at its best. The trees were intensely lit with sun that came under the clouds and made each leaf and blade of grass unnaturally sharp, like a world underwater. Whatever else had changed, this wonderful green park, in the very heart of the city, remained as glorious as ever. Pauli had been brought here in the pram by Nanny, even before he’d learned to walk. He knew each tree and bush, and the water that looped in its surprising shapes, and the ducks and birds that lingered there waiting to be fed on bits of bread hoarded from nursery teas. Sometimes, on the way home, they’d heard the lions growling in the zoo.

That summer of 1943 was perfect. This day had been wonderful, with warm sun and blue skies. But now the spell of perfect weather was coming to an end. Today the air was turbulent with the gusty breeze that comes before a storm. There was thunder in the air and the sky was darkening. For this reason Pauli had suggested they shorten their excursion. They could turn at the Siegessäule and head straight towards Budapester Strasse. But his parents dismissed the threat of rain: his mother because she knew how much Harald liked these outings, and Harald because he readily accepted such concessions from her. He always had done. He was selfish. Sometimes Pauli wondered why his mother didn’t rebel against his father’s self-centredness.

‘I wish we’d spoken English more often at home,’ Veronica was saying. ‘It would have been good for you, Pauli, and good for your father, too. And I confess my English is getting rusty these days. It’s a sin.’

His mother was wearing a smart new coat and a brown felt hat with the wide brim that was fashionable these days. When the wind gusted, she had to hold the brim or it would have been whisked off her head. She was sixty-eight years old, but she’d kept the same slim, upright figure that she’d had as a young girl. Pauli was proud of her. ‘There is a joke going the rounds,’ Pauli offered, ‘that the optimists are learning English and the pessimists learning Russian.’

‘That’s a perfectly awful thing to say, Pauli. And I’m sure it’s not true.’

‘I’m sorry, Mama. I said it was a joke. I’m sure we’ll soon be pushing the Russians back again.’ The sky was getting blacker every moment, and the thunder came again; this time a flash of lightning preceded it. They would get wet if it rained: there was nowhere nearby to shelter.

‘I don’t even look at the newspapers any more,’ she said. ‘All those maps … Did I tell you that Hugo – the young footman who worked so hard to convert the wine cellar into an air shelter for us – was killed? He went into the navy and was killed in that terrible air raid on Hamburg. He must have put us down as his next of kin. Poor little Hugo – I didn’t know he had no family. That’s why he wrote to us so often, I suppose.’

At the mention of the series of air raids that had devastated Hamburg – and caused widespread alarm throughout the German population – Harald Winter showed interest in the conversation. ‘What do you know about Hamburg, Pauli? What’s the truth of it? Eh? Eh?’

Pauli didn’t soften the hard truth. ‘Kauffmann, the Hamburg Gauleiter, reported having eight hundred thousand homeless wandering around the streets and needing food, clothes and shelter. What could we tell him? We sent blankets and medical supplies and so on. But our people in the ministry don’t know how to cope with that sort of catastrophe. The fellow we sent didn’t help them much, I’m afraid: he came back quite shaken and said the damage was unimaginable. He brought photos. The whole city has been razed. But they’re gradually getting it back to work. No one will ever know how many died. People leapt into the canals to escape from the flames, but they didn’t escape, and the canals were filled with corpses next morning.’

His father growled. Every such disaster was to be blamed on that ‘fat fool’ Göring, Commander in Chief of the sorely pressed German air force. His mother didn’t respond. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told either of them. Some people preferred to be ignorant of the facts about everything. A plane flew over. He looked up. It was a Junkers transport. He’d seen hundreds of them, but each time he saw one his mind went back to that dreadful morning in 1934 when the Führer had flown into Munich to wreak a terrible vengeance upon his brownshirts. Again he saw poor old Graf fold up and spurt blood. And the others … ‘Heil Hitler!’ they’d screamed as the firing squad squeezed the triggers. Poor deluded devils. And what for? Had Röhm’s cronies really been planning a coup, or was it just another example of the Führer’s notorious paranoia?

‘Will the Führer ask for terms?’ his mother asked.

‘Peace terms?’ Pauli was surprised at such a question. The possibility had never seriously entered his mind. ‘No, I don’t think so. He’s always said he’ll fight to the last drop of blood, and he’ll demand the same from us.’

‘But they will keep on bombing, won’t they? Suppose all our cities are attacked by thousands of bombers, the way that Hamburg was attacked?’

‘We’re safe in Berlin, Mama.’

‘But the Luftwaffe started bombing London years ago. I can’t think that the English will want to spare us.’

‘Hamburg is on the sea, Mama. It’s easier for them to attack Hamburg – they don’t have to penetrate our main air-defence zones.’

‘You’re always so confident, Pauli, but I fear the worst.’

‘What is the worst, Mama?’

‘That the Russians will get here,’ said Veronica without hesitation.

Pauli laughed. ‘Come along, Mama. You can’t really believe that the Russians could get all the way to Berlin. The Cossacks are coming: that’s the sort of story Berlin mothers used to frighten their naughty children with.’ There was another flash of lightning, and this time the soft drumroll of thunder went on for a long time.

Another plane came over. Veronica said, ‘Perhaps they are hurrying to land before the rain starts.’

He didn’t laugh at her. ‘Perhaps they are, Mama,’ he said. The plane was very low; it was a huge four-engined Focke-Wulf transport coming in to land at Tempelhof. Its camouflage painting was streaked with dirt and oil, and it bore the marks of recent damage. These long-range aircraft that carried senior officers and urgent supplies between Berlin’s Zentral-Flughafen and the battlefront, reminded every Berliner who cared to look up how near the fighting was.

His mother said, ‘Germany is fighting a two-front war, Pauli. I can remember when everyone said that a two-front war is always fatal for Germany.’

‘We haven’t got a two-front war, Mama. The British and the American armies are still in England.’

‘They are not there on vacation, Pauli,’ said his mother sharply.

‘You’re not secretly hoping that the Amis will win, are you, Mama?’

‘No, of course not, Pauli, but I wish the Führer would start thinking about peace.’

‘I wouldn’t say anything like that in public, Mama.’

She looked at him. It was terrible when a mother couldn’t reveal her true thoughts to her own son, but she could see that, on this subject, Pauli’s mind was closed. ‘No, I won’t, Pauli,’ she promised.

He looked at her and touched her arm. He loved his mother. But, like too many other people he knew, she simply didn’t know the difference between what was expedient and what was downright foolish. Suppose everyone in Germany went round saying exactly what he or she thought? The cellars of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse wouldn’t have room enough to lock them up.

‘It’s going to rain hard,’ said Pauli. ‘Did you bring the umbrella?’

‘No, but it doesn’t matter.’

‘We’ll get wet,’ said Pauli.

Four young soldiers and their girls, anxious to avoid the rainstorm, came hurrying past them as they crossed the little bridge. They were noisy and excited as only young couples can be. Pauli turned his head to watch them as they pushed one another and chased along the path. Pauli had never known that sort of carefree, youthful exuberance. His whole life had been spent in thrall to authority.

When they reached the rose gardens everyone had gone, the seats were all empty. Pauli sat down alongside his father’s wheelchair while his mother strolled around the flower beds. Harald’s outings to the Tiergarten had become a set routine. Mama liked to examine the flowers: she remembered all the bushes like children, and remarked upon their progress. While Pauli talked to his father, they watched his mother on her tour of inspection. She showed no sign of hurry, despite the black sky and the thunder that was getting nearer all the time. It was characteristic of her: she was a very determined woman. One day Pauli would confide in her about Inge’s infidelity, and she would provide renewed strength for him – but not yet.

‘Have you visited Lottie recently?’ his father asked him. It was a surprising question. Although Harald Winter had been informed that his daughter-in-law was living in Berlin, he’d shown no interest in seeing her, and her name was seldom mentioned in his presence. When Veronica went to visit Lottie, she went alone.

‘I take food for her,’ said Pauli nervously.

His father’s eyes shone with an intensity that did nothing to allay Pauli’s fears of him. Other old men had vague, watery old eyes, but Harald Winter had the same piercing gaze that had sent Pauli running to Nanny. ‘You got her out of prison, didn’t you?’ Harald Winter said, showing no sign of pleasure.

‘She was released. Her sentence was fully commuted for good behaviour.’ Pauli’s speech was hasty and nervous. He knew his father had an ear tuned to nervousness in anyone, and that made Pauli more diffident.

Harald Winter looked round to see where his wife was. She was well out of earshot, but even so he whispered. ‘What happened to Martha?’

‘Martha?’

‘Don’t pretend to me, you swine!’

‘Oh, Martha. Your Martha.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘You went there, you went to Vienna. I heard all about it.’

‘That was years ago…. That was the Anschluss.’

‘You gave her a card and offered her protection.’

‘Yes.’ Pauli smiled nervously. Surely now he would be praised.

‘She was arrested. She phoned you in Berlin.’

‘No!’

‘Don’t deny it: I have a witness,’ said his father.

‘I wasn’t there.’

‘I know you weren’t there. I say she phoned you.’

‘I wasn’t in the office, I mean.’

‘Don’t tell me lies. She spoke with you. The man who arrested her let her use the phone to call you in Berlin. You told her that nothing could be done.’

Why was his father blaming him for everything? Pauli corrected him. ‘I told her that I would try to help her.’

‘You did nothing.’

‘I did what I could.’

‘You did nothing.’

Now it was Pauli’s turn to become resentful. ‘You think it’s so easy, don’t you? Why didn’t you do something to help her? She’s your mistress.’ Harald Winter reeled back as if struck in the face. Pauli had never spoken to him like this, at least not since that terrible night when Hauser was stabbed by one of Pauli’s Nazi comrades.

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ said Harald Winter.

So great was Pauli’s sense of injustice that the sort of hurt and anger that he’d harboured so long came pouring out. ‘I’ll talk to you any way I like. I’m not a child any longer. She was taken into custody because she was a foreign national of Jewish race. If you’d married her she would have had a German passport and the protection of a mixed marriage.’

‘Are you trying to blame me for what happened to her?’

‘I don’t know what happened to her,’ insisted Pauli.

Harald Winter stiffened; his hands clenched tight and his voice went quiet. ‘You never could face the truth, Pauli.’

‘I tell you I don’t know.’

‘She was taken to a camp and sent east for resettlement.’

‘There was nothing I could do.’

Softly Harald Winter said, ‘Your signature was on the protective-custody order. Can you explain that?’

‘It’s not true.’

‘There was a witness to the arrest. You didn’t calculate on that when you sent one of your tame gangsters to Vienna to arrest her. You didn’t think of that, did you?’ He gave a grim, mirthless smile, a bleak smile of triumph.

‘It’s not true.’

‘You think I don’t know what happened? You think I don’t know how your warped mind works?’

‘What?’ Pauli’s world was falling to pieces.

‘You disgusting little swine. You’ve the moral code of a snake.’

‘What?’

‘Mrs Winter: foreign national, female, Jew. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I can’t add it up? You had Martha arrested and sent her to the camp where Lottie was expected.’

Pauli wet his lips. ‘What if I did? I saved Lottie, Peter’s wife, didn’t I?’ He heard his own voice: high and shrill, betraying everything he wanted to hide most, the fact that he was still the scared schoolboy he’d always been, and had always hated.

He looked at his father, even at this point hoping for a reprieve. His father’s lips twisted with scorn. ‘You swine!’

‘Peter’s wife.’ He waited for his father to understand, but Harald Winter’s fury and contempt were unabated. Pauli said, ‘Your mistress – and she wasn’t the only one you had – for Peter’s wife. Your Martha was old…sixty years old.’

‘I never want to see you again,’ said his father quietly.

‘Who was this witness? Can I be told that?’ said Pauli sarcastically.

‘No.’

‘Boris, I suppose.’

‘Yes, Boris.’

‘Her fancy man.’

Harald Winter looked hard at his son before deciding how to reply. ‘So that’s what you thought.’ He wiped his mouth as if trying to keep words from escaping. ‘Boris is my son: her son.’

‘Boris is your son?’ said Pauli hoarsely.

‘Your half-brother,’ said his father, twisting the knife.

‘He was probably only taken because he couldn’t prove he was half Aryan. It’s your fault if he was taken: if you’d acknowledged him as your son, he’d have been registered as a Mischling and got identity papers. Mischlinge aren’t usually taken to the camps.’

‘He was taken.’

‘Then how do you know about all this?’

‘He escaped.’

‘They never escape.’

‘Some do. Tell your masters that. Some will be there to watch you hanged.’

Pauli took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his nose. ‘I’ve never been able to please you, have I? No matter what I do, it’s wrong. I pass out of Lichterfelde and you tell me I got low marks; I fight in the war and you wonder why I don’t get a medal; I pass my law exams and you say that criminal law is easy; I become a civil servant and you call me a bureaucrat; I work hard and get promoted and you say I’m a Nazi swine! I never got a word of praise from you, and I suppose I’ll never hear one.’

‘Get away from me.’ The first drops of rain started. Huge spots like shiny coins were scattered on the dusty path.

‘I saved Lottie, your daughter-in-law.’ His father’s face showed no change. He stared at his son with a curious blankness. There was no hatred there, just indifference. Pauli said, ‘And what’s more, I destroyed the file on you.’

‘The file on me?’ Harald Winter said contemptuously. All Pauli wanted was a word of praise, or some small gesture of appreciation. The risk he’d taken in removing the file – like the risks he’d taken in a whole lot of things, from warning Alex Horner about the frame-up of General von Fritsch to saving poor Lottie – was considerable, but his father was unyielding.

‘In Vienna. The Emperor’s secret police had a thick file on you, right from the time you joined the Silver Eagle Society as a student.’

‘Ha!’ Harald Winter looked at his son and remembered the conversation with Count Kupka in the club. That was on New Year’s Eve, just before Pauli was born. He could remember the clangour of all those damned church bells. And he could remember that fool of a gynaecologist who said, ‘Your baby will be born in 1900: a child of the new century.’ Well, perhaps he was right, and what a damnable century it had been.

He wished his son had never been born. ‘Get away, I say!’

‘Mama can’t manage the wheelchair.’

‘She’ll manage. Get out of my sight! And stay away from my house until I’m dead.’ The rain started in earnest. ‘That’s not much to ask, is it?’

‘Where’s Fritz?’

That Sunday evening marked the end of the wonderful summer weather. By the time Pauli returned to his apartment, near Bismarckplatz, the rain was heavy and unrelenting. He went up in the lift and let himself in. He was surprised to find all the lights burning and a smell of coffee lingering in the air. In the kitchen was an opened cake-box on the table; its wrappings were in the bin.

‘Pauli?’ He went into the drawing room. Inge was sitting on the sofa, dressed in a sober brown-striped, button-through dress that suited the hot weather, but her hair was bedraggled. ‘Did you get wet? I got absolutely soaked.’

‘Inge! What are you doing here?’

‘It’s my home,’ she said defiantly.

‘Where’s Fritz?’

‘He’s in Hamburg.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Doing something very predictable with a willing blonde nineteen-year-old who works in the typing pool at the Blohm and Voss aircraft factory.’

‘I see.’ He looked at her; this crestfallen Inge was someone he’d never seen before.

‘That’s what he’s doing.’ She laughed. She must have got used to Fritz’s endless affairs, for there was not much bitterness in the laugh. ‘We went together. He made a speech to war workers and then took one of his audience off to bed.’ She was still lovely. How could that stupid Fritz prefer anyone else to this wonderful creature? On the low table was a Gugelhupf with a slice or two missing. There was a pot of coffee and two cups with saucers. How could she have guessed when he’d arrive? She couldn’t possibly have known; but Inge had always been lucky in small things. It was the important things that went wrong for her: Peter, Pauli and now Fritz and the baby that she wanted so much.

‘Beneath the ashes fires still rage,’ said Pauli.

Inge smiled. It was a quote from Fritz Esser’s speech, a speech he repeated when he couldn’t think of anything new to say.

‘Is it over?’ Pauli asked.

‘I don’t know.’ She touched her hair, conscious of what a sight it must look.

‘I don’t think I could…’

‘I need somewhere to stay.’

‘Fritz won’t marry you, if that’s what you are still hoping for.’

‘He won’t even come looking for me,’ she said sadly. ‘I know that.’

‘The Führer said he doesn’t want any more messy divorces.’

‘He’s a puritan. Yes, I know. Fritz won’t even take me to see him in case he gets asked awkward questions.’

‘I thought Fritz was “a real man”. Is he so intimidated by the Führer?’

‘I’m sorry if I hurt you, Pauli. I didn’t want to.’

‘Didn’t you?’ He remembered the way she’d humiliated him. He remembered her taunting him about his ‘manhood’.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said and poured coffee for him. It wasn’t real coffee, but it was very good.

‘Worry and hard work.’ He sipped the coffee and eyed the cake without taking a piece.

‘Worry?’

‘I’ve just had an awful row with Papa. He says he never wants to see me again.’

‘Poor Pauli.’

‘He means it.’

She laughed, trying to make light of his misery. ‘We’re both feeling rejected, aren’t we? Let’s go to bed and forget it all. It’s another day tomorrow.’

It was typical of her that she bestowed her favours on him with such condescension. He loved and wanted her, but it would all be different from now on. He would never adore her as once he’d done, because he didn’t want to be hurt again. ‘I’ve a lot of paperwork to do,’ he said. ‘I’ll sleep on the folding bed.’

She smiled. She didn’t mind too much: Inge had learned to take things as they came. Today all she needed was a place to sleep.

1944

‘We’re all serious’

‘Berlin again tonight,’ said the RAF Flight Lieutenant. An elderly man, he wore the Observer air-crew badge of the first war and the sort of medals that go with it. Now he worked in the Operations Block as an intelligence officer but, apart from briefing crews when his colleague was away, his duties were not much more than those of a high-ranking clerk. He was wearing a battle-dress blouse of the sort that the air crews wore, instead of the more usual officer’s tunic. It was an affectation, like the ‘handlebar’ moustache he’d cultivated.

‘So I heard,’ said Colonel Peter Winter. There was no need to ask him what he meant. Ever since November 1943, Berlin had been the focus of the Allied air bombardment. Enough heavy bombers had found their way to the German capital – despite the cloud that is a regular feature of Berlin winters, and the extensive built-up areas that made the city difficult to discern on the H2S radar screens – to devastate whole areas of the city. Most of the ministries were, at least temporarily, rendered uninhabitable, and so was one-fifth of Berlin’s living accommodation. The British information services were calling this series of air attacks ‘the Battle of Berlin’.

‘The long winter nights, you see,’ said the man. ‘It gives them a chance to hit the distant target and get home in the dark.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Peter.

‘You’re waiting for General Rensselaer, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Peter. He leaned closer to his copy of Picture Post magazine in the hope that the man would stop talking. The airfield was quiet now and the Operations Block silent. The bombers were all in the air, and there was no work to do until they returned.

‘But you’re not a Yank?’ It was an odd thing to say to a man dressed in the uniform, patches and badges of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, but all sorts of strange fellows, in unlikely costumes, had passed through this RAF Bomber Command airfield.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Peter.

‘You don’t talk like a Yank.’

‘I went to school in Europe,’ said Peter.

‘Ah, that’s it,’ said the man. ‘Where, may I ask?’

‘Where?’

‘Did you go to school. It’s a personal question, I know, but I’m just curious about where you learned to speak such good English.’

‘My mother is American,’ said Peter. Although tempted to say that he’d learned his good English from a Scots nanny in Berlin, he’d discovered from previous encounters that this only led to endless well-meaning questions that he didn’t want to answer. And he’d been warned a thousand times that his job was top-secret, and that meant his background and country of birth were top-secret, too.

‘Yes, Berlin is getting it again tonight. Serves the bastards right, I say.’

‘Yes,’ said Peter. ‘It serves the bastards right.’

‘It’s my boy I worry about.’

‘Your boy?’

‘My son. He flies Lancasters. He’s done fourteen ops. I worry about him. The Jerries call them “terror fliers”, you know. We’ve heard of cases where our boys have been killed out of hand after parachuting. It’s against the rules of war, but your Hun is like that.’

‘It’s hot in here,’ said Peter. He put down his magazine. The man was determined to chatter. ‘It’s stuffy, there’s no ventilation.’

‘Can’t take the blackout boards down.’

‘Couldn’t you black out the windows with curtains and let air in?’

‘We tried that, but there were always chinks.’

‘Chinks?’ said Peter. That was the difficulty about English: they were always inventing new words.

‘Chinks that let the light through.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Not Chinese chinks,’ said the man. ‘You’ve not been in England long, I can see.’

‘It seems long,’ said Peter.

‘That’s the war,’ said the man. ‘Sometimes I think it will still be going on after I’m dead. I’m getting on for sixty.’

‘Really? You look younger.’

‘Yes, a lot of people tell me that. It’s my hair, I think.’ He looked at Peter’s empty teacup. Peter had been given a saucer, too; he’d learned that this was something that was accorded to him because of his rank. The British did not give every visitor a saucer. ‘More tea, Colonel?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You drink it without milk, I notice.’

‘I don’t like the powdered milk.’

‘The Germans drink it like that. Were you by any chance born in Germany?’

‘Encino, California.’ He always gave Encino as his place of birth. It was a place he could describe, and it was about as far away from Europe as one could get.

‘I just remember the Germans always drinking their tea black.’ He got to his feet. ‘Are you sure you won’t have one? I’m going to get my girl to brew more. I’m a teapot.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Would you prefer coffee?’

‘I don’t like coffee.’

‘The Germans love coffee. I hear the German prisoners of war just can’t believe that we’ve gone right through all these years of war and never rationed coffee.’

‘They’d believe it if they tasted it,’ said Peter with feeling.

‘Ah!’ He looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed briefly. ‘I see what you mean. Yes.’

The British didn’t like jokes about their coffee. Peter had noticed that before. You could make jokes about their uncomfortably cold houses, about the miserably inefficient telephones and postal service, about the government and even about the King; but jokes about the British cooking or their inability to make coffee were not considered polite. ‘I never drink coffee,’ said Peter.

It was at this moment that the door opened and Glenn Rensselaer came in. His opposition to wearing a uniform had waned since he was made a brigadier general. He looked strong, smart and soldierly. His greying hair made him distinguished, rather than old, and he still had the easy smile.

‘I’m just brewing up, General Rensselaer,’ offered the man.

‘No thanks, Mr Parker. We must hurry. Come along, Colonel. Have you got your overnight things?’

‘Your driver put them in the car,’ replied Peter.

‘Let’s go, I’m driving. Wrap up. We’re in a jeep, and that’s as cold as an English bedroom.’

The night was dark. Glenn Rensselaer dismissed his driver and got behind the wheel himself. It was a long drive to London, but Glenn Rensselaer didn’t mind driving, even on the narrow, twisting, blacked-out roads of England. His ‘jeep’ turned out to be the slightly more roomy, and very slightly more comfortable, Dodge three-quarter-ton weapons carrier, but it still had canvas top and sides against which the cold night air drummed a tattoo before striking the occupants like a stream of ice-cold water. It was warmer in the front, Glenn told his nephew. Peter nodded and buttoned up his collar.

They drove in silence for a while. Peter was thinking about Lottie. By deducting the maximum reduction of sentence for good behaviour, she’d be out of prison by now. He’d written to his mother asking for news, but he couldn’t be sure the letters got there. He wondered what the RAF Flight Lieutenant would have said had he been able to see into his thoughts.

‘He guessed I was German,’ said Peter suddenly.

‘Who? Nosy? He likes to see what he can find out. Next time he sees me he’ll take me aside and tell me that he knows all about you. He used to be an interrogator in a POW camp. When he was there he wanted to be here; now he’s here he wishes he’d stayed there. You know the type.’

‘You called him “Mr”.’

‘That’s the British style for officers below field rank.’

‘He speaks German?’

‘Fluently. He was a flier, shot down in 1916. Spent the rest of the war behind barbed wire. He thinks he’s an expert on “the German mind”.’

‘He’s very persistent.’

‘An RAF Flight Lieutenant is no more than a captain. You’re a colonel. Just tell him to shut up.’

‘I don’t feel like a colonel.’

‘By now you should feel like one.’

‘I see him sitting there with a chestful of ribbons and his wing.’

‘Do you want to wear your ribbons and your Zeppelin Division insignia?’

‘That’s different.’

‘It’s not different. You don’t have to take any backchat from Nosy, or anyone like him.’

‘Did SIXPACK get away okay?’

‘Yup! We got the radio signal from the plane to say he dropped on time. Now we wait and see.’

‘He’ll be all right,’ said Peter.

‘Oh! That’s unusual coming from you. Why are you so confident about SIXPACK?’

‘He’s a crook,’ said Peter. ‘He has no intention of following his orders. He’s on the make.’

‘How exactly?’

‘I don’t know how. But some of them are like that, Glenn. They are opportunists. They’ll hang on to the money and lie low.’

‘Have you told anyone else what you think about these agents of ours?’

‘They’re not all like that. But I don’t think we should put any follow-up into SIXPACK unless we’re sure of what we’re getting.’

‘Money, you mean?’

‘Sure. He’ll ask for money, and more money. You’ll see.’

‘I hope you’re wrong.’

‘It doesn’t matter too much, does it?’

‘SIXPACK knows a few faces, doesn’t he?’ said Glenn Rensselaer.

‘He won’t turn himself in. He’ll go to ground.’

‘You’ve got a good instinct for these guys, Peter.’ Peter’s previous predictions had so far proved right.

‘It’s not instinct, Glenn, it’s judgement. I’ve lived among Germans all my life. I can recognize one from another, just as you can with Americans.’

‘I guess so.’ Glenn slowed up as they came to the circular junction that the British called ‘roundabouts’. A lot of Americans, encountering such unexpected obstructions for the first time, continued straight on, and ended up as a traffic casualty on the central reservation. ‘I would appreciate a little of that “judgement” on the can of worms facing me tomorrow. Something real big has come up.’ Glenn slowed the car and cruised along slowly until he found a place where he could pull off the road.

‘I didn’t want my driver with us,’ said Glenn, ‘because this is really hot.’ He switched off the engine. The countryside was black and the night was silent, except for a nearby owl and the distant sound of trains shunting.

‘Whatever is it?’

‘For over a year now the British have been getting feelers about some kind of peace deal.’

‘From Hitler?’

‘No, not from Hitler. These are people who plan to overthrow Adolf and then come to terms.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Right. Who are they? There are different groups. One is called the Kreisau Circle, pacifists and intellectuals with a lot of “von”s and “count”s and stuff. Big names they tell me. Okay.’

‘Von Moltke,’ said Peter.

‘Maybe.’

‘The Moltke estate is at Kreisau, in Silesia,’ said Peter.

‘Is that right?’ said Glenn. ‘Sounds like they need a little tighter security, if you can guess it in one go.’

‘Am I right?’

General Rensselaer didn’t answer the question. ‘These Kreisau guys got a couple of high-up church leaders to go to Stockholm, Sweden. They talked to some British bishop who was on a trip there. He brought their message back to London.’

‘How did they get permission to leave Germany?’

‘It’s a question that kind of troubles me, too. Anyway, there are other contacts. Have you heard of a guy named Goerdeler?’

‘Carl Goerdeler, yes. Onetime mayor of Leipzig. Protestant, monarchist and anti-Hitler.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Tough, brave, active, intelligent.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘But noisy and impulsive. Too conspicuous, as an anti-Hitler man, to be a suitable rallying point for a secret coup.’

‘Okay, but what if Goerdeler got together with the army?’

‘The army?’

‘Goerdeler has been trying to sell his revolution to the generals. He even went to Smolensk to recruit Field Marshal Kluge, commander of Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front.’

‘With what success?’ asked Peter.

‘We don’t know. We know, or we think, that Ludwig Beck, who used to be chief of staff, is a convert.’

‘What power does he have nowadays?’

‘Influence, they say. The idea is that they knock Hitler off, use General Fromm’s Replacement Army to take over in Berlin, then ask for terms. We say yes immediately and they consolidate power.’

‘The Replacement Army is just recruits and transfers.’

‘But it’s got guns, and it’s right there in Berlin, and other big cities.’

‘And is all this going on without the Nazis’ knowing?’

‘The experts say Himmler won’t wield the dagger that cuts Hitler down but he’ll willingly take over the government when, and if, someone does the job for him.’

Peter said, ‘This is the man they call Loyal Heinrich.’

‘Well, maybe Himmler is a question mark, but Admiral Canaris is with the plotters.’

‘Canaris? Who’s he?’

‘Chief of the Abwehr. That’s why the generals feel so confident. The chief of army intelligence is one of the plotters.’

‘What’s all this got to do with us?’

‘It didn’t have anything to do with us – it was strictly a British headache – until these guys found our OSS office in Berne, Switzerland, and tried to hurry things along. Our man in Berne told Washington, and now Washington is asking us if it’s kosher.’

‘Washington is prepared to do a deal?’

‘Washington is an eagle with many heads. My guess is that they want to keep the conspirators simmering on the back burner.’

‘To see if they can take over?’

‘An unequivocal no might send them marching off to talk to Uncle Joe in Moscow.’

‘Is Washington that cynical?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what are we supposed to do?’

‘The conspirators are going to bump off Adolf very soon, March maybe: exact date and method yet to be fixed. They want us to supply an agent and a radio link. They’ll want to have a communiqué about a cease-fire issued pronto. Then, if the SS remain loyal to the Hitler regime and fight back, these boys expect quick military help. What do you say?’

‘I knew it would happen.’ Peter managed to conceal his happiness. He’d always hoped that the Germans would come to their senses and get rid of the Nazi gangsters. Now the old Germany – the Imperial Germany he’d grown up to love and honour – would be restored to its rightful place in the world.

‘Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But let’s keep our fingers crossed. A political solution like this could save us from invading the Continent. Maybe it would save a million lives.’

‘What about the Russians?’

‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that, Peter.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Sure you are; so am I. We’re all serious – the Limeys, the Russkis and maybe even Washington. But are these sons of bitches in Berlin serious? That’s what we need to know, Peter.’

‘March – that doesn’t leave much time.’

General Glenn Rensselaer didn’t answer. He turned the key in the ignition and resumed the journey, leaving Peter Winter to stare into the dark night and think about it.

They reached London in the early hours of the morning. The sky was streaked with pink and there was the noise of pigeons, starlings and sparrows from the trees in the square. Cyrus Rensselaer’s London house had been turned over to the American Red Cross as an Officers’ Club. But Glenn had kept possession of the mews house in the narrow cobbled street at the back of it. He opened the doors of what had once been stables and drove the Dodge inside.

‘If I leave it on the street, regulations say I have to remove the rotor arm,’ he told Peter, ‘and, to tell you the truth, I don’t have the faintest idea what a rotor arm is.’

Peter smiled and helped close the doors. He wasn’t always sure whether to believe his uncle’s self-deprecatory remarks. Self-conscious about his age – sixty-four next birthday – Glenn had lately begun to refer to himself as if he were a blundering old idiot. Perhaps it was because the war was being taken over by youngsters. They flew the planes and commanded the ships and won the medals. Now even some of the generals were little more than kids.

‘Rotor arms!’ Glenn Rensselaer continued. ‘Why, some crook with a pocketful of rotor arms could go around the streets helping himself to any vehicle he fancied.’

He led the way up the creaky wooden staircase. The place had hardly been changed from the time when it was coach house and stables: the stalls, feed troughs and drains all remained in place.

‘Ah, good! Sally has been here,’ he said.

‘Sally? Who is Sally?’

‘Not my fancy woman,’ said Glenn, and laughed. ‘What the British call a charlady – the old woman who cleans up for me.’ He went over to the sink and nodded approvingly at how clean and tidy everything was, then switched on the lights. ‘These mews flats are always dark. It’s the worst fault with them.’

‘It’s very pleasant,’ said Peter. He looked around doubtfully. It was not only dark but also incredibly cramped: the ‘kitchen’ was just a stove on the landing, the bathroom was no more than a small closet. The ever-adaptable Glenn – who’d spent his life in improvised lodgings – didn’t seem to notice these disadvantages. ‘Who lived here?’

‘Dad’s chauffeur and his wife and kids!’ Glenn took a bottle of Scotch from his overcoat and put it on the table. ‘When gas rationing started, he got another job and moved.’ Standing precariously on a chair, Glenn reached a cupboard and opened it to reveal electric meters and a tangle of ancient wiring. He switched on a box crudely labelled ‘hot water’. Then he stepped down, red-faced with the effort, and looked through the mail that his char had put on the little writing desk he’d rescued from his father’s house. He shuffled quickly through the letters and put a copy of the Saturday Evening Post on a pile of magazines that remained unopened. ‘Dad sends magazines,’ Glenn explained. ‘He says it’s to help me remember where my roots are.’ Glenn laughed and switched on an electric fire. ‘It will soon warm up.’ Then, in anticipation of it warming up, he took off his short overcoat, and tunic, and threw them over a chair. Then he looked in the tiny refrigerator to confirm that she’d bought him milk. Americans were addicted to dairy foods, Peter noticed. Even the men ordered glasses of milk in restaurants or went into drugstores just to have an ice-cream sundae. After some thumping with a dinner knife, Glenn loosened a tiny ice tray and slid it out. ‘Charlady,’ he said reflectively, putting the accent on ‘lady’. ‘Don’t these British kill you? Even the men’s urinals here are marked “Gentlemen”.’ He held the ice under the water tap. ‘Take off your coat, make yourself comfortable. Whisky?’

‘No thanks.’

Glenn put some ice cubes in a tall glass. ‘Maybe you want to hit the hay?’

‘No,’ said Peter.

‘If you’re hungry, there are some real eggs here. Sally gets them on the black market.’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

Outside, in the cobbled street, were the sounds of taxicabs arriving, and the loud voices of people saying goodbye after a party that had lasted all night. Peter pushed aside the net curtain to see through the window. Outside the house opposite, a chauffeur was hosing down a Daimler while two children raced matchsticks in the fast-running water of the gutter. Getting into the taxis were women in fur coats, a couple of scruffy-looking British army officers, a Polish sailor and a man in evening clothes, tails and white tie. London was like that nowadays – a curious melange of incompatible elements – and these converted mews houses were often rented for short periods to such transient people.

‘I’m talking to Boy Piper at noon. I must have a tub and get cleaned up.’ Glenn opened his bottle of PX Scotch, poured some on the ice, loosened his tie, and sat down on an armchair. He put his feet on a low table and sipped his drink.

‘About the anti-Hitler putsch?’ said Peter.

‘Yes. The arrangement is that I have to keep him informed.’

‘Is Sir Alan still running things for the British?’

‘Not officially, but his successor has assigned areas of responsibility to him. The British are good at dividing command without quarrelling about it. It’s something we could learn from them. On their tank-carrying ships the senior army and navy officers have equal say. Try that on a U.S. boat and you’d have a knockdown, drag-out fistfight.’

‘But the final word is yours?’

‘I know what’s in your mind, Peter, but forget it.’

‘The final word is yours?’

‘When we have a plan worked out, I will put it to Boy and he’ll okay it.’

‘And if he doesn’t okay it?’

‘It will be because he has good reason, so I’ll look at it again.’

‘You trust him, don’t you?’

‘Sure. He’s an old buddy. Any reason I shouldn’t trust him?’

Peter didn’t reply. He still felt bitter about Boy and his brief affair with Veronica. ‘What kind of man will you drop to make contact with these people?’

‘No one big. Washington sent strict instructions about what we mustn’t do. It mustn’t be a politician or even a political adviser. It mustn’t be an officer of high rank. Just a radio operator; someone expendable, I guess.’

Peter was appalled. ‘Those people won’t negotiate with some tech sergeant from the Signals Corps,’ he said.

‘For God’s sake, take off your coat and sit down and relax. You make me nervous standing there like you’re on guard duty.’ As if to emphasize this, Glenn pulled off his own shoes and tossed them into a corner of the room, near the chair where he’d put his overcoat and tunic. ‘Negotiate? Who’s talking about negotiations?’

‘In effect, whoever you send will be a representative of the Allied governments.’

‘No, they won’t!’

‘You’re avoiding the truth, because you want to avoid the truth. These generals and field marshals are not even going to say good day to the sort of man you’re talking about.’

‘Then let them go to hell!’

‘Is that official policy? Would you really prefer that this had never happened? Do you want to ensure that it all collapses? Is this your way of showing them that the Allies want no part of their conspiracy to get rid of Hitler? You send them an uneducated time-serving noncommissioned radio operator?’

‘Peter you’re a goddamned snob.’

‘You told me last night that this could save a million lives.’ Peter took off his jacket. American informality went much too far: what made them relaxed made him uncomfortable.

‘I don’t know what to think, Peter, and that’s the truth.’

‘You must treat it seriously, Glenn. It would be terrible to leave these people unsupported. They’re risking their lives, and the lives of their families, too. We know the way the Gestapo work.’

‘So you’d send a U.S. general?’

‘You must have a general who speaks German.’

‘And what a propaganda coup capturing him would make for Goebbels.’

‘Not such a coup as having Deputy Führer Hess fly to Scotland. The Nazi regime survived that.’

‘A general.’

‘Or someone they’d consider a social equal,’ persisted Peter. ‘Germany is the most class-conscious nation in the world – no matter what they may say about the British class system – and the German Officer Corps is the most sensitive element of it.’

‘I guess you know about these things better than I do.’

‘Yes, Glenn. I know about them.’

‘But to you this is a chance for Germans to show the world that they are not behind Hitler?’

‘Yes, good Germans.’

‘You mean upper-class Germans: the Prussian Officer Corps, intellectuals, academics and men with the right backgrounds.’

‘What if I do? What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing. I just want to get the terminology right.’

‘There have been plenty of chances for the workers to overthrow Hitler, and nothing has come of them, because Hitler is popular with the working class. Hitler has eliminated un employment and he’s given the workers the best living standards in Europe – far higher than England’s – and workers with high living standards don’t urgently want freedom of speech and a choice of literature.’

‘That sounds kind of sad.’

‘Well it’s true,’ said Peter.

‘And so the counterrevolution depends upon the generals?’ Glenn said with just a hint of mockery.

‘You find it amusing,’ said Peter. ‘Perhaps you don’t realize what dangers the conspirators face.’

‘Okay, Peter. You’re right, I guess. But I have a hunch that if I told you we were parachuting the Kaiser back into Berlin to lead a revolution against Hitler, you’d be even more enthusiastic.’

‘The Kaiser died in Holland in 1941,’ Peter corrected him soberly, half hoping that his uncle would tell him he was wrong.

‘And people say you Germans have no sense of humour,’ said Glenn.

‘You must let me go,’ said Peter, ignoring the gibe.

‘Well, we’ve both known what was in your mind since I first mentioned it last night, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘The people you’re talking about are likely to be of my age and from my class. I’m a German, I can speak to them.’

‘You’re a defector.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Peter in what was almost a cry of pain.

‘In their eyes you are,’ persisted his uncle.

‘I was trapped in the U.S.A. by the outbreak of war.’

‘Peter! You’re wearing the uniform of a colonel of the U.S. Army. We’re at war with Germany. Can you really expect your people to see that as a trick of fate?’

Peter said, ‘I will have a drink if you will permit.’

‘All the rest of the booze is in the writing desk. I have to lock it away, or Sally takes it home for her husband’s flu. He suffers a lot with flu. The glasses are in the cupboard, over the sink. Hit me with another Scotch, too, please.’

‘I can parachute,’ said Peter when he came back with the Scotch.

‘I know. I watched you. You scared the shit out of me.’

‘I did?’ He poured more whiskey for his uncle and a small measure for himself.

‘You were scheduled to take that group to Wales the following week. If you’d broken your neck, there was no one else but me to go. And I hate those trips to Wales.’

‘I could do it, Uncle Glenn.’

‘So it’s “Uncle Glenn” now?’

‘Seriously.’

‘Peter. I wasn’t kidding when I said that this was a job for someone expendable. You’re not expendable.’

‘It’s worth the risk.’

‘You think it’s worth the risk, but you’re not running the department. I’m running the department, and I say it’s not worth the risk. Dropping someone in there is easy enough, but if this military uprising fails, the Nazis will clamp down real tight. And then there will be no way of getting our guy out.’

‘In such a case no one would have such a good chance of survival as me. I know Berlin, I’ve lived there, I have family there who would shelter me.’

‘And your mother is my sister.’

‘Yes,’ said Peter, and knew that any chance of endangering Veronica would count very much against his going. He picked up his scotch, but the moment he caught the heavy, sweet smell of it his stomach revolted. He put the glass down again.

His uncle was watching him very carefully. ‘Oh, sure, there are reasons why you would be a good choice, but the reasons against are even more persuasive.’

‘Tell me the reasons.’

‘That you should go?’ Glenn Rensselaer had walked right into that one, but there was no getting out of it now. Peter expected to be treated like an equal, and that’s the way he’d be treated. ‘General Fromm is heavily committed to the conspiracy. On his staff he has a general named Horner who was at cadet school with your brother.’

‘Horner? Alex Horner? Yes, I know him. He’s one of the very best types of Prussian: honourable, clever, restrained. He would never be a party to something that might easily fail.’

‘Take it easy. We don’t know that Horner is one of them. We only know that Fromm is, and Horner’s on his staff.’

‘And my brother?’

‘Pauli? No, no indication that Pauli is involved.’

‘Horner is just about his closest friend. I thought…’

‘Politics divides friends and families,’ said Rensselaer. ‘I guess you’ve discovered that already.’

‘Yes, a long time ago.’

‘Pauli is not the revolutionary type, Peter. You know that. Pauli swims with the tide.’

‘He pulled me out of the sea.’

‘Okay, that wasn’t the right analogy, but Pauli is not the type who joins a coup. Pauli is the bloodhound type, who smells out what’s going on and dutifully reports to his superiors.’

‘That’s not fair, Uncle Glenn. Pauli is the kindest and most liberal of men.’

‘I confess I’d worry if I heard that Pauli was involved in this business. I like him, Peter, I really like him. But Pauli has his own ways of doing things. They can be great, but guys who have their own way of doing things can’t be relied upon.’

‘I want to go. Officially. I’m asking to go.’

‘Take it easy, Peter. We’ll talk again tomorrow.’

Peter was persistent. ‘Tell Boy Piper that I want to go. See what he says.’

‘I know what he says,’ said Glenn.

‘What?’

‘He chose you right from the word go.’

‘Well, then.’

‘One other thing,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, who now felt bound to put all the cards on the table. ‘We have no one to receive an agent in the Berlin region. The British would have to organize the reception at Bernau, which they like because it’s on the main line into Berlin. I’m reliably informed that their man there is that fellow Samson.’

‘Brian Samson? The man I employed at the Bremen factory?’

‘That’s the one. He was sent back in, about six months ago.’

‘Why can’t Samson do it?’

Glenn finished his drink and pulled a face. ‘Samson knows nothing of this business, and anyway he has his own work to do. He can’t be compromised by revealing his true identity to these conspirators. Whoever goes in will need a lengthy briefing. Samson may not even have a radio. He probably hasn’t been trained to operate a radio. There’s no way to tell him the wavelengths. There are a million reasons … but even if they were all overcome, the British wouldn’t let one of their SIS people do anything like this. The British keep their operations entirely separate from the collection of intelligence. All “Operations” are done by SOE, out of that office on Baker Street, and they concentrate on the occupied countries. They don’t operate anywhere near Berlin at present.’

‘Samson,’ said Peter. ‘I would trust Samson.’

‘But would he trust you?’ said Rensselaer. ‘Up till now, the British SIS have refused to work with our guys, because they say we are amateurs and the agents we use are renegades.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I wonder if that water is warm by now. I’ve got to get my act together if I’m to keep all my appointments today.’

‘You’ll talk to Boy Piper,’ insisted Peter.

Glenn Rensselaer looked at him. Lottie’s name had not been mentioned. It was better that it not be. ‘I’ll talk to him,’ Rensselaer promised. He switched on the radio to get the news. It was tuned to the American Forces Network, a big band playing ‘Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me’.

General Glenn Rensselaer was late arriving at his meeting with Sir Alan Piper, or ‘Sir Boy’ as some of the wags called him. Glenn hated to be late, but he told himself his conversation with Peter made the delay worthwhile. He was shown into his friend’s new office, a room facing a weed-filled bombed site at the back, now that Piper was no longer running the show.

Though this room was smaller than his previous one, it shared a landing with the kitchen and the ladies who supplied tea. On the whole, Piper, a dedicated tea drinker, had decided it was a change for the better. There were other changes, too, notably a wide-eyed young man with a thin nose and lank hair who had been appointed as Piper’s special assistant. Glenn Rensselaer shook hands gravely with the nervous youth, who had come down from university with unprecedented high marks in Greek. To Glenn it seemed a weird recommendation for an important job in the Secret Intelligence Service, but the British seemed to prefer men who had spent their college days doing something conspicuously impractical. ‘This is Mr Frank Harrington,’ said Piper. ‘He’ll sit in and take notes, if that’s all right with you.’

‘Sure thing,’ said Glenn, and the young man took his coat and went to get them the inevitable cups of tea.

‘He’s a clever young man,’ said Piper defensively after Harrington went out. ‘He’s one of the youngsters selected for security work in Germany after the war is won. We plan to have an office in Berlin with Gaunt, whom you know, in charge. Young Harrington and a few other selected people will work there.’

‘Has it got as far as that?’ said Rensselaer in surprise. ‘Jesus. We haven’t even invaded the Continent yet.’

‘I know,’ said Piper. ‘These preparations for the future make me feel old sometimes.’

Glenn Rensselaer looked at his friend and smiled. Piper was seventy. Goodness knows how he’d fixed permission to go on working all this time. It was the war, he supposed, the same war that had given him new work to do when he was past retirement age. Harrington came in, balancing two cups of tea. Respectfully he put them on the desk and went to get a tin of homemade biscuits that was kept for special guests.

‘Well, what did he say?’ Piper asked.

‘Young Winter? He said yes, just as we both knew he would. I practically had to tie him down to prevent him from coming along here and giving you his lecture.’

‘What kind of lecture?’

‘The same one you gave me, with a few modifications.’

‘Yes, there would be a few modifications. I can’t imagine any German seeing it my way exactly.’

‘I’ve never been able to hate the Germans the way you hate them, Boy,’ Rensselaer told his friend.

‘I don’t hate the Germans, but I hate their attitude to the rest of the world. I hate the crocodile tears they shed for their own victims. Everywhere I went in Germany before the war, I saw big signs that said, “The Jews are our misfortune”. They victimize the Jews, steal from them, lock them up, and kill them. But the Jews are their misfortune: that’s what I hate about the Germans.’ He found a box of cigars in the drawer of his desk and offered them to Rensselaer. It was a gesture of concern. He knew Glenn was worried. ‘And God only knows what we’re going to find in these concentration camps when we get there. The reports we’re getting are too horrible to contemplate, but every day we hear more of the same sort of thing. It’s almost as if the Germans are trying to exterminate the whole Jewish population – all of them, from the whole of Europe!’

Rensselaer took a cigar and toyed with it but did not light it. Lighted cigars were for reflection, contemplation, or satisfaction, not for times of anxiety like this. Piper waited for him, giving him time to think. For a moment Rensselaer stared in silence. Damn! Why had he been faced with such a conundrum? Peter was part of his own family. ‘I’d like to have a couple of days looking for an alternative,’ he said.

Piper nodded and poured tea. ‘Oh, of course. It’s hard for you, old chap, I know it is. But your nephew seems to be an ideal choice.’

‘We have to put him in by air, don’t we?’ said Glenn. Politely he took the proffered tea and put it on the table. He could not face a cup of strong English tea.

‘I’m afraid we do, Glenn. Whoever goes will have to parachute. There again your nephew fits the bill.’

‘Have you ever dropped people untrained?’

‘Yes. They always get hurt. Sometimes only a sprained ankle, but that’s enough to write a man’s death warrant when he’s lying crippled in the dropping zone. The radio side is much easier. Nowadays we have sets that even a child can operate.’ Piper smiled and drank tea. Piper – like so many of his countrymen – seemed to flourish on this stuff.

‘And back through Switzerland?’

‘If possible, but I think I should be quite frank with you, Glenn. The chances of getting him back safely are not one hundred per cent.’

‘I thought Samson was coming back. You said Samson’s wife was having a baby. You said you’d promised to bring him back.’

‘Samson is a special case. He’s proved to be one of our very best people. We flew him to Stockholm in a Mosquito, and he went straight to Germany on a Swedish steamship. He has first-rate identity papers and he will come out very soon. Silas Gaunt wants Samson as his number one, and these Military Government security teams must be ready by the time we invade the continent and they have a lot of preparatory work to do. I couldn’t endanger him to help the fellow you send…. Your chap’s identity papers will be produced in a hurry. I couldn’t risk it, Glenn, I really couldn’t.’

Glenn’s stomach turned over. He’d always taken great pride in having an impassive professional attitude towards everything he did. But Peter was his own family, and over the past year Glenn had become more and more attached to him. ‘He’s expendable, you mean?’ He kept his voice flat and unemotional.

‘You know I don’t mean that. We’ll do everything we can to get your fellow out, but the chances are not good.’

Glenn tapped the unlit cigar upon the back of his hand and gave it all his attention. He said, ‘Shall I take it, from everything you’ve just said, that you don’t rate the chances of this assassination of Hitler very high?’

Piper got up from his desk, walked to the window, and looked down at the empty place where not so long ago a fine Queen Anne house had stood. Now it was flattened and the rubble removed; it had become a thick tangle of nettles and willow herb. ‘Not very high. It’s a long shot. Hope for the best; plan for the worst. That’s all we can do, isn’t it?’

He turned and noticed that his friend’s fingers had started to unravel the cigar. It was unsmokable now.

‘Until the Führer is dead’

From a distance the two horsemen looked like bugs on a bedcover, a rumpled green blanket dotted with bare trees and small farms. They were Germans and, charactistically, the two men rode with that desperate competition that not even the Latin races aspire to. They chased across the fields and jumped hedges and gates with a calculated skill and a daring that bordered upon the foolish.

A third man watched them through field glasses. He was in his mid-sixties, a soldierly sort of figure, but not in uniform. Though he was wearing rough country clothes and rubber boots, he was certainly not a peasant. He was standing on a hillock at the end of the churchyard that marks the very edge of the village of Hohendorf, on the road from Bernau to Biesenthal. When the horsemen went out of sight over the hill, he put his field glasses back into their case and strapped the case closed. Then he turned and walked back slowly through the churchyard, stopping now and again to look at the headstones. A sudden shower of rain began to fall, but he still didn’t hurry. When he got to the little village church, he peered inside.

The church was quiet and unlit. The last morning service had ended and the lights were out. The man went into the church. Though it was empty, he could smell smoke from the recently extinguished candles. Candle wax was in short supply – no one wasted it. He found a place at the very back where he could see everything. Then he kneeled down to say a long prayer. That finished, he sat back on the hard wooden seat and started thinking. He had a lot to think about.

The man was Baron Wilhelm von Munte; his son was a senior official in the Reichsbank. The von Muntes were wealthy. They’d owned a big house here for many years, and their estate in Pomerania went back many generations. Von Munte had a lot to lose if his plans went wrong.

Outside, where the brief shower had passed and the sun was brightening the dull colours of the wintry landscape, the two horsemen had stopped and were talking.

‘I would never have done this if you hadn’t suggested it,’ said Pauli.

‘And suggested it and suggested it and suggested…’ said General Alex Horner. He got down from his saddle and stood, enjoying the air. There was only a small patch of blue sky. The sun would vanish, and there was much more rain to come, but it didn’t matter.

‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. But when the Reichsführer became Minister of the Interior last year, it created a lot of work, and we are still not clear.’ He got down, too. Pauli was puffed. That chase had taken it out of him, though he would never admit it.

‘But you’re all right?’ Alex asked.

‘Oh, you heard about the scourging of the lawyers. Yes, he got rid of all those lawyers in the Administration and Legal Section of Hauptamt Orpo, but that was long overdue.’

‘Fritz was disappointed,’ said Horner. ‘He wanted to be minister.’

‘Once he saw that the Reichsführer was determined to take over, Fritz was sensible enough to stay clear of the struggle. But Fritz has done well enough. He’s still deputy, and so much extra power has been given to the RSHA that Fritz Esser has become more powerful than before.’

‘That’s not evident.’

‘I don’t think Fritz minds that.’

‘I don’t think Fritz minds anything as long as he can live in high style,’ said Horner. ‘I went to a party there last month; I’ve seldom seen such food and wine. You’d never know there was a war on.’

‘Fritz takes what he can get,’ said Pauli feelingly. ‘My God, but it’s wonderful to be out here in the open country again. I feared I might have forgotten how to ride.’

‘It’s not something you forget, Pauli. We were lucky to have learned so young. And the cadet school taught everything properly. I wonder what the old riding stables are used for, now that the SS soldiers are there.’ When Pauli didn’t respond he said, ‘My little Christian will be six in June. I’ve promised him his first riding lesson then. Chrisi is making him a riding outfit for his birthday.’

Pauli still did not respond. They got back on the horses and rode slowly to let them cool a little after their furious ride. At the brim of the next rise Horner dismounted again and stood looking over the landscape before them. He looked with a soldier’s eye. The only way he could interpret the landscape nowadays was in terms of covered ground, observation points, artillery positioning and antitank defences. But this wasn’t a battlefield, this was the homeland, and he tried to see it in other terms. He relished it as one of the things he was fighting for.

‘It’s over between me and Inge,’ said Pauli. There, he’d said it at last.

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s all right, Alex. I don’t mind talking about it.’

‘But I thought she’d…’

‘Come back to live with me? Yes, she has. It’s convenient for both of us now that she’s not living with Fritz.’

‘It’s tragic, Pauli. I’m so sorry.’

‘The marriage will never be anything but a sham. I don’t blame Fritz,’ said Pauli. ‘Inge threw herself at him. She told me so. But Fritz became tired of her. I knew he would. Fritz has hundreds of women: it’s the way he is. You know him.’

‘Yes, I know him,’ said Horner. ‘We had lunch the other day. He said that Germany now had no chance of winning the war.’

‘I wouldn’t take that too seriously,’ Pauli warned him. ‘Fritz says all sorts of things he doesn’t mean.’

‘I think he meant it this time,’ said Horner.

There was a pause as Horner waited for Pauli to respond. ‘Things are not too good at present,’ said Pauli. ‘But there are so many things in our favour.’

‘For instance?’

‘If the Americans try an invasion, we’ll thrash them as they come ashore. I’m convinced it will be the greatest tragedy they’ve ever suffered.’

‘I wish I felt as confident,’ said Horner. ‘I was in France looking at the defences last month.’

‘I saw the newsreel,’ said Pauli. ‘It’s magnificent.’

‘The piece they film for the newsreel is,’ said Horner, ‘but we don’t know where the Allies will strike. It’s possible that they’ll land an airborne army in our rear. And much of the coast is manned by Russian volunteers. We can’t expect them to fight to the last drop of blood to defend occupied France for us.’

‘You think the landing will succeed?’

‘I think it has far better than a fifty-per-cent chance. And if they get a beach head they will land such an amount of men and material that our forces in the West could be overwhelmed.’

‘Are their armies to compare to the Russian armies?’ said Pauli scornfully, hoping to end his friend’s pessimistic arguments. ‘Are you saying that these Americans, and the Tommies that we chased out of France in 1940, can compare to the German soldier?’

‘Not man for man. But the Amis fight with machines. Our army is still mostly horse-drawn. The Anglo-American armies have got rid of their horses. Everyone is moved by road; sometimes whole divisions of infantry advance in armoured carriers. Their artillery has an abundance of shells, there will be endless supplies of bullets, and their supply forces will use planes and trucks to keep the pressure up. In the West, where the roads are good, we’ll find it difficult to withstand them.’

‘We also have planes to attack them. The beaches will make a juicy target for our bombers. And we have the miracle weapons.’

‘That the Führer has promised. Yes, the miracle weapons. I wonder what kind of miracles they will perform, and how long we will have to wait for them.’

‘Are you really so despondent, Alex?’

‘Fritz is right, Pauli. Perhaps the war is not yet lost; but the war cannot be won. If only the people at the top would make the Führer see it.’

‘The Führer is determined,’ said Pauli.

‘Then perhaps someone must make the Führer step aside, and do it on his behalf,’ said Alex Horner.

‘What do you mean, Alex?’

‘I see divisions mangled every day. The German army is being destroyed. Our losses are gigantic, Pauli. Germany is losing its soldiers: and with such wholesale conscription, its soldiers are its entire male population. We can’t go on like this. Germany is dying. Dying, Pauli!’

‘But what can we do?’

‘Have you ever heard of the opposition groups?’

‘The Kreisau Circle?’ said Pauli.

‘Yes,’ said Horner guardedly.

‘Or do you mean what Goerdeler and Beck are doing?’

Horner was silent and like the skilful interrogator he’d become, Pauli gave his friend a few moments to reflect. But then he continued the pressure. ‘Are you one of them, Alex?’

‘I’ve been approached, Pauli,’ said Alex Horner.

‘Oh my God, Alex. How can you be such a fool?’

‘Turn me over to your Gestapo if you like, but you’ll get nothing out of me.’

‘I’m not going to turn you over to anyone, you fool. But how can you get mixed up with treason? You didn’t tell Fritz any of this?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Cut your connections with these people, Alex. We’ve had the Beck-Goerdeler group and the Kreisau Circle under observation for months. Just go sick or think of some other way to do it.’

‘Is that your best advice?’

‘Beck is too old and Goerdeler too indiscreet. They’ll talk and talk until their activities can’t be ignored any longer, and then they’ll be thrown into a camp. They won’t do anything. It’s all for nothing, Alex.’

‘I’m glad I talked to you, Pauli. You didn’t mind, did you?’

‘Those people have been under observation for over a year. “Gestapo” Müller was bragging about it only last week, when I was over there. He was showing us his dossiers and playing the wiretaps. He knows all about those people.’

‘I feel better now, Pauli.’

‘Depend on the Führer,’ said Pauli. ‘Some people are too ready to discount him, but he’s never been wrong yet.’

‘Race you to that clump of trees?’

‘Let’s go.’

Both men swung up into the saddle with such energy that the horses reared. Then they pounded across the fields, their horses neck and neck.

Pauli felt good, really good; this time he’d done something useful to help his friend.

‘And?’ said the old man who sat waiting for General Horner in the back pew of the empty church.

‘He’s a careful one,’ said Horner.

‘He won’t join us?’ said von Munte. He fiddled with the strap of the field glasses.

‘No, but he’ll keep it to himself. I would trust him with my life.’

‘You have,’ said the old man dryly.

‘He knows about the Kreisau Circle and the Beck-Goerdeler group. The Gestapo know, too. He says they have recordings of phone calls and everything.’

‘Poor devils. But nothing about us?’

‘I’m sure he would have mentioned it.’

‘It’s been worth all the trouble to maintain security.’

‘But now I am compromised,’ said General Horner.

‘Yes, we should assume that your friend will betray you. It’s safer that way. But it doesn’t matter, General. You will be in Berlin. There will be no need for you to do anything until the Führer is dead.’

‘Wipe out these vermin’

‘You’ve been working hard, Koch.’

‘Yes, Herr Deputy Minister,’ said Koch, his doleful expression unchanging. He was becoming more canine every day, thought Fritz Esser as he looked at the little man hunched in the centre of the sofa. Koch’s dark-ringed eyes and bushy eyebrows made him look like a dutiful wolfhound waiting for the command to bite.

Fritz Esser picked up the papers that Koch had spread over his antique desk and piled them together. ‘I’ll think about it.’ Esser picked up the phone that connected him to his secretary in the outer office and said, ‘Send Herr Doktor Winter in.’ He looked up at Koch. ‘Leave now, Koch.’ He nodded to the other door, which led to the corridor. ‘I want your part in this kept secret.’

Koch had to move fast to pick up his Tirolean hat and leather coat and get out through the door before Pauli arrived. Koch was not surprised at this instruction. Fritz Esser’s obsession with secrecy was well known. His assistants made jokes about it when he was not around.

It was the first time that Pauli Winter had seen Fritz Esser’s new accommodation. Far more comfortable than any previous office, it had room for a leather sofa in addition to matching black leather armchairs. And there was a low table so that Esser could sit with his visitors and drink coffee when he wanted an atmosphere of informality that could not be achieved from behind his magnificent desk. On his desk now, alongside the dossier that Lothar Koch had brought, was a loosely wrapped brown paper parcel.

They shook hands and exchanged greetings. Pauli had promised himself that Inge’s infidelity would make no difference to his friendship with Fritz. Fritz had said the same thing a million times. But it did make a difference. Pauli saw Fritz in a new light these days. He was aware of the deviousness and cunning that were hidden under Fritz’s noisy, outspoken friendliness. Hunched over his desk, this man whom Pauli had always likened to a moth-eaten bear looked like a toad. ‘It’s wonderful, Fritz,’ Pauli said, looking round at the modern lithographs on the wall – a series of National Socialist heroes, from a tank commander to a shapely swimming champion – and the silver-framed photo, signed with fraternal greetings from the Führer, that had a place of honour on the side table.

‘Yes,’ said Fritz Esser awkwardly, ‘you haven’t seen it before, have you?’ Pauli realized that the decoration must have been arranged by Inge. The carpets, the tapestry that hung behind his desk and the lithographs: it was all very much Inge’s style. Some of these items were things she’d always wanted Pauli to have in his office.

The windows were big and the view of Unter den Linden high enough to see over the famous lime trees. Across the road, men were repairing the two badly burned upper storeys of a building that had been hit by a cluster of incendiary bombs. Nowhere was safe from the Allied bombers now. ‘I came as soon as I could,’ said Pauli.

‘Yes, good,’ said Fritz. ‘Drink?’

‘No thanks.’ It was the usual routine, but Fritz always offered. He reached for the bottle and topped his own drink up. ‘I have some new reports on the conspiracy.’

‘Better than the last lot?’ said Pauli, referring to some hysterical rumours that informers had brought here in January, and which had provoked first alarm and then anger from SS-Reichsführer Himmler.

Fritz ignored this remark. He said, ‘Would you believe that the army – Army Group Centre, those rattlesnakes around Kluge – are preparing a coup?’ He said it without much anger in his voice and looked up to see how Pauli reacted.

‘Any evidence?’ said Pauli. He’d heard such stories before. Berlin was full of rumours these days, and Pauli encountered most of them in his rounds of the Gestapo building and the ministry.

Fritz sighed at his ‘lawyer’s reaction’. ‘They have a bomb: two bombs, in fact.’

‘They have?’ said Pauli.

‘British bombs.’

‘Is the army so short of bombs?’ said Pauli.

‘It is no laughing matter,’ said Fritz Esser sternly and then, having said it so sternly, found he couldn’t keep a straight face. Collecting himself, he said, ‘These British devices are dropped for the terrorists. I have a sample one here.’ He unwrapped the parcel that was on his desk. There were two metal cylinders inside, and Esser grabbed one to show him. When Pauli showed some alarm Fritz reassured him: ‘These have been emptied. But let me show you how they work.’

‘Very well,’ said Pauli. Fritz Esser did not have the sort of brain that could cope with the intricacies of mechanical engineering, but these bombs were simple enough for him to understand the way they functioned, and he proudly explained the workings to Pauli. ‘You press here and the little bottle breaks. Then acid eats into the restraining wire until the wire …There, that’s it – see? Lets the spring bring the…Wait a moment. Yes, that’s it. The striker there hits the detonator. Detonator explodes and up goes the bomb. What do you think?’

‘Very crude. It looks as if a schoolboy made it. Is this the best the British can do?’

‘Crude, yes. They make them by the thousands, and it costs them almost nothing. They drop them into France, Belgium, Holland, Norway and so on. These hoodlums use them against us while the British rub their hands and laugh.’

‘Are you saying there’s to be an attempt to kill the Führer?’

‘It’s silent. That’s what you’ve missed, Pauli. No ticking or whirring of clockwork. Absolutely silent. And this wire can be changed so that the timing can be anything you want, from ten minutes to an hour or two.’

‘Can I ask how you came by this infernal machine?’

‘The Abwehr have intercepted thousands of them.’

‘The Abwehr.’ Since February 18, the army’s intelligence service had been amalgamated with the SD, the SS intelligence service, and now came into Himmler’s ever-growing empire.

‘The Abwehr are a part of the conspiracy against the Führer. Sometime last year there was a conference of intelligence officers at Smolensk – Army Group Centre – and two of these bombs were taken there. That’s where the army swines did their plotting. They might have already tried and failed. We have trouble infiltrating these army circles, of course. They close ranks against us.’

‘What do they plan?’ asked Pauli.

‘I don’t know, but there has already been some contact between certain of these traitors and the Western governments.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The Ausland-SD and the Gestapo both agree on that.’

‘Will there be arrests?’

‘Not yet,’ said Esser. ‘The SS-Reichsführer says that nothing is to be done until we are quite ready.’

‘The Führer’s life is in danger,’ said Pauli, appalled at the risk.

Fritz drank some of his drink. It was brandy; Pauli could smell it. Then Fritz leaned forward and in a low voice said, ‘Suppose I told you that the SS-Reichsführer himself has been in contact with the Americans?’ Pauli was not shocked; he didn’t believe it. It was one of Fritz Esser’s stories.

‘To discuss making peace with them?’

‘He sent Dr Carl Langbehn – a Berlin lawyer – to Switzerland to talk to an American named Dulles who claims to speak on behalf of President Roosevelt.’

Was it true? Could it be? ‘I can’t believe it. But Langbehn was arrested….’

‘Listen, Pauli, listen. Langbehn went to Switzerland with the SS-Reichsführer’s blessing. But the Gestapo monitoring service picked up a radio broadcast. No one knows how, why, or what the source was, but the British have always opposed any dealings with the SS-Reichsführer, so it looks like the British wanted to sabotage the Langbehn talks and sent the message so it could be monitored by our listening service…. The Gestapo sent the intercepted message to Führer HQ, and we had no alternative but to arrest Langbehn and send him to a camp.’ Fritz grinned to reveal his bent teeth. ‘The SS-Reichsführer was very worried. Yes, I’ve never seen Heini so scared. Since then he’s had no contact at all with any other of the groups.’

Pauli was overwhelmed. His world was falling to pieces. ‘This is all true? I can hardly believe it.’

‘Well, believe it: it’s true, every word. But Heini’s problem has always been his oath to the Führer. He wouldn’t listen to any plans that included doing harm to the Führer.’

‘I should think not,’ said Pauli.

‘And yet, while the Führer is there, no one will be allowed to do what has to be done.’ Fritz Esser leaned forward across his desk and touched his fingertips together while he smiled. ‘But suppose something like this…’ He touched the bomb delicately, as if it might explode. ‘Suppose the person we’re talking about was no more.’ Even Fritz couldn’t bring himself to say it in plainer words. ‘Then we could arrest the culprits and provide the SS-Reichsführer with the mission that I believe is his.’

Pauli looked at Fritz Esser as he realized what Fritz meant. He wanted the Führer to be assassinated, to make way for Himmler. What a hypocrite he was, and what a cynic. How much of this had come from the SS-Reichsführer, and how much of it had been planted in Heini’s mind by the cunning Fritz? But it made sense – it was crude and cunning but it made sense – and what Fritz had told him fitted together with other things he’d come across in his official duties.

‘Why are you telling me this, Fritz?’

‘I want you to take over the investigation of these treacherous opposition groups.’

‘Me?’

‘You’ll have all the authority and all the staff you need.’

‘No, Fritz, no. Please.’

‘Pauli, it’s got to be someone I can trust.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘No.’

‘I want you to wipe out these vermin, whether they are in the army, the Abwehr, the church, the universities, or anywhere else. Even if they are in the SD or the Gestapo, you will have authority to question who you like. No one will be empowered to challenge your authority. I want the Führer to know that the party’s police apparatus is in control of the state.’

‘You want me to smash these organizations?’

‘Investigate them,’ Fritz corrected him gently. ‘There are influential people involved: high churchmen, field marshals and aristocrats. Don’t underestimate their power. There will have to be a proper trial. The party can’t afford to look foolish in court.’

‘So I shall bring them to trial?’

‘Yes, but not too quickly.’ He smiled that inimitable cunning smile. ‘Give them time to do something we can charge them with.’

Across the road the workmen were boarding up the top storeys of the ministry; the upper part of the building was being closed and abandoned. It was eyeless, its boarded-up windows here in the Government Quarter a reminder to every passer-by that the Allied bombers could bring the war to the heart of the Reich.

‘Do you understand?’ asked Fritz.

‘I understand,’ said Pauli.

‘We don’t need any help in killing Hitler’

Before the coming of the Nazi regime, the inhabitants of Berlin’s Wedding were reliably communist in sympathy. It was a district of huge old apartment blocks, barracklike buildings that had been hurriedly built in the previous century to house the seemingly endless waves of peasants who swarmed into Berlin looking for jobs in the new factories. Since they were designed in a honeycomb style, shafts of daylight could sometimes reach into their courtyards and scatter light into their tiny, squalid rooms, where men crowded together in dozens. Now these apartment houses were not so crowded or so squalid as they once had been, but there was no comfort here in the grim stone monoliths, and the inhabitants were thankful that summer was coming, bringing with it more light and warmth.

A room at the very top of one such building was, on this chilly spring evening, occupied by two men. One was some sort of foreign seaman, a tall, cheerful man, about thirty-five years old, with a large moustache and steel-rimmed circular glasses, excellent German – usually an impossible language for foreigners to master – and a clever way of making rude jokes that were particularly berlinerisch. With him there was a German fellow, getting on for fifty, with wavy grey hair and the sort of Berlin accent that you’d expect to hear in Grunewald, rather than in a grimy place like this.

Living together in the same room for nearly two weeks had not made the men friends. The stress did not help, nor did the smell from the toilet on the landing, the dirty sheets on the bed, and the stuffy atmosphere of this room in which they slept, ate, played cards and tried not to argue.

‘What’s the time?’ said Peter Winter, the elder of the men. He was wearing a dark-grey suit. It was baggy and in places thread-bare, but it was one of the few suits that had fitted him when the Special Operations Executive in London offered him their selection of German-made clothes with German labels. It might help him sustain the fiction that he was the senior costing clerk that his forged identity papers described. But respectable-looking clerks were not easily provided for. Most of the clothes available came from refugees, and refugees are not noted for their sartorial elegance.

‘Twenty-five minutes past,’ replied Brian Samson testily. It was the third time Winter had asked him that question in the previous quarter of an hour. Samson had a white roll-neck seaman’s sweater and brown corduroy trousers and heavy boots with studs that in the last resort he could use as a weapon. He was sitting immediately under the light, darning a sock while holding it stretched over an empty tumbler.

‘They should have sent someone by now.’ Winter looked at the radio transmitter in the corner. If they were caught with that, and the antenna that was fixed to the guttering outside the window, they’d be executed without trial. He looked at Samson. There was no anxiety to be seen; it wasn’t nerves that made him so bad-tempered. If the door crashed down now, Brian Samson would smile and do his Swedish seaman act and get away with it, with laughs and salutes all round. Samson had the ‘common touch’ and Peter Winter envied him that gift. In the dangerous game of espionage, the ‘common touch’ could be a trump card.

‘Perhaps Hitler cancelled the meeting and went back to Wolfsschanze,’ said Samson. He said the name of the Führer’s headquarter’s with unconcealed contempt. ‘Wolf’s Lair’ – the name that Hitler had given to his headquarters – was a measure of the fantasy world in which these madmen lived.

‘To Rastenburg in East Prussia? No, that’s out of the question. Everything is done from the Berghof at this time of year. The Führer is spending more and more time there these days. The generals say the Führer won’t go back east until the summer offensive begins.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep calling that bastard the Führer. He’s not my Führer.’

Peter Winter didn’t argue, but it was difficult to get out of such ingrained habits. ‘That’s why this is such a good time for the army to do it. He’ll be at the Berghof until about July, and the security there is not so rigorous.’

‘I see,’ said Samson sardonically, without looking up from his darning.

Winter looked down at the crippled fingers of his left hand. Handling the harness and shroud lines for his parachute drop had proved difficult, and this maimed hand was red and sore with the exertion of it. For years he’d been able to forget about the deformity, but now – under the critical gaze of Samson – he was self-conscious again. ‘It’s a young captain…. He’s demonstrating a new antitank weapon to Hitler….’ He got it right this time, ‘Hitler’, not ‘Führer’. ‘The bomb is concealed in one of the ammunition boxes that are part of the demonstration.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Samson in an offhand way.

‘The officer will lose his own life,’ persisted Peter. He looked at his companion in the hope that he’d show more interest and compassion.

Samson looked up from his darning, stared at Peter, and said, ‘You really believe all this shit, don’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do our people in London believe all this rubbish you keep telling me?’ And then, in answer to his own question, ‘I suppose they must do, or they wouldn’t have given me all the extra work of looking after you.’

Peter resented that. It was typical of Samson that everything was measured by his work and his inconvenience. ‘Why wouldn’t they believe it?’

‘The Yanks sent you, didn’t they? They’ll believe anything. If someone told those Yanks in London that Hitler was really a tame gorilla, they’d send a zoologist over here.’

‘The army are determined…’

‘The army! Don’t tell me about the bloody army. Those spineless bastards didn’t discover that there was anything wrong with Hitler until the Red Army started showing them how to fight battles, and the RAF started bombing their precious German towns. Now they’ve decided that they want to get rid of him. Typically German, that: fair-weather friends, the Germans.’

‘They’ve tried before,’ said Peter. He knew that a lot of it was just Samson letting off steam, but it hurt just the same.

‘And how they’ve tried before! I’ve heard so many stories about the army’s attempts to assassinate Hitler that I can’t keep account of them.’

‘His security is so tight nowadays.’

‘So why weren’t they trying to kill the bastard back in 1940, when security wasn’t so tight? Too busy marching into Poland, Norway, France, Belgium and Holland, that’s why.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘No “perhaps” about it. These bloody aristocrat army officers are not going to kill Hitler. They haven’t got the guts. If the generals were going to kill Hitler, they would have done it by now. My God, they’ve been discussing it long enough. Would you like to know when I first heard those stories?’

Peter, who didn’t want to hear how long ago that was, said, ‘It’s not only the army. A lot of Germans are making efforts to get an armistice.’

‘An “armistice” is the right word,’ said Samson. ‘A suspension of hostilities. That’s what they want – a breathing space before going back to war again. I’ve got no time for any of them: generals, landed gentry, churchmen, intellectuals, liberals and all that crowd. I wouldn’t listen to any of them. A kick up the ass is what they need.’

‘Don’t you want the war to end?’

‘Yes, I want the war to end. But I want it to end at the right time, at the right place, and with the right people ending it. We’ve stated our war policy – unconditional surrender. We don’t want any of this damned armistice nonsense. We had an armistice in 1918, and look what happened. It only needed a few years of reorganization and rearmament and you bloody Germans were on the march again. No, no, no. Let’s not make the same mistake again. The hell with this clique of well-born officers, and the rest of them. Sod them! We don’t need any help in killing Hitler. We’ll do it in our own way and in our own good time.’

‘Is that what most of your countrymen feel?’

‘My countrymen? Yes, it is. And if you think we’re a bit lacking of the Old World courtesies, you should talk to the Poles and the Czechs and the rest of the poor devils you’ve walked over.’

‘I didn’t realize how strongly you feel. Under the circumstances I must thank you again for everything you’ve done for me.’

‘I did what I had to do.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They’re not going to kill Hitler. They’ll have some wonderful excuses, of course – they always do. If they spent as much time on their assassination plots as they do on their excuses, Hitler would have been eaten by the maggots long ago.’

‘We’ll see.’

Seeing that his outburst had failed to anger Winter, Samson was a fraction more conciliatory. ‘You see, these staff officers you think so much of – they don’t want to make Germany into any sort of democracy. I don’t have to tell you that; you remember what most army officers thought about the Weimar government.’

‘They don’t like Hitler,’ said Winter.

‘No, he’s the wrong rank for them. They don’t hate Hitler because he invaded neutral countries or because of what he’s doing to the Jews. They hate him because he’s a rough-spoken Austrian country yokel who doesn’t respect their noble ancestry and admire their mastery of the art of war.’

‘That’s silly talk.’

‘The German generals don’t want to end the war: they want help to fight it. You told me yourself that they propose to go on fighting the Russians as a “bulwark to communism” while making peace with the Western powers.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what does that mean, except us helping them fight the Reds?’

‘I suppose you’re right, but we can’t let the Russians keep coming. They will have to be held back. A lot of people in America agree.’

‘Forget it. The British public wouldn’t stand for it; they think Joe Stalin is their saviour. And the government would never try it on. No matter what sort of havoc the Red Army are creating for you, there’s not a chance in hell of a separate peace without the Russians. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin spelled out their unconditional-surrender message long ago. If they didn’t modify that when they were losing, why the hell would they do so now, when they’re winning?’

It was not encouraging to listen to this man, thought Winter. If there were many others like him, Winter’s mission was doomed to failure right from the start. And he had the feeling that there were a lot of others like him.

‘Love him? I detest him!’

In another part of the city a Mercedes 320 convertible, one of the smaller types of staff car used by the army, went slowly along Unter den Linden. The lime-tree blooms smelled strong at this time of evening. There was a lot of traffic tonight. People were coming out of the Opera and flooding across Unter den Linden, oblivious of the traffic, their heads full of music. It was Mozart tonight. Not The Magic Flute, of course – that was banned because of the Masonic references – and not The Marriage of Figaro or Così fan tutti, because the libretto had been written by da Ponte, a baptized Jew. Tonight it was Die Entführung. Berlin audiences had always liked that, and it was written in a language they could understand.

General Horner, seated in the back of the slowly moving car, looked at the buildings as the car went along. He could never get used to the terrible damage that the winter of air attacks had wrought. So much of the city had been destroyed, whole districts had gone, so many killed and injured, but even worse was the loss of confidence that these sustained air attacks had inflicted. Berliners being Berliners, they had met their hardships with smiles and jokes. But the jokes were different from the old jokes. Scratch a smiling Berliner and you’ll find a cynic underneath, and Berlin jokes were becoming bitter. And the jokes were not just jokes about Hermann Göring and the Luftwaffe’s defence system; they were farther-ranging than that, and they were about defeat. ‘Jewish jokes’, some people called them, and perhaps they were right.

There were more people on the street in the evenings now that winter had passed. Night bombing was done by the British, and Berliners realized that the RAF’s heavy bombers could get as far as this only under cover of the long winter nights. Now it was possible to get a proper night’s sleep, except when sometimes light aircraft were sent over to drop a few bombs and sound the alarms just for the nuisance of it. Well, it was good tactics, he supposed. It was worth losing a small aircraft in exchange for having the whole city’s workforce bleary-eyed next morning. And, as everyone knew, the British didn’t lose even their light aircraft. These damned RAF Mosquitoes flew too high for the Luftwaffe’s night fighters to reach them.

As for the Americans, they were crossing the Reich to bomb Poland in broad daylight! The implication was frightening: the Allies were getting virtual control of the air.

Even Unter den Linden had not escaped the bombs. Kranzler Corner had been demolished, he noticed. He’d not sit there again, eating cream cakes and watching the girls strolling past, as he’d so often done with Pauli Winter when they were young cadets. In those days wars were fought on battlefronts: the enemy didn’t come and destroy a man’s home while he was hundreds of miles away fighting for his country. The effect of the bombing upon soldiers serving on the Russian Front was only too evident from the extracts and samples that the field post-office censors sent back for analysis. Every way he looked, reason said the war must end. And if there was only one way to end it, then so it be, oath to the Führer or no oath.

‘Hurry, driver! I told you it was urgent.’

‘Ja, Herr General.’

After they were past Pariser Platz the traffic thinned a bit, and they roared through the dark Tiergarten, where the shielded headlights picked out a few couples strolling arm in arm, round past the Eden Hotel and the scaffolding where they were repairing the bomb damage to the zoo. The Zoo Palast cinema was emptying, and the Ku-Damm was filled with traffic; the streetcars slowed everything even more. But the evening was not yet over, and more people were arriving here in the entertainment district. The dark-green Mercedes halted behind a streetcar and waited while the alighting passengers walked to the kerb before resuming the journey. Some of the streetcar passengers were dressed up: it had become difficult to get motor fuel for anything but important official journeys nowadays.

His driver knew the way. He turned off at Hubertus Allee and went around the circle at Bismarckplatz and to the expensive little apartment block where Pauli Winter now lived. The driver jumped out and ran round to hold the door open. Damn, it was cold, thought Alex Horner as he got out of the car. He should have worn his overcoat.

General Horner went and rang the bell. The janitor let him in, bowing in deference to the general in his uniform with the breeches and polished high boots, and the Knight’s Cross dangling from his collar. The janitor opened the grille of the lift. ‘Good evening, Herr General.’ Alex nodded and pressed the button; there was a grinding noise and a lurch before the tiny lift went up to Pauli’s apartment on the fifth floor.

Pauli opened the door. ‘Alex! Hello!’

‘Are you alone?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. ‘Come in. Inge’s gone to the cinema.’

‘I can’t stay, but I couldn’t tell you on the phone.’ Horner put his peaked cap on the hall stand before going into the drawing room.

‘A drink?’

‘No. Pauli – there has been another attempt on the Führer’s life. This afternoon at four o’clock. At the Berghof.’

‘It failed?’

‘Yes, it failed.’

‘I’ve heard nothing so far,’ said Pauli. He looked at his friend quizzically. Was that all? Had he dashed across Berlin to tell him that another of the army’s attempts on the Führer’s life had ended in failure.

‘I will have that drink,’ said Alex. ‘Brandy, if you have it.’

‘Sit down, Alex.’ Pauli poured a glass and opened an Apollinaris water for himself. Ever since the SS had acquired the mineral-water company, Fritz Esser had arranged that everyone on his staff got crates and crates of the stuff.

‘It’s rather complicated, Pauli. It was a demonstration for the Führer – an antitank rocket weapon, an elaborate version of the Panzerfaust…. You know how he likes to be shown these things so that he can lecture all present and display his knowledge.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Pauli. He watched Horner drink his brandy-and-soda in two or three gulps and put the empty glass down. Pauli lit a cigarette. For a moment the two men stood facing each other and not speaking. It had become a strange relationship. Although the deep and long-lasting friendship provided a fundamentally sound basis of trust, there was an element of bluff and double bluff, too. General Alex Horner was single-minded and at case. He was loyally serving the army, and more specially the group of plotters to which he reported. If Himmler wanted to monitor the plot through Pauli Winter, that was all right, for Alex was kept at arm’s length from the plotters, just in case his old friendship proved not enough protection. And if Himmler felt he was going to step in and eliminate the army’s men after the deed was done, then he might find himself out-manoeuvred.

Pauli Winter’s loyalties were less easily defined. He also revered the army, and his training at Lichterfelde bound him to the Prussian Officer Corps in the same way that it bound Horner. But Pauli Winter had other allegiances, too: in the postwar years the Nazi regime had provided him with renewed self-respect, at a time when he needed help most. He’d become one of the party’s elite, part of the state within a state. The apparatus that the SS-Reichsführer had brought under his direct control now included the black-uniformed Allgemeine SS, the field-grey-uniformed Waffen-SS, the concentration and extermination camps, the SD intelligence organization, the Ministry of the Interior, the Gestapo and various police organizations that came under Himmler in his role of minister. Added to this were commercial companies that made everything from cheap furniture to uniforms and firearms.

Himmler was now more powerful than any army general could ever have hoped to become, and Pauli admired the quiet, modest little Heini in his pince-nez and the uniform that he so liked to wear. If Himmler wanted his men to do nothing while the army tried to assassinate the Führer, then Pauli would do exactly that. He had come to see the logic of it. Himmler had already taken over de facto control of the Third Reich; it was just a matter of time before he took over entirely. And if the SS-Reichsführer then negotiated peace with the Western powers, doubtless he would do it with the same skill he’d shown in climbing to his present position.

So Pauli Winter was able to treat Alex Horner’s determination to kill the head of state with equanimity. And yet he would not rejoice at Hitler’s death. He’d be saddened, as he’d been saddened at the necessary death of old Graf before a firing squad in the prison in Munich.

General Horner had declined the invitation to sit down. He moved about the room, looking at pictures and books without actually seeing them, and moving his lips without speaking. Now he turned, fists pushed into the front pockets of his breeches and said, ‘The weapons were displayed – no firing, of course, just a display of the prototypes – and the bomb’s time fuse was set. The demonstration was in the SS barracks yard behind the Platterhof. Then, just as the demonstration was about to begin, the Führer was called back inside the barracks building to take an important phone call from the Chancellery. You can’t change the fuse once it’s started.’

‘It went off?’

‘Just half a kilo or so of explosive, but the officer was badly hurt.’

‘He’s not dead?’

‘No he’s “being questioned”, Pauli.’

‘I can do nothing for him, Alex. I really can’t. I have authority to investigate plans for attempts against the Führer’s life, but this is something quite different. Questioning your man will be done under the orders of the SS officer in charge of security there. Even the Gestapo couldn’t get access to such a prisoner until the officer there is satisfied that the immediate danger is past and no other bombs are planted in the vicinity.’

‘I didn’t come to ask you to interfere at the Berghof, Pauli. But the trouble is that this officer has had contact with other people here in Berlin.’

‘You’d better get them to some area where the army have complete control: France might be best.’

‘One of the people was your brother.’

‘My brother? Peter? How?’

‘Peter is in Berlin. He was sent to make contact on behalf of the Western powers.’

‘Peter?’ It was bewildering.

‘And Peter met the officer concerned. If they make him talk he will describe Peter. It’s for you to decide, Pauli. You might want to get your brother out of danger.’

‘What is he doing here?’

‘He has a radio. He was to radio to London the news of the assassination and then remain as the liaison with the army here in Berlin. He would stay until the army radio established a direct link with London.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘In Wedding. There’s no phone.’

‘No phone – how absurd.’

‘It was more secure,’ explained Alex Horner.

‘And damned inconvenient. Didn’t they take into account that something like this would happen?’

‘No, they didn’t. They thought it would be successful.’

Pauli looked at him. ‘Yes, they always think it will be successful.’ He was tempted to add some sarcastic remark about the army’s similar optimism, and lack of success, against the Russians, but he knew that Alex Horner would not welcome it, and he was too fond of Alex to erode their precious friendship.

In the moments of silence that followed there was the sound of the lift motor. Outside on the landing the metal grille slammed, and then the voices got louder until Inge came into the room, and Fritz Esser followed her. He made some sort of joke and they both laughed.

‘General Horner?’ said Inge in the stagy voice that she often adopted after a few drinks. ‘What are you doing here?’ She was dressed up: they both were.

‘Alex called in for a drink, darling,’ said Pauli. ‘But I thought you were going to have a late dinner and go dancing.’

‘We were,’ said Inge, ‘but some tiresome man brought Fritz a message.’ She looked in the mirror and touched her hair. She was forty-seven and had begun to tint the greying places. They’d been to see Romanze in Moll. Inge loved it and identified with the doomed heroine, the unfaithful wife of a civil servant. But her lover – a musical genius writing a ‘romance’ – could hardly be compared to Fritz Esser. Inge was annoyed at missing the rejected wife’s suicide, even if she had already seen the film three times. She smiled wanly at her reflection.

‘To the cinema,’ said Fritz after he’d greeted Horner. ‘They stopped the film and put a slide on the screen asking me to contact the manager.’

‘What is it?’ said Pauli.

Fritz Esser looked from General Horner to Pauli and back to Horner. He guessed what had brought Horner here, but he went through the motions, since that was the way they wanted it. ‘An attempt on the Führer’s life. It’s not being announced officially. An army captain with a bomb. A staff officer, but an ex-front-line soldier: the usual Knight’s Cross and all that ironware. The poor little swine got his arm blown off. The Führer was inside having a shit at the time. He must have wondered what he’d eaten when he heard that one go off, eh?’ The Führer’s diet of salads, and the chronic flatulence that resulted, was well known to those in his immediate circle, and Fritz laughed loudly, exposing his teeth. He’d had a great deal of expensive dental work done lately. At Inge’s urging, his old bad, crooked, broken tombstones were now being systematically replaced with even, regular ones. Many of them were gold.

‘How do you know all the details?’ Pauli asked.

‘I phoned Bormann. Bormann’s the only one who knows what he’s doing down there in the Berghof. It’s a circus! Those Bavarians couldn’t run a candy store, but the Führer doesn’t seem to mind the way they screw everything up. And they’re the only ones who can understand the Führer’s accent,’ said Fritz, and laughed again. ‘Give me a drink, Pauli, will you? I’ll be up half the night. They have the poor bastard in custody, but we’ll have to send someone down there to investigate, just for the look of the thing. Do you think our pal Koch could handle it?’ He looked at his watch and then poured the drink himself. He knew where everything was kept. ‘I must go.’

‘Koch’s not a very good investigator,’ said Pauli. ‘And he sometimes upsets people. Don’t send him to the Berghof. I’ve put him behind a desk and let him shuffle paper. Leave him there.’

‘I’ll find someone,’ said Fritz, drinking his large measure of schnapps.

‘I’ve got to go out with Alex,’ Pauli announced.

‘Where to?’ asked Inge petulantly. She would be left alone, and she hated to be alone. That was why she stayed with Pauli and put up with this absurd pretence of marriage.

‘Out,’ said Pauli.

‘You don’t have to be so damned rude,’ said Inge shrilly. Any sort of rejection hurt her deeply.

‘Now, now, now,’ said Fritz Esser, who often found himself keeping the peace between them. ‘Pauli never asks us where we’re going, Inge, my love. You must let him live his own life.’

‘We should have been divorced ages ago,’ she said.

Alex Horner had picked up his cap. He stood in the hall, staring at an engraving of Vienna – a present from Inge for Pauli’s birthday long ago – his face blank, as if he were not hearing the conversation.

‘Forget about divorces,’ Fritz Esser told her. ‘The Führer doesn’t approve of divorces: it would affect your husband’s career, and maybe mine, too.’ He grinned. This might have been a joke – it was not always possible to know with Fritz – but at least she could be sure that his injunction was sincere, and she didn’t pursue the topic.

Inge looked at Pauli with a smile that was too sweet. ‘So Peter is here in Berlin?’ she said suddenly.

‘What’s that?’ bellowed Fritz Esser.

Alex Horner continued to study the engraving and Pauli said, ‘Peter? In Berlin? No.’ But Pauli had never been a very good liar, and Fritz’s genuine surprise showed Pauli’s denials for what they were.

‘I heard you talking,’ said Inge. ‘I came up the stairs – I can’t go into that lift any more – and let myself in while Fritz was parking the car. I heard you.’

‘Yes, he’s here.’ Pauli’s voice was devoid of emotion. It was the voice he’d used so often during the rows they’d had.

‘Is that where you’re going?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Pauli. ‘I’m going to see my brother.’

‘Are you going to tell him that Lottie is dead?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Murdered by American bombs: make sure he understands that,’ she said cruelly.

Pauli looked at her. Poor Inge. ‘Do you still love him?’ he asked.

‘Love him? I detest him!’

‘Like you detest me?’ Pauli asked her.

‘Yes, like I detest you.’

Fritz Esser gulped his schnapps, put the glass on the table, grabbed Inge by the arm, and shook her so hard that her teeth snapped together. ‘Now, you listen to me, you silly girl,’ he said. ‘This is state business, not romantic stories from the ladies’ magazines. You keep your mouth shut.’ He shook her roughly. ‘Tight shut! You mention the name of Peter Winter and I’ll beat the daylights out of you. Understand, you little bitch?’

Fritz released his grip on her arm and she backed away from him fearfully, rubbing the arm where he’d hurt her. To Pauli’s surprise, Inge smiled – a bitter smile, but a smile nevertheless. ‘You make everything so clear, Fritz darling,’ she said.

‘She’ll be all right, Pauli,’ Fritz assured him without even looking at her. ‘You get going and do what you have to do. Where is he?’

‘Where is he?’ Pauli in turn asked Alex Horner.

Horner hesitated and then said, ‘Wedding: an apartment block, between Saint Josef’s Church and the subway station.’

‘I need to know, if I’m to keep the bloodhounds away from you,’ explained Fritz Esser without saying how he intended to do it.

‘The officer held in custody – the injured one at the Berghof – has met Peter,’ said Pauli.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Fritz. ‘He’s already taken care of.’ He glanced at General Horner, but Horner remained as stiff as a rod, in that tense and formal military attitude that the Germans call zackig.

Pauli looked at Horner, too, and felt embarrassed. There was no doubt what Fritz meant: plans had been put under way to ensure that the officer died as quickly as possible and so obviate any chance of further complications. General Horner understood, of course – he was not a fool – but he gave no sign of emotion.

‘Go to bed, Inge,’ Fritz Esser said; when she remained in the room fidgeting with the empty glasses, as if trying to decide whether to clear them away, he said, ‘Did you hear me? I said go to bed.’

‘Yes, Fritz. Goodnight, General Horner.’ Horner bowed without a word. ‘Goodnight Pauli.’

‘Goodnight, Inge.’

‘And keep that big mouth of yours shut,’ said Fritz before she could say goodnight to him. To the others he said, ‘Come along. I take it you’ve got a car, Alex?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Good luck to you both,’ said Fritz. ‘It’s going to be a damned long night.’

‘Who was the Swedish fellow?’

The Bodensee is a large gloomy-looking lake that forms the boundary between southwestern Germany and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. Its waters are frequently made dangerous by storms that spring up quickly from the snow-tipped Alps that serrate the southern horizon. From Friedrichshafen – a small town on the German side – a ferryboat goes regularly to the Swiss town of Romanshorn. This June evening the air had turned suddenly cooler, and the water had the curious milky look that local people say is the presage of a storm. The air was full of tiny flying insects, and there were birds swooping low over the smooth lake water preying upon them. The threat of rain had kept everyone indoors except two men. The waterfront was theirs alone.

The men were strolling along under the trees. One was shortish, plump, and in his mid-forties. An untidy-looking fellow, he wore a good suit of the same black worsted as lawyers favour throughout the world. His blond hair was going white, and he moved his hands a lot as he spoke. The other man was slightly older, a thin-faced man with eyeglasses; he was shabbily dressed but tall and slim, and he carried himself more gracefully, the way an actor or a dancer might walk. When they got to the wall, they turned and started coming back towards the big black BMW with the Berlin registration plates that was parked near the church.

‘The immigration officer on this side is named Schanz,’ Pauli told his brother. ‘A tall fellow with a moustache …about sixty years old. He used to work for Papa at the factory here in town. He’s friendly. Tell him you are going to Switzerland for the company. If there’s any trouble I will intercede, but let’s hope it will be all right without me.’

‘I don’t want to get you into trouble,’ Peter said.

‘I can look after myself,’ said Pauli.

‘I wouldn’t have got out of Berlin without you.’

‘Who was the Swedish fellow?’

‘A seaman. He was trying to sell me tins of butter and bacon.’

‘He slipped away very quietly,’ said Pauli.

‘Black market. He was afraid of getting picked up, I suppose.’

‘I thought I knew his face,’ said Pauli.

‘Perhaps he’s sold you butter and bacon.’

Pauli smiled. ‘That must be it.’ He looked across the water again. They were on the strand near the Schlosskirche, at the very spot where Mama had sat in Papa’s wonderful Italian motorcar watching the zeppelins so many years ago. Where was the old car now? Pauli wondered. In a museum, perhaps. Once, during the Berlin fighting in 1919, he’d glimpsed it driving through the Tiergarten with half a dozen soldiers piled in it. ‘You say you’ll be all right on the other side…. If you have any trouble there, ask for a man named Becheler. He’s a police inspector who is always somewhere near the customs office. Tell him you know me. He’s a sullen young bastard, but we pay him.’

‘The Gestapo?’

‘Yes. He helps us from time to time. His parents live in Innsbruck: he won’t do anything that might upset us,’ said Pauli ominously.

Peter looked at his pocket watch – a cheap steel one, but it worked all right, just as London said it would. ‘The boat will be leaving soon. I wish you’d come, too, Pauli.’

‘We’ve been through all that, Peter.’

‘I wish you’d come. I could make it all right for you, whatever you’ve done.’

Good grief! How could Peter be urging his younger brother to flee from his native land and join his country’s enemies? Surely it would make more sense for Peter to stay here and let Pauli protect him. The world was turning upside down. ‘I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of,’ said Pauli.

Peter looked at his brother. He wished he could make Pauli understand what was waiting for the SS and the Gestapo and all Himmler’s minions. ‘They hate us, Pauli.’

‘Who? The Americans?’

‘Everyone hates us. No one respects the Germans any longer. They call us names – Krauts, Huns, Boches, Jerries – and they despise us.’

‘We’ll see about that when we’ve won the war,’ said Pauli defiantly.

Pauli’s childish optimism irritated Peter. He wanted to shake sense into him. ‘The war is lost, Pauli. Surely you must see that by now.’

‘Is it, Peter?’

Poor Pauli. He looked lost. Peter had always taken his brother’s respect, love and loyalty for granted; perhaps he’d not given enough in return. Perhaps none of the family had. Suddenly he felt protective of his younger brother in a way he’d never felt before. He put an arm round Pauli’s shoulder and said gently, ‘God knows what is going to happen to Germany. Come with me! What have you got to stay here for?’

‘Nothing. I’ve lost Inge; I have no children; Father won’t permit me in his house. But I can’t go with you. I’m too old to adapt to another country and another language. Too old and too stupid. I’ll stay with Mama. She’ll need comforting when Father dies. He won’t last another winter; the doctor told Mama that.’

‘The boat is coming now. I wish I could have seen him … and Mama. Perhaps you could find some way of telling her.’

‘The fewer people who know, the better, Peter.’

‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s terrible to think I may never see him again.’

‘I didn’t want to argue with Father, but he blamed me for things that were not my fault. It wasn’t fair.’

‘He’s old, Pauli. And old people become crotchety.’

‘I did what I could.’

‘I’m sure you did, Pauli. We’d better go along to the pier.’

Pauli stopped strolling. He turned to his brother and said, ‘I loved Lottie. I really loved her.’

‘I’m sure you did, Pauli. No one blames you for anything.’

‘You don’t understand: I loved her!’

‘We must go, Pauli. The ferryboat is almost here.’

‘If she’d stayed at Lial Hennig’s she would have been all right, but she was feeling low, and Lisl’s little boy said he’d take her to the cinema. She never went out, but it was a colour film, a musical. Little Theo said it would cheer her up.’

Peter closed his eyes and tried not to hear Pauli’s words. It was too painful. ‘You told me.’

‘And then the Americans came over. It was a bad raid. They both must have died instantly: the whole cinema got it – a direct hit.’

Peter opened his eyes to look at his brother. ‘No one blames you, Pauli. It’s the war. I understand.’ Peter had forced the news of Lottie’s death into some dark recess of his mind. He’d grieve for her at another time and in another place.

‘I would have done anything, Peter. You know that.’

‘I know, Pauli.’

‘There is a visitor’

The big house in downtown New York City had become something of a curiosity, for all around it were tall apartment blocks and office buildings. In a bedroom on the second floor of the old house, Cyrus Rensselaer was in bed. He was ninety-three years old and in amazing physical shape for a man of his years. Almost every day he got up and, with a little help from a servant, got dressed and came downstairs in the newly installed elevator to have luncheon. But for the last two weeks he’d not managed that feat. He’d remained in bed and had The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal read to him. He’d eaten only soft-boiled eggs and a little chicken soup with dry toast. The doctor visited him every day. At first he’d said that his patient was in fine shape, but on the Tuesday Cyrus Rensselaer grew weaker.

He liked to have the mail brought up to him. Sometimes there was a letter from Glenn. It didn’t say very much, of course – Glenn had never been very good about writing letters, and now that he was engaged in secret work in England, his letters were both short and uninformative. A couple of times he’d said that all the family could be proud of Peter Winter, and once, very recently, he’d written to say that Peter was in England, safe and sound. But since they’d never heard that Peter was out of England, or in danger, this letter of reassurance meant little to anyone.

On Friday morning Cyrus Rensselaer received the sort of letter he liked: a big fat letter from an old friend who’d been on a business trip to Portugal. This long letter, written in a bold, flowing hand on a dozen sheets of bright-blue airmail paper, contained all sorts of information about European people, places and corporations known to Cyrus. The latest doings of his business rivals were catalogued there, and near the end his friend had written: ‘…no one gets to Berlin these days, but I met a fellow who told me that Harald Winter’s funeral was something of an event in that miserable town. Your daughter, Veronica, was there and looking well, I’m delighted to tell you, but you probably know all this already.’

Cyrus put the letter down. So Harald had died. Soon the war would be over and Veronica would come home. Life would be better then. He’d be back on his feet once Veronica was in the house again. He could clearly remember the sounds of her voice from the days when she was a child. Singing and chattering – such a noisy little girl. He smiled at the memory. The house had never been the same since she’d gone off to college. There was so much to talk to her about.

They found Cyrus Rensselaer dead when they took his light lunch to the bedroom. His eyeglasses were still on his nose; he’d died peacefully. The blue sheets of writing paper had fallen to the floor. Some people who read the letter thought that perhaps the news of his son-in-law’s funeral had killed him, but more perceptive people said that he’d died happy knowing that his old enemy Harald had gone before him.

The news of Cyrus Rensselaer’s death reached London more quickly than the news of Harald Winter’s death had crossed the Atlantic Ocean. For Cyrus Rensselaer was a name known to the world of business and beyond. In London an obituary appeared in The Times and in The Financial Times, too. The Economist ran a short article about ‘A Wizard of Wall Street’. But it took much longer for Glenn to find out that the old man’s fortune had been made over to his wife, Dot. For Glenn there was no more than a small annuity, and for Veronica, who, as his will said, had never returned to her homeland, there was nothing at all.

In London that long and anxious summer of 1944, Glenn Rensselaer and Peter Winter were too occupied to spend much time with condolences, mourning, or celebration. June 6 was D-Day, when the Anglo-American armies invaded France, and Germany had the two-front war that most strategists thought must prove fatal.

Colonel Rudolf von Kleindorf had been amongst the first to encounter the newly arrived foe. He was the commander of a battalion that was engaged close to the beach in the early hours of the battle. On the day following D-Day, he made a personal reconnaissance of the ground to the south of Omaha Beach, where the American assault had gone very wrong. It was easy to get lost in the leafy, hedge-lined lanes, and the German defenders were under constant attack by Allied fighter planes, which ground-strafed anything that moved. In one such low-level attack, von Kleindorf’s armoured car was hit by machine-gun bullets and went off the road and overturned. He and his driver spent four hours hiding in a shell crater, hoping to get back to their own lines under cover of darkness.

But darkness comes very late in a June evening in Normandy. Advancing American infantry captured the two men, and a corporal took from Kleindorf his medals, his gold signet ring with the Kleindorf family crest, and his wristwatch and stuffed them in the pocket of his jacket. When von Kleindorf objected vociferously to this theft of his personal possessions, an infantry soldier named Weinberger from Chicago swore at him in fluent, colloquial Berlin German before hitting him in the face with a rifle butt, causing Kleindorf to suffer a broken jaw, broken nose, broken cheek bones, some lost teeth and multiple cuts and bruises. He was left unconscious at the roadside, and the infantry platoon moved forward again.

The armies of the Western Powers had broken through the ‘Atlantic Wall’ without pausing. The Anglo-American navies permitted no German ship within striking distance of the vast invasion fleet that filled the Channel, and the sky belonged to their air forces. Two weeks later, on June 20, the Red Army’s summer offensive began on the Eastern Front. The Red Army smashed into Army Group Centre, where the German army’s power was concentrated. The German Front gave way, and Poland and the German Reich were laid open to the Russian advance.

On July 20 the army conspirators tried again to kill Adolf Hitler. Another of the English-made bombs obtained from Abwehr sources was exploded by time fuse during a conference at the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ at Rastenburg in East Prussia. This attempt was only marginally more successful than all the previous ones. Hitler was injured, but survived and maintained control of his regime.

This time, however, the conspirators bungled not only the assassination but the seizure of power, too. The messages, proclamations and orders that had been so carefully prepared by the plotters were not issued. It was a hot, humid day in Berlin, and in the offices and corridors of the Replacement Army in the Bendlerblock, officers stood around discussing what to do and waiting for orders that did not come. No attempt was made to seize the radio-broadcasting offices or the post, telephone and telegram service. No one arrested Nazi ministers, and Berlin’s chief of police, who was a party to the conspiracy, waited in vain for orders to act.

Only after Count von Stauffenberg – who had put the bomb alongside Hitler – returned to Berlin did the coup attempt start. By that time it was too late. News had reached Berlin that Hitler was alive and kicking. Now the conspiracy fell to pieces, and soon the notorious basement of the Gestapo building in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was filled with high-ranking army officers. The questioning to which they were subjected was hurried and ruthless. Shorthand clerks wrote rapidly while the professional torturers performed their tasks.

None of the men involved got anything resembling a fair trial: it was feared that the opportunities for public speaking might incite others to resist the regime. At the Volksgerichtshof – the People’s Court – the accused were not tried; they were simply abused and reviled, a process in which the so-called defence lawyers joined. Conspirators were tortured, sentenced and executed by such barbarous methods as slow strangulation. Generals and field marshals were hung from meathooks by piano wire and filmed in their death agonies so that Adolf Hitler could have the satisfaction of seeing them die many times over. Not only the guilty were made to suffer. Relatives and friends in the thousands were executed or sent to concentration camps. Many died simply because they had the same name as one of the accused.

General Alex Horner’s assignment to command an army corps in France took him away from Berlin and the attempted putsch. When news of it came, Horner – a corps commander – was desperately trying to counter General Bradley’s breakthrough of the front at Saint Lô and stem General Patton’s Third Army, which came charging through the gap. Constantly aware of the risk that his name might be revealed by the continuing interrogations of his fellow officers in Berlin, and knowing that his superior, Field Marshal Kluge, was a suspect, Alex Horner nevertheless gave all his attention to the battlefield. But every night he found a few minutes to write a letter to his wife, Chrisi, and always he drew at the bottom of the page some silly picture for his six-year-old son, Christian.

It was warm this evening, so warm that he could smell the ripe cherries on the trees of the orchard in which he was bivouacked. Even through the green canvas, the flashes of a new American artillery bombardment lit his tent. And the noise of the gunfire came like thunder; sometimes the explosions were so close together that it was impossible to distinguish one from another.

He’d finished writing his letter when young Winkel came into the tent. ‘Herr General?’

‘Yes, Winkel. What is it?’ The boy was getting to look exactly like his father. Too much beer, that was the trouble. No matter: the days of beer and roses had gone, never to return.

‘There is a visitor.’

‘Who?’

‘A general, an SS-Gruppenführer.’

The SS officer pushed past Winkel. ‘General Horner?’ he said brusquely. His face registered surprise, but Alex Horner was used to that. Forty-five-year-old generals were not yet a common sight, even in this new age of National Socialism.

‘Yes?’

‘Heil Hitler,’ said the officer, extending his arm in the salute that, since the bomb attempt on Hitler’s life, had become mandatory for the army as well as the SS.

‘Good evening,’ said Horner, remaining seated. He licked the flap of the envelope. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m bringing my division up on your left tomorrow, General.’ Horner was senior to him in rank and was his corps commander, but the newcomer called him ‘General’, not ‘Herr General’. That was the SS style: they did it amongst themselves and to the army, too. He was about sixty years old, clean-shaven, with a bony nose in a long leathery face that had rounded and wrinkled with time. He spoke in the thick, inarticulate mumble of Bavaria. On his head he had a well-worn ‘Africa Corps’-style cap at a jaunty angle; he wore the mottled camouflage smock that was issued only to the Waffen-SS, and the SS insignia and his rank badge were crudely stencilled on its collar. He had a pistol on his hip and laced high boots that were nonregulation. Despite his age, he looked like a fighting soldier or a brigand. Horner looked at him but was not impressed. Some of them chose to look like infantry veterans, but it meant nothing: generals won battles by using their brains, and a pistol on the hip got in the way when you were leaning over a map table.

‘Yes, I was expecting you two days ago,’ said Horner.

‘There were unforeseen transportation problems.’

‘Have a drink,’ said Horner.

‘Is that real French brandy?’

‘Bring two glasses, Winkel,’ Horner called. He knew that his driver would be picking cherries as an excuse to eavesdrop, but Winkel knew how to hold his tongue, so Horner tolerated his nosiness. To the newcomer Horner said, ‘Where have you come from?’

‘Northern Italy: near Milan. We were in reserve, trying to get ourselves sorted out. We took a pounding on the Eastern Front. We’re nowhere near full strength.’

‘Panzer grenadiers?’

‘On paper.’ Winkel brought the glasses and the two men looked at each other as they drank. The new man had small, active eyes: cunning? piglike? Or was Horner too prejudiced against these political soldiers? He didn’t relish the prospect of having a Waffen-SS division in his corps, despite their undoubted capacity for battle. Waffen-SS units had a tiresome habit of ignoring orders when it didn’t suit them: of occupying towns they were ordered not to enter, and failing to enter ones they were told to attack. The SS-Gruppenführer drank some cognac and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘That’s good stuff.’ And then, ‘But we’ll manage, General; my boys know how to fight.’

‘As long as you don’t think it’s easy here,’ said Horner. ‘The Americans are young and inexperienced. Sometimes they are stupid, and they continue to make a lot of mistakes, but they have youthful energy and boldness, too, and they learn fast. More important, they seem to have an endless supply of everything. It’s different from the Eastern Front, but don’t think it’s easier.’

‘My men will hold your line for you.’ Horner noted the way that these SS soldiers would be holding ‘his’ line ‘for him’. The man helped himself to another brandy without asking for it. It was often said that Prussians were too cold and aloof but, faced with a fellow like this, it was difficult for Horner to resist his father’s theory that all Bavarians were stupid, hostile, sour-faced pigs.

‘I’m sure they will,’ said Horner.

‘The “fire brigade”, they call us. We rush from front to front, wherever the army need help. And we fight to the last bullet.’

‘One thing must be understood, Herr Gruppenführer,’ Horner said coldly. ‘I don’t want any shooting of prisoners. There’ll be no atrocities on my sector of front.’

‘These things happen,’ said the SS-Gruppenführer. ‘My men fight to win.’

‘If they happen on my front there will be a field court-martial.’

‘Right. No shooting of prisoners.’

‘I hope you understand, Herr Gruppenführer. I will court-martial any officer who disobeys my orders. Whatever his rank.’

‘You don’t recognize me, do you, General Horner?’

Horner’s life had been crowded with faces, fleeting glimpses of men of all ranks, shapes and sizes, but he’d never had command of an SS division before. He stared at the man. ‘No, I don’t, Herr Gruppenführer.’

‘Brand is the name; General Heinrich Brand, Crazy Heini! I was teaching you about trench warfare when you were scarcely out of your nappies and bibs.’

Yes, it was Brand. He’d changed a lot, but Horner should have recognized those mad, constantly moving eyes. What bad luck to meet up with that insolent swine again after all these years. ‘You’d better start moving up into position right away,’ said Horner.

‘My men are still arriving.’

‘You’ll need the cover of darkness. In this sector, enemy air activity is fierce as soon as there’s light enough for them to see. They come in relays, squadron after squadron…rocket-firing planes, sometimes. Anything that’s moving will be attacked. And it’s like that all day.’

‘Where’s the damned Luftwaffe?’

‘They have unforeseen transportation problems, too,’ said Horner. ‘They get shot down every time they come near.’

‘My flak…’

‘Never mind trying to stem the air attacks – leave that for the day following,’ said Horner sarcastically. ‘Just get your forward positions in place before daylight. We’re all ready for you; we’re considerably overextended. I have an officer fully briefed; I’ll send him with you. Do as he says. You’ll have to keep them all moving.’

‘I don’t need any help,’ said Brand.

‘I didn’t ask if you needed help,’ said Horner. ‘I said I’ll send one of my staff officers with you. I’ll expect you to be holding the frontline positions by dawn.’

‘That’s not much time,’ said Brand.

‘It’s the regular army procedure,’ said Horner, to goad him more.

‘Where’s the officer?’

‘Winkel!’ called Horner. ‘I want you to take the Herr General to the command post.’ To Brand he said, ‘Send a runner when you are in position. Then come to the staff conference at 0730 hours.’

‘Yes, Herr General,’ said Brand. He bared his teeth in a fierce smile.

‘A very proud parent’

Veronica Winter peeped into the room that Harald Winter had used as a study ever since they’d moved in. The room was little changed from the way it had been just after they married. Everything was in place: Harry’s library; the valuable carpets, now a little worn; and the wonderful inlaid desk where Pauli was sitting. He’d been sitting there for nearly half an hour, trying to summon up the courage or the will, or whatever it was he needed, to unlock his father’s desk and sort out his private papers.

Pauli would have given almost anything to have someone else do this sad task. His mother refused to go through Harald’s desk. He supposed she dreaded finding love letters, or other compromising material, from Harald’s notorious love affairs. Veronica had taken her husband’s death stoically. She’d loved him with that tenderness and loyalty that her generation were taught a provider deserved. Though she wept for him, Harry’s death marked the end of her bondage.

Pauli noticed the new strength of his mother, but he could not account for it. He took it for granted that Veronica would be as devastated by Harald Winter’s death as he was. Often, ever since he was a small child, he’d wondered how he would cope with his father’s death. At one time it had been the ultimate nightmare. But always he’d comforted himself with the thought that, when the time came, it would be Peter’s duty.

He took his father’s keys and put the tiny one into the lock. How familiar those keys were to him. Ever since Pauli could remember, Papa had worn them on the gold chain that stretched across his waistcoat. Now the keys and the chain were his, but Pauli didn’t enjoy handling them.

Methodically he started going through the desk: onyx cuff links in a tiny box bearing the name of a Paris jeweller; a horn-handled letter opener; a Zeiss magnifying glass held alongside a spare pair of eyeglasses by a thick rubber band; an ivory slide rule worn and discoloured from constant use; a small calfskin address book that fitted Papa’s waistcoat pockets, filled with Papa’s tiny writing; letters put back into their envelopes with pencilled notes on the outside; deeds of the house, a carbon copy of a letter about Harry’s shares in the Winter companies, and a long agreement about the partnership signed by all the directors and affixed with a red wax seal; photo postcards of all the old zeppelins, one of them bearing a note and a complex signature of the old Count; a sepia studio photo of Veronica before they were married.

Pauli went through everything piece by piece, trying not to think about the father he would never see again, trying not to wonder where the relationship had started to go wrong. What did Harald expect of him? What does any father expect of his son? Far, far too much. If Harald had just taken Pauli’s love and respect for what they were worth, and thanked God for a loyal and trusting son, it would have all been wonderful. But for Pauli life with Harald Winter had been one long, unrelenting examination. Their relationship had always been a series of tests, invented, conducted and judged with Godlike impartiality by Harald Winter in person.

At the back of the desk were four large plainly bound books, their leather covers showing varying degrees of wear. At first glance they might have been ledgers, which is why Pauli, who was not very skilled at reading accounts, left them to last. But when he opened the heavy pages he was in for the biggest surprise of his life. They were scrapbooks. Neatly pasted onto each page were newspaper and magazine cuttings. There were photos, too, and even a couple of signed menus and a home-made birthday card that nine-year-old Pauli had sent to his father so many years ago.

The four books contained what was virtually a history of Pauli’s life. School reports from Lichterfelde, letters he’d written from the trenches, newspaper cuttings reporting his graduation from law school. Newspaper photos of Pauli’s magnificent wedding. There were even tiny cuttings from the SS newspaper that announced each of Pauli’s promotions and his honorary appointment to SS rank. He didn’t know that his father had even seen a copy of Das Schwarze Korps, let alone got a copy and cut it up. Pauli was astounded. He read the four books all the way through. There were some cuttings and mementoes concerning Peter, but it was mostly about Pauli. And there was nothing to cast a shadow upon Pauli’s career. It was the sort of thing that only a very proud parent would compile.

1945

‘It’s a labour of love’

In the middle of January 1945, the Red Army launched the greatest Russian offensive of the war. One hundred and eighty divisions were used in an attack that within two weeks cut East Prussia away from the Reich and gave the Russians the Silesian industrial region, which supplied most of the coal and steel for Germany’s war effort.

Adolf Hitler’s command post had been moved back to the Reichskanzlei and the bunker under it. On January 19, Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress, and Martin Bormann arrived from the Obersalzberg to be with him. On the afternoon of January 27, maps on the wall of the newly equipped Berlin operations room were revised to show that reconnaissance units of Zhukov’s Red Army’s spearheads had crossed the river Oder and were now only a hundred miles from the city. As the month ended, Hitler made one of his rare excursions: he went to tea with Dr Josef Goebbels at the Goebbels home at Schwanenwerder, an island in the Havel. Distrustful of poisoners, Hitler took with him a vacuum flask of tea and a bag of biscuits.

On that same day, in Weissensee, on the other side of Berlin, another doctor was entertaining colleagues to tea. There was no funeral that day in Berlin’s big Jewish cemetery. Dr Isaac Volkmann, who’d once been a highly regarded dentist in the town, was celebrating his birthday. For some years Volkmann had worked as a gravedigger here, and he was grateful to God for his opportunity to survive. He’d brought a handful of tea with him today. Not real tea, of course – a mixture of mint leaf and other herbs that Germans had learned to drink without complaint.

Volkmann had a lot to be grateful for. He went home each night to his wife and his baby son, and the hard work of digging and working as a general labourer came more easily to him than it did to some of the others. Volkmann had always been stocky and muscular. At college he’d excelled at games: hockey, rowing and athletics. For some of the others it was more difficult. There was Benjamin the rabbi, with his arthritic shoulder; old Simon ‘the professor’ who’d had a chair in physics at Frankfurt an der Oder, with his bronchial cough that left him gasping for breath; and Dr Sigmund Weiss, who was frightened to go to hospital with his chest pains in case he was taken straight off to a camp.

It was three other men who did most of the digging. They were younger, working-class lads who’d grown up to the prospect of such hard work. The only misfit was the seventh man, the strange Boris Somló, who was the most awkward fellow there. Dr Volkmann wondered about Somló. He was officially known as ‘Fromm’, but Volkmann had seen his real name on an old Austrian driving licence that had fallen from his pocket one day. It dated from before the Anschluss and was no longer valid. The man was a fool to keep it. There had been photos, too, all of them of a woman who looked very like him. It must have been his mother.

The mystery about the furtive Boris Somló was that he once said his father wasn’t a Jew. As a Mischling he could probably have lived and worked a more normal life, without persecution. It wasn’t absolutely necessary for him to work here in the cemetery. It wasn’t the difference between life and death, as it was for the rest of them. Dr Weiss said it was a disgrace. Weiss said that Boris should get out, and so provide a safe place for some real Jew who was in danger, but Boris said that he’d been on a transportation train and he didn’t want to risk it again. No one believed him, but that was his story. Transportation train: no one got off transportation trains and came back to tell the tale. It had taken a long time to comprehend fully what was happening to the Jewish families who went off to be ‘resettled in the East’, but who never wrote letters or postcards to say they’d arrived. Now they knew, however, and they knew that no one ever came back. That’s why they didn’t believe Boris.

Isaac Volkmann was the only one who befriended Boris at the cemetery. He felt sorry for him. Although over forty years old, Boris was an unlucky bungler who seemed unable to organize for himself such things as clean linen or even regular shaves. He was – said the others, when Boris was out of earshot – a shlemiel.

Boris’s helpless demeanour might not have made him such a figure of fun had it not been for that dreadful Viennese accent, a nasal whine that made even Isaac Volkmann grin sometimes, despite his determination not to make the poor chap’s life more difficult.

But today, with mugs of hot tea in their hands and the door closed against the awful Berlin cold, they were all in a good mood. Volkmann looked round at them. They were good men, although none of them had had what he would regard as proper dental care. They stood in the shed behind the mortuary that afternoon talking about the Russian advance – or, rather, about the rumours of it, for none of them had heard anything about the Red Army’s crossing of the Oder on the German radio at first hand. Perhaps some had heard the BBC, but none would admit to it, even to these close friends and fellow sufferers.

What would they do if the Russians got here, to Berlin? It was still ‘if’, despite the closeness of the enemy. ‘The Russians are barbarians,’ said Dr Weiss, who had a cousin in the army. ‘They will kill everyone if they get here.’

‘Not us,’ said the professor, ‘not Jews.’ The revolution in Russia had been founded upon the intellect and dynamism of the Jews. ‘The Red Army will not harm Jews.’

‘How will they know who are Jews?’ asked Dr Weiss.

‘We must not be afraid,’ said Benjamin the rabbi. He was the last rabbi alive and free in the whole of Berlin. For all he knew, he was the last surviving rabbi in the whole of Germany. He was always cheerful.

It was while they were talking that Boris went to the metal lockers in the side room where the men kept their street clothes. He unlocked the door of his locker and reached inside for a brown paper parcel. They watched him in silence as he laboriously untied the string around the parcel. Inside it was what appeared to be a bundle of bright-red cloth. He took it by one edge and, holding it high, let the other end fall to the floor.

There was a gasp of surprise, and of fear, too, when they saw what he displayed. It was a full-size red flag, complete with hammer and sickle.

‘Where did you get this?’ asked Dr Weiss.

‘I made it,’ said Boris.

There was no laughing at his accent now. Weiss leaned over and touched the hem of the flag as if it might explode. ‘You made it?’

They could all see now that it had been assembled from small pieces of cloth sewn together with remarkable skill. The hammer-and-sickle insignia was put together from bright-yellow cloth that shone like gold. Thousands of tiny stitches had gone into the effort. It was a labour of love, and the professor respectfully said so.

‘When they come, we will fly it from the flagpole,’ said Boris.

‘It’s a labour of love,’ repeated the professor.

‘They’ll know then,’ said Boris.

‘Put it away quickly,’ said Benjamin the rabbi, who was by common consent the voice of authority and wisdom. ‘Good work, Boris. Now put it away until we need it.’

‘Good work, Boris,’ said the others. There was a new respect in their voices. Who would have guessed that such a slow lugubrious fellow could have fashioned that magnificent flag in secret, and brought it here without their knowing?

But Issac Volkmann now thought he saw a reason for the Mischling’s exaggerated fears, and his change of name. He guessed that Boris Somló had been an active member of the Communist Party in Austria before the Anschluss. If that was the case, his fears made sense.

‘It doesn’t look like gold’

For any superstitious Nazi like Fritz Esser, Friday, April 13, 1945, fulfilled its awful promise. The U.S. Army was across the Berlin Dessau autobahn, and from Bendlerstrasse there came the order to destroy the army’s two explosives factories, which were imminently threatened by the American advance. These were the army’s last two powder factories; there would be no more ammunition for the German guns.

Berlin was a maze of fires and bombed buildings. The Chancellery was badly damaged – Hitler was in the bunker – and in the nearby Adlon Hotel, Louis Adlon walked through scorched carpeting, shattered mirror, and broken brickwork to see what might be salvaged of what had once been the most magnificent hotel in Europe. Potsdamer Platz was unrecognizable, its trees gone and surrounding hotels and offices gutted. The famous Messel façade of Wertheims department store was no more. Most of the ministries had already begun to move their documents and personnel out of Berlin. Hitler’s personal staff had gone to the Obersalzberg to prepare for his arrival there on April 20, his fifty-sixth birthday. A cake was made ready: Adolf Hitler loved cakes.

The morning of Friday, April 13, dawned blood-red. The RAF squadrons that had lit up the skies with marker flares, and the ground with their phosphorus bombs and high explosive, had gone. In the street Fritz Esser, in his big six-wheel Mercedes, steered carefully around the huge mountains of old rubble and fresh wreckage. He was on his way to pick up Pauli Winter. Public transport could no longer be relied upon, although the efforts of the transport workers were almost superhuman. Esser’s car passed a large group of children – fourteen-, fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds – straggling along Keith Strasse towards their homes in badly damaged Schöneberg. It had been a bad night: some were to find their homes had disappeared. They were dressed in absurdly ill-fitting uniforms and carried helmets too heavy for them to wear comfortably on their heads. They were the school-children lately assigned to crew the heavy anti-aircraft guns in Tiergarten. The last of the children were crossing Cornelius Bridge. Under it the Landwehr Canal was dry, the machinery that controlled its flow bombed and useless.

Fritz Esser stopped his car and backed up. He felt a sudden impulse to give the children something: they looked so pathetic. They stared at the car – it was the same model that the Führer had used in the days when he could be seen riding through the city. They realized that Esser must be a high-ranking official. They grouped around him respectfully. In the boot of the car was a large box of chocolates that he’d obtained for Inge. He gave them to the children and they ate them ravenously. Some of them had never seen chocolate before. One pale-faced fifteen-year-old, discovering the taste for the first time, laughed as if someone had played a joke upon him, as, in a way, the little Austrian corporal had played a joke upon all of them. Fritz laughed, too. What else was there to do except cry?

‘Goebbels is still sitting in his office in Wilhelmsplatz, drinking champagne,’ said Fritz. He was in the car with Pauli, outside the Interior Ministry building. They were waiting for the offices to open and the staff to arrive. ‘He phoned the Führer and told him that it was written in the stars that mid-April would see a change in our fortunes. He says the death of Roosevelt corresponds to the death of the Tsarina during the Seven Years’ War, and it will bring victory to the Führer as it did to Frederick the Great.’

‘I’m sure that went down well,’ said Pauli. The doorman came out and opened up the ministry at exactly 8:30 a.m. and an organ grinder began playing in the hope of getting a few coins from the office workers.

‘He’s had someone dig out the Führer’s horoscope for January 30, 1933. It says the same thing.’

‘Does Goebbels believe in all that horoscope stuff?’ said Pauli.

‘Goebbels is shit-scared of the Russkis,’ said Fritz. ‘He’s doing everything he can to convince himself that they’ll never get here.’

‘But Goebbels is an educated man.’

‘Goebbels believes his own propaganda,’ said Fritz. It cast a new light on the Reichsminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Pauli had always thought Goebbels, with his virulent anti-Semitism, was a cynic like Fritz.

‘I never realized that,’ Pauli coughed. They were both smoking, and the interior of the car was blue with tobacco smoke.

‘They are all mad,’ said Fritz. ‘That’s why I’m clearing out.’

‘I thought you were going to the Obersalzberg with the Führer.’

‘He’ll never go. I should have seen that before. He’ll stay down inside that damned bunker until the Russian tanks roll over us.’

‘I thought he’d arranged to be there for his fifty-sixth birthday.’

‘That’s what he said, but he’ll not go now. I should have realized what he really intended when Eva Braun arrived here back in January. He usually keeps her locked up in the Berghof.’

‘Who’s Eva Braun?’ said Pauli.

‘The Führer’s mistress: his fancy woman.’

‘Mistress? The Führer? Are you sure?’

‘It’s been a well-kept secret, hasn’t it? He’s had that lovely little piece tucked away in the Berghof for twelve years or so, yet very few people know.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘South. Once the American spearheads join the Russians, we’ll never get through.’

‘Through to where?’

‘I don’t know…Switzerland, or Italy. I want false papers. Do you think Lothar Koch could fix something for me?’

‘I should think so; he’s done it for others, and for himself. He has papers to show he’s been a clerk for the last twelve years, and a hotel reception clerk before that. Who knows, someone might believe him. Go up and see him now. He’s been sleeping in his office since the S-Bahn stopped.’

‘I want you to come, too, Pauli.’

‘I can’t, Fritz.’

‘Wait until you see what I’ve got.’ Fritz grinned. ‘Look in the sacks.’ The whole rear seat was taken up by small sacks tied loosely with rope. Pauli grabbed one and looked inside. At first he couldn’t distinguish what was there. It was damned heavy but it looked like scrambled egg – dirty scrambled egg.

‘What is it?’

‘Gold.’

‘Gold? It doesn’t look like gold,’ said Pauli.

‘Teeth and stuff, gold spectacle frames, a lot of junk the SD had stored in the Reichsbank.’

‘How did you get it?’

‘Reichsminister Funk has ordered that all gold, silver, foreign paper money and valuables stored in their vaults be moved south.’

‘Where to?’

‘It’s all being put in salt mines and caves. Hidden away.’

‘And this?’

‘It doesn’t belong to the Reichsbank: it belongs to us. I gave them a receipt on Sicherheitsdienst notepaper. No one cared as long as they had a receipt.’

‘The SD? There will be terrible trouble when they find out, Fritz.’

‘Don’t be so stupid, Pauli.’ He lit a new cigarette from the butt before stubbing it into the ashtray with exaggerated force. ‘It’s all over. And this is what we need to finance us. Reichsmarks are not going to be worth a thing once we stop fighting.’

‘But you’ve stolen it.’

‘Who else needs it? Come along, we’ll share. Feel the weight of it.’

‘Teeth? Gold teeth?’

‘From prisoners who died in the camps.’

‘Ugh!’

‘Don’t go squeamish. You fought in the war, didn’t you?’

‘Prisoners? People who died in the camps? It’s horrible. They stored it in the Reichsbank?’

‘There’s tons of it there. This is all I could manage. Come with me, Pauli. I have plenty of gas for the car.’

‘I have to stay here, Fritz. I have to look after my mama.’ Pauli wound the window down to let some of the smoke out. The sound of the little barrel organ sounded louder.

‘You’ll never have a chance like this again, Pauli. The Russians will kill everyone in the city.’

‘My mother’s too old to go anywhere.’

Fritz didn’t argue that point. He had no intention of taking Pauli’s mother anywhere. Hell, she must weigh at least fifty kilos, and think what that would be worth in gold.

Pauli closed the neck of the sack. He found it disturbing to look at these pathetic and grotesque bits and pieces now that he knew what they were. He tied the sack carefully and pushed it aside. ‘Thanks again, Fritz, but I have to stay here with her. There’s no one to look after her now that Papa is dead.’

‘I’ll need a gun, Pauli.’

‘I thought you had one.’

‘Something more effective – a machine gun.’ They looked at each other and Fritz said, ‘People will kill for this much gold.’

‘Will they, Fritz?’

‘Not here in the city … not yet. But I’m going south, where the fighting is.’ People were arriving for work. A bus stopped and a dozen or more clerks got off it. It was amazing how people just carried on, despite the imminent collapse of the nation.

‘See Koch. Tell him to phone the armoury at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – he knows who to speak with – and say I said it was all right for you to have whatever you want.’

‘I knew you’d be able to fix it, Pauli.’ He tugged at the steering wheel, as if impatient to start.

‘Then it’s goodbye?’

‘Yes. I’m off as soon as I get documents and a gun.’ Fritz tapped ash from the end of his cigarette in the little ashtray. It was an unusual gesture for Fritz, who usually let ash fly where it might.

‘We had some good times, Fritz.’

‘And we’ll have lots more, Pauli. It will work out, you’ll see. I’ll write to you at your parents’ house. Okay?’

‘Is Inge going with you?’

‘She left yesterday. By train. I managed to get her a seat and papers. I’ll meet her in Mittenwald on the weekend.’

‘Tell her good luck, too.’ Pauli opened the car door and got out. ‘Goodbye, Fritz.’ The organ was playing ‘Lily Marlene’. Pauli had lots of work to do. Perhaps it would be more sensible to get false papers and flee, the way Fritz was doing, but for Pauli work came first. It always had.

‘A time to be brave’

On April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday was celebrated in Berlin, and all the top Nazi leaders were with him in the bunker: Göring, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Bormann and Goebbels, as well as the senior military commanders. But that night many of them left the city. Göring, in a long caravan of motor vehicles, was taking some choice pieces of plundered art to the Obersalzberg, while Himmler headed north to Lübeck, where he was to discuss peace terms in the Swedish consulate.

Such extra space made available in the Führerbunker meant that the entire Goebbels family was invited to move in from their damaged house in the Wilhelmstrasse garden. Two days later, Russian tanks broke through the outer defences and got into the city limits. By this time artillery shells were falling in the centre of Berlin.

The men who worked at the Weissensee cemetery continued to go to work even when there was German field artillery in nearby Berliner Allee firing at targets in the open ground at Wartenberg, to the north of the freight railway lines. The shots were falling in the vegetable patches, and the loose earth made great black clouds as each one exploded in the dry dirt.

‘Infantry,’ said Dr Volkmann. The others listened respectfully. In the first war he’d won the Iron Cross first class while serving on the Western Front. ‘High-explosive shells; and that sort is used against soft targets. Russian infantry.’

‘Poor devils,’ said Benjamin the rabbi.

The poor devils must have been radioing for help, for hardly were the words out of his mouth when great fireballs began arcing across the dark sky, their trajectories ending in the approximate position of the German guns. The mysterious fiery missiles made loud screaming sounds as they came racing through the air.

‘Counterbattery fire,’ said Dr Volkmann. ‘Rockets. They call them “Stalin Organs”. I think we’d better get back to the mortuary. There must be tanks behind the infantry. One of the guns has started to fire armour piercing rounds. Can you hear it?’

‘The infantry will be behind the tanks, surely,’ said the professor, who never liked to be left out of a conversation too long.

‘No, no, no,’ said Volkmann. ‘Infantry first, then tanks.’ He didn’t intend to turn it into the sort of academic discussion that the professor enjoyed. ‘I’m getting back.’

Boris Somló had been carrying his big red flag wrapped in brown paper. Now he untied the string and was ready to unfold it. The others stayed close to him.

Dr Volkmann asked if anyone was coming with him.

‘We have to face them sometime, Dr Volkmann,’ said Benjamin the rabbi.

‘Better here in the open,’ said Dr Weiss. ‘Perhaps they’ll give us some form of laissez-passer that will keep us safe. By tomorrow everyone will be clamouring for special treatment.’ He looked at Boris. There was a hard, determined expression on his face, a look the others had never seen before.

‘I’m going back,’ said Volkmann. ‘Who’s coming with me?’ No one answered.

‘This is a time to be brave,’ said Benjamin the rabbi.

As Benjamin said it, Boris moved forward, with the flag thrown over his shoulder like a blanket roll. The others followed him, heading for the railway lines. Boris had decided that the embankment would be a good place to confront the oncoming Soviet soldiers. They would have enough time to see the flag if it was draped across the embankment. By tacit consent Boris had become the leader of the group.

Dr Volkmann went back. He didn’t want to confront the Red Army soldiers. He wanted to get back to his wife and baby son.

Volkmann hurried along Berliner Allee, hoping for a lift into the centre of town, but the only traffic on the street was the army: trucks filled with infantry, some ten-centimetre guns being towed behind big half-tracks, and five tanks coming down Virchow Strasse from the Friedrichs Hain, which had been made into a vehicle park for the army. The tracks were damaging the road surface, but it didn’t matter now, he supposed. Nothing mattered. When he got to the Horst Wessel Hospital on Landsberger Allee he saw men strung up on the lampposts. The bodies were swaying in the breeze and on each one a hastily scrawled white card was tied. It said, ‘I deserted my post and paid the price’. He’d heard that there were ‘flying tribunals’ serving out summary death sentences in the streets, but this was the first evidence he’d seen of their work. He shuddered and hurried on, skirting round a place near the Alexanderplatz where a bus had fallen into an exposed section of the underground railway. Teno crews – specially trained and equipped engineers – had erected lifting tackle and were working to release people trapped in the twisted wreckage.

On the west side of the wide intersection two streetcars had been shifted off their tracks to improvise a barrier. Hitler Youth and elderly men wearing old Imperial Army greatcoats, ‘Africa-Corps’ caps, and Volkssturm armbands were filling the streetcars with rubble and bits of broken paving. In the middle of the road were three dead horses and the pieces of an army wagon scattered around the shallow crater that marked the place where the stray round from some Red Army gun had found them.

As Dr Volkmann reached the next corner, there was the sudden sound of rifle fire. Just a ragged volley of about half a dozen gunshots, but it was so near at hand that Volkmann stopped in his tracks, frightened that he was coming into a line of fire. Surely the Russians hadn’t got this far so suddenly, though there had been rumours about parachute troops dropping into the city at night.

He looked around in time to see six soldiers scrambling over a pile of rubble to get back to the street from some wrecked houses. They were tough-looking fellows, their uniforms stained and dusty, their boots dirty and scuffed.

‘Hey, you!’ one of them shouted.

Volkmann turned.

‘Don’t move!’ Two of them had their rifles raised and pointed at him in a businesslike way. They’d been through this routine before.

Volkmann raised his hands well above his head and waited. As they got closer he could see that their uniforms were green and they wore police badges on their sleeves, but they weren’t ordinary policemen: they were members of one of the special ‘police regiments’ formed for service in the occupied Eastern territories. They were fierce-looking men who well knew the terrible reputation they’d earned in the regions where they were employed to protect the army’s lines of communication.

One of them – a tall NCO with the rank badges of a Wachtmeister – prodded Volkmann with the muzzle of his rifle, and in doing so deliberately pushed back his coat lapel to expose fully the large yellow cloth star of David that all Jews were compelled by law to wear outdoors.

‘Where are you going, Jew?’ he demanded roughly in the singsong accent of the Rhineland.

‘Home, Herr Major.’

The other men gave grim, mirthless chuckles. Volkmann knew the man wasn’t a major – he wasn’t even an officer – but it seemed expedient to flatter him. Jews, those who’d survived, had learned to flatter every official they encountered, so now their fellow Germans expected such subservience.

‘All the way to Palestine?’ said the Wachtmeister, and the other men laughed dutifully.

Volkmann smiled to show what a good joke it was, and said, ‘To Neuer Westen, Herr Major.’

‘New West End!’ said the Wachtmeister, and sucked his teeth in mock respect at the mention of such a grand district. ‘The Jews are back in New West End already. They must think the war is lost.’ To Volkmann he said, ‘Jews aren’t allowed on the street.’ As the soldiers crowded closer round him, Volkmann grew aware of how tall they were. He became frightened, as they intended he should be.

‘I work at the Weissensee cemetery,’ said Volkmann. ‘I have my papers.’

‘Shoot the little bastard,’ said one of them, ‘and tomorrow he’ll ride to work in a hearse.’ He laughed at his own joke.

Volkmann looked round at the men. He knew now beyond doubt what the volley of rifle shots were: this was a ‘flying tribunal’ executing stragglers, deserters, or any unfortunate who could not satisfy them with their credentials.

The constant drumbeat of distant bombardments was suddenly obliterated by the closer, sharper bangs of field artillery. The soldiers looked back across the Alexanderplatz. The Volkssturm men working on the barricade had crouched down at the sudden sound. The Wachtmeister laughed at such nervousness. He spat on the ground, and as he wiped his mouth Volkmann saw a tattoo on the back of his hand: ‘Mother’. The Wachtmeister took out his notebook. He opened it at a dog-eared page and began a litany: ‘In the name of the Führer and the Reich…’

‘Oh my God!’ said Volkmann.

‘Better wait for the officer,’ one of the men warned the Wachtmeister. The officer emerged from a piece of wall behind which, with an exaggerated modesty considering the circumstances, he’d retired to urinate. His pistol belt was thrown over his shoulder and his overcoat was flapping open as he fastened his flies. He was a big fellow with a round face, narrow eyes and a thin pointed nose. His uniform was not like the others’: it was the ordinary German-army field grey, and his badges and piping were those of an artillery captain. When he’d fastened his overcoat, he left the top three buttons undone and the lapels fully open. It was a privilege extended only to generals and field marshals and to heroes who had Germany’s most coveted medal for valour hanging at their collar.

‘A Jew,’ the Wachtmeister reported. ‘No proper papers: shoot him?’ His voice betrayed the very limited respect these men of the police regiment had for the regular army. The Wachtmeister would have very much resented being sent out on patrol under the orders of a mere gunnery officer had it not been for the ‘tin necktie’ – the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves – and all the other paraphernalia that he was wearing.

‘I have papers,’ said Volkmann shrilly, although he knew the officer was more likely to believe his NCO.

Heavy trucks lumbered past, towing guns. Inside the trucks the crews looked tired, pale and apprehensive. ‘What’s your name?’ said the officer. Volkmann was slightly reassured to hear the accent of Berlin in his voice. Berlin – a cosmopolitan city – had never been as hostile to the Jews as some other regions.

‘Volkmann. Isaac Volkmann. I work at the cemetery. My papers are in order, Herr Hauptmann.’ He almost added that he was an ex-officer and a holder of the Iron Cross, but even now, with death so close, Isaac Volkmann’s pride prevented him from saying it. Besides, such claims were unlikely to impress this fellow. Better, perhaps, simply to show these riffraff that a Jewish officer could die with his dignity and self-assurance intact.

The artillery captain stared at him disdainfully. ‘You work at the cemetery?’ he asked as though he didn’t believe it. ‘The cemetery?’

‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann.’

‘You’re Dr Volkmann the dentist,’ he said accusingly.

‘Yes, I was.’

‘You did my teeth. When I was tiny. My father took me to your surgery in Ku-damm. Mauser; Rolf Mauser. Remember me?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Volkmann.

‘Rolf Mauser. You photographed my teeth. You said you were going to use the photo slide in a lecture.’

‘I lectured a lot at one time,’ said Volkmann.

‘Some special sort of root treatment. You never sent a bill,’ said the officer.

‘Perhaps the school sent you,’ said Volkmann. The field artillery fired again. It was closer this time. It must be on tracks: only self-propelled guns could change position and fire so quickly afterwards.

‘Lichtenberg,’ said one of the soldiers to the unasked question. ‘Over open sights …and that means Russki tanks …at close range.’

‘Get along home,’ said the officer. ‘Now the bill is paid. Right?’

‘Thank you, Herr Hauptmann.’

‘Go home and stay home. Protect your wife and your family. When the Ivans arrive, God help all of us.’

By the time Volkmann got back to the Hennigs’, the first platoon of Red Army infantry had reached the railway embankment at Weissensee. They were veterans. Some of them had fought all the way from Moscow. They had dreamed of this day. They thought only of the women and the drink that were awaiting them just along the road in the centre of this great metropolis. They had been promised full liberty to take anything they wanted from the ‘German criminals’. There would be no restrictions. It was to be three days of raping, killing, looting and drinking; three days that would make up for the misery they’d suffered, the years without leave, the comrades lost.

But the Germans were still fighting hard. It would be tragic to die on this day, so near the end. That was why the Red infantry took no chances. That was why it was better to shoot at anything that moved. That was why they didn’t hesitate to kill the small bunch of old men in civilian clothes who were crouched behind the railway embankment. One long burst of fire was all that was needed, but a couple of hand grenades made sure of them. After that the whole platoon came across the railway in one wild dash. An embankment like that can be dangerous. There is a moment when each infantry man becomes silhouetted against the southern sky. German snipers, and an MG 42, were firing from the roofs of houses in Franz Josef Strasse. But of the first Russian infantry platoon across the railway embankment only one man was killed. The fatality was a fifty-year-old senior NCO from Odessa. It was his bad luck to get his feet entangled in a big red cloth.

When the burial party picked up his body nearly three weeks later – when fears of typhoid and typhus forced the Soviet authorities to hurry up the burying of the dead – they found his feet tangled in a flag, a crude home-made red flag. The burial party didn’t waste any time wondering what it was. The Red Army didn’t encourage men to wonder about such things.

She was not young or even middle-aged

When the fighting, and its horrendous aftermath, ended, Berlin was like a Hollywood film set. To the casual observer appeared streets and houses. But a closer inspection revealed that most of the houses were no more than hollow shells open to the sky: a honeycomb of enclosed empty spaces. Sometimes the whole sides of big blocks had slid away to reveal sinks and baths hanging from their plumbing lines. Paintings, and even mirrors, had survived on walls unaffected by the blast, and upper floors hung out over the street like tongues extended in a last rude, defiant grimace at the city’s tormentors.

It was spring. For many of the inhabitants, the coming of summer would provide a chance to survive and prepare for the sort of raw temperatures that Berlin suffers in winter, but the summer would bring the sun and the flies, and it would make the stench of the city something that Berliners there at that time would never forget.

Already it smelled bad. It smelled of the unburied dead, the dust of ancient brickwork and burned timbers, and of the stink from broken, overflowing sewers. But the conquering armies had become used to that. The sour smell of faeces, wreckage and putrefying flesh was a smell all soldiers knew: it was the smell of war.

For most of the American, Russian and British soldiers, Berlin was just another German town. It was smelly and very badly damaged by bombing and shelling, but so were many of the other towns through which they’d fought. The only changes were the ones that occupying armies brought to all conquered towns: whores, beggars and black-marketeers.

But not all the soldiers who walked between the huge mountains of rubble were indifferent to the city’s plight. Sir Alan ‘Boy’ Piper felt the city’s agonies as a chronic stab of pain. It was like seeing some beautiful friend who’d narrowly survived a disfiguring accident. One recognized every feature, but where did one look? What did one say?

Piper was dressed as an Intelligence Corps major. His actual equivalent rank was brigadier general, but he felt far too conspicuous in such a uniform. For the time being at least, the military command was insisting that everyone wear a uniform of some sort, so Piper, as an important figure in the military government, felt unable to flout the regulations. He’d chosen to be a major. Colonels attracted far too much attention, but this field rank gave him admittance to clubs and offices where a captain would find it difficult to get in.

But if Piper thought this device would render him inconspicuous, he was mistaken. Piper was upright and healthy – they’d made him take a physical before allowing him to come overseas – and he managed a soldier’s stride and had abundant white hair and bright-blue eyes that seemed to glitter when he smiled, but Piper was as old as Methuselah. Though soldiers were used to seeing very elderly brigadiers, such a very elderly major made heads turn. By now he’d realized this – and he was frequently stopped by military police and asked to show his papers – but he didn’t care. He preferred being a major. People talked to majors in a way they didn’t talk to generals; Piper liked talking to people, and his German was excellent.

At the Kempinski Hotel he turned off Ku-damm and went up the side street until he came to the tea room. It was in a dilapidated condition, but someone had been trying to repair the ceiling and get it back into shape. What’s more, the tea room was functioning: a handwritten sign said it opened at noon. There were chairs and tables with newly washed cloths and some primroses in tumblers on each one. In the corner was a big cracked Chinese pot containing an aspidistra plant. There was even a fellow tuning the piano. Piper watched him as he took a moment off from his work and played a few bars of Beethoven – ‘Für Elise’.

‘That’s damned good!’ said Piper when the piano tuner ended his little recital.

‘Thank you, Herr Major,’ said Erich Hennig.

‘I’m looking for Frau Winter. Frau Veronica Winter. She isn’t in her own home. I understand she’s staying here.’

‘The second floor. Are you a relative?’

‘Alas, no,’ said Piper, ‘an old friend.’

‘At the back, on the second floor. Mind the loose stair carpet, Herr Major: it’s dangerous.’

‘Thank you,’ said Piper. ‘I shall.’

As he went up the stairs, he was humming to himself. You old fool, he thought, you are like some wretched eighteen-year-old on his first date. But he couldn’t help feeling excited. He’d spent his life thinking about Veronica, one way or another. He’d even contrived to see her brother as often as possible because he was so like her in looks and in manner. Now the moment had finally come and he was preparing himself for a rude shock. Preparing himself for a rude shock, and yet not actually expecting it. ‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst’ – his niece had embroidered that at school on a small sampler that she later gave him. He’d had it hanging on the wall of his London office ever since.

He reached the dark landing, knocked, and after a moment or so called: ‘Frau Winter?’

She was a long time coming to the door. What had he expected: that beautiful, animated creature who’d turned his head in 1910 and occupied his mind ever since?

She was not young or even middle-aged, that woman who answered the door to him: she was white-haired.

‘Yes?’ Old and frail but unmistakably her. She held the door open. She was not as tall as the woman he remembered, but she had the same wide, bony face and the same Rensselaer jaw and mouth. She was still beautiful.

‘Veronica. Do you remember me?’

It took her a moment to adjust herself to speaking English. ‘Are you a friend of my brother’s?…I am sorry I am in such muddle. I have just moved here …Everything is…’

‘Veronica. It’s Alan Piper – “Boy”. You remember …?’

‘Yes, Boy.’ She frowned. She recalled the voice so clearly. It was a wonderful voice, low and clear and mellow. Without her glasses she couldn’t see him distinctly in the darkness of the landing. But when she leaned closer her face lit up and she smiled the sort of sad, reflective smile that he remembered so well. ‘Docome in…. You’re in the army. Come in…. It’s all such a muddle I have just moved in.’

‘Thank you, but I mustn’t stay. I came to see that you were all right. I promised your brother.’

‘How did you find me? This house belongs to the Hennig family.’

‘The ration cards.’

‘Oh, of course.’ She took his peaked cap from him and indicated that he should sit down on the battered sofa. The room was in a terrible muddle. There were two trunks open on one side of the room. From them she’d been taking linen and some oddments of personal possessions. Otherwise the room was relatively bare. Apart from the sofa, there were three hard wooden chairs and a table propped up under a broken leg. A picture of a rather grand wedding group was occupying pride of place on a small inlaid side table. There was no frame for the photo: she’d sold the silver frame to give the Hennigs something to help, and show her appreciation. Close inspection revealed that the groom was Paul, in his army uniform. The bride looked radiant, and there was a big crowd of smiling faces and an escort of army officers with drawn swords.

‘And I wanted to tell you that your sons are safe and well,’ he said.

‘Safe and well,’ she repeated, and sat down as if dazed. ‘Safe and well. Both of them?’

‘Peter is in the American army. He’s with your brother in the American Zone – Munich or somewhere near there. I’m sure they’ll both visit you as soon as they get a chance.’

‘Peter, yes, I’d heard he was with the army.’

‘A full colonel. He’s been assigned to the International Military Tribunal.’

‘That sounds very grand.’

‘The war crimes trials at Nuremberg. It won’t start for a long time yet, and it will go on for ages. You’ll see a lot of them, I should think, unless you’ve decided to be repatriated.’

‘To the U.S.?’

‘It wouldn’t be difficult to arrange, Veronica. If that’s what you want.’

‘You said both boys were safe.’

‘Paul is in a prison camp near Cologne. He’ll probably be taken to England eventually.’

‘To England?’ The poor woman was confused. It was all too much for her.

‘Shall I put the stove on and boil some water?’ he offered. ‘I brought some coffee with me.’

‘Real coffee?’

‘Yes indeed.’

‘It’s a pressure stove. You won’t be able to work it.’

‘Stay where you are, Veronica. I was working these stoves when I was at Boy Scout camp, and that was a long time ago.’

She laughed. It was a sweet, girlish laugh. ‘Yes, it must have been a long time ago.’

She watched him as he made the coffee. It gave her a moment to compose herself. It was all so unexpected. Why hadn’t he written? She would have worn something better, and asked Lisl to do her hair for her. There was a sudden loud hissing as he got the pressure stove started. He tried the tap, but there was no water.

‘In the jug on the drainingboard,’ she called. As well as a two-pound package of coffee, he’d brought a can of evaporated milk and a bag of sugar. He was so precise and methodical. ‘The can opener is in the drawer.’

‘Stay where you are, Veronica. I can manage.’

‘And you are in the army?’ she said.

‘Don’t I look like a soldier?’

‘Of course you do,’ she said, although in fact he didn’t. He looked like an elderly matinee idol playing the role of one.

He brought the pot of coffee, and the milk in a jug. She said, ‘Tell me about Pauli.’

He looked at her. It was better to tell her the whole truth; she wasn’t the sort of woman who refused to face reality. ‘He’s being interrogated…. Oh, don’t be frightened, Veronica. That doesn’t mean ill-treated. He’s being questioned.’

‘About what?’

‘Paul was a high official of the Gestapo. He was at a decision-making level in the Ministry of the Interior.’

‘He’s not a criminal,’ she said softly. ‘He was just a civil servant: a bureaucrat.’

‘These are Nazi Party organizations, Veronica. It’s routine, but he’ll have to be questioned.’

‘You know a lot about him.’

‘I poked my nose into it. They let me look at the files. One of my young men, a fellow named Brian Samson, is what, in this hateful modern jargon, they are calling “a de-Nazification expert”.’

‘Samson. The name is familiar. Do I know him?’

‘Possibly. He used to work in one of Harald’s factories.’

She looked at him in mild surprise; she could believe anything by now. ‘An Englishman. Yes, I met him once or twice. So he was one of your people?’

‘Yes,’ said Piper.

‘Harald always said you were a spy. I laughed at him. We quarrelled about it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For being a spy?’

‘That you quarrelled.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She picked up the coffee, smelled it for a moment, and then drank some greedily. It was the first taste of real fresh coffee she’d had in a long long time. ‘Do you have a family?’ she asked.

‘No, I never married. There was always so much work. Girlfriends wouldn’t put up with me.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

He tried to think of something to say. Something that would smoothly lead to his being able to tell her that no one he’d ever met could measure up to her. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He only had two days here in Berlin, and he’d vowed to tell her that there had been no one else in his life. He watched her, savouring the sight of her. She had drunk all her coffee already and he’d not even tasted his own. He smiled and poured more for her.

‘That coffee tastes so good,’ she said.

‘And you never married again?’ he asked.

‘Me? No.’ She decided that her second cup would have evaporated milk in it. ‘Do you take cream?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

She poured some for him. ‘Enough?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s so good to speak English again.’ She poured some of the tinned milk for herself, then touched her hair. ‘I must look terrible. It’s so dusty, and everything is such a mess.’

‘You look wonderful, Veronica.’

‘I wish I could offer you something.’

‘I’ll send you some food. I have such a lot. Do you smoke?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘I’ll let you have some cigarettes anyway. They say you can get anything done for cigarettes.’

‘Yes, there’s no doubt about that.’ She sighed. ‘There is no self-discipline, no faith, no dignity, no self-respect any more. The Germany that I once knew is gone.’

‘Was it anything but our self-deception, Veronica? I loved Germany, too, but now I ask myself if that Germany I loved so much ever existed.’

‘What will happen to him?’

‘To Paul? It’s difficult to guess. There is talk of declaring the SS an illegal organization, but I don’t see how they could punish every member of the SS, could they?’

‘Harald said that once about the Jews. He said that Hitler and his Nazis could hardly punish every one of them, but he did, didn’t he?’

‘Nearly every one, yes, but we’re not Hitler.’

‘Pauli’s wife left him. She went off with a man he worked for, Fritz Esser, the deputy minister. Now I see that Fritz Esser is going to be charged with crimes against humanity.’ She picked up her coffee and sipped some. ‘I worry about Pauli. He’s a wonderful boy; there is no wickedness in him.’

‘And I’m sure he’ll come to no harm.’

‘When the Russian soldiers came to the old house, he stayed with me, locked up in the attic. He had a gun. Eventually they went away.’

‘It must have been terrible.’

‘People were being raped and murdered. We could hear them screaming and shouting. It was a nightmare, and it went on for days and nights, but Pauli stayed with me. Then, when the British soldiers arrived, an English officer and police came. They searched the house and took Pauli away.’ She was distressed at the memory.

He said, ‘Better us than the Russians.’

‘Pauli said that, too. Then the English came back and commandeered the whole house. They’d noticed that I was there alone and that it wasn’t too badly damaged. They gave me forty-eight hours to get out. I had to come around here to live with the Hennigs.’

‘Berlin will not be a good place to live, Veronica. Accommodation will become more and more difficult, and when winter comes life will be hard.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said. She looked at him and smiled.

He wondered if this was the right time for him to say that he loved her, that he adored her, that he wanted to marry her, that she was the only woman he’d ever wanted. But he wasn’t sure it was the right time. He was English: an elderly Englishman who was frightened of making a fool of himself. He decided to leave it for another time. The thought of her laughing at him was unendurable. Better, perhaps, to live without her than to risk the destruction of his dream.

‘I’m going to Cologne tomorrow for a conference,’ he said. He mustn’t outstay his welcome. Perhaps it was a mistake to come without warning. He got to his feet. ‘If I can get any news of your son, I will let you know.’

‘Thank you. You’re forgetting your package of coffee.’

‘Please, keep it if you’d like it.’

‘It was wonderful to see you again, Boy.’ She couldn’t offer him a meal; she had no food and no money to buy any. She wondered where would be the best place to sell the coffee. With that money she’d have enough to give him a snack of some kind next time he came.

‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he promised. She was close to him, and he wondered whether he should kiss her, but it might offend her. He decided to shake hands instead.

‘Everyone is being damned vindictive’

Colonel Peter Winter could never get over the Americans, their profligate use of money and the hardware, and convenience, that money could buy. When he went to collect his brother, the U.S. Army provided him with the exclusive use of a plane to Nuremberg. It was not a small communications plane, either, but a large Douglas DC3 transport.

Pauli Winter’s months in custody had made him thin, wiry and fit – he looked like the young soldier who’d marched off to fight in World War I – but he was no longer the careless, cheerful man he’d once been. Confinement did not suit Pauli’s restless, undisciplined spirit, and now he’d become moody and subdued; even the presence of Peter hadn’t restored his confident good humour. He’d chosen a seat by the window, and now he watched the land pass beneath in breathless horror. Nothing he’d read or heard had prepared him for the reality of this war-ravaged, pock-marked land that once had been Germany. The light dusting of snow revealed every crater and roofless farm building, every broken spire and lifeless village. To Pauli it was as if someone had taken a pot of white paint to mark each wound and say to him, ‘German, this is your punishment – repent!’

Peter Winter and his brother, Pauli, sat side by side. Behind them sat Brian Samson, who wore the uniform of a British army captain. The people in London had been reluctant to let Paul Winter go, and eventually Peter had eased the situation by suggesting that Brian Samson came, too. Samson didn’t want to go to Nuremberg, but he’d been ordered to do so. It was, someone had said, important not to create a precedent. Senior staff from the Ministry of the Interior were important catches. Such cat egorized German prisoners would not be released to the Americans on receipt of a request. Paul Winter was not released to the Americans: he was still in the direct custody of Captain Brian Samson and would remain so until further notice.

Suddenly Pauli dragged his eyes away from the ground below and asked, ‘Wouldn’t it have been better if I’d stayed in London and faced this de-Nazification inquiry?’

Peter was tired. There were rings under his eyes, and his face was wrinkled, as was his uniform. Worry about Pauli and grief for Lottie, concern for his daughter and his mother had put such a multitude of burdens upon him that he sometimes felt he could no longer cope. For the last week or so he’d been subjected to Glenn Rensselaer’s long and bitter tirades about Dot and the way she’d managed to become the sole beneficiary of Cy Rensselaer’s fortune. She’d already made it clear that she’d do nothing to rectify the old man’s harsh decision to omit Glenn and Veronica from the will. The money was destined for her three sons. Glenn, who’d never concerned himself with money was furious. He wanted to contest the will and urged Peter to join him in the action. Peter was too tired even to argue about it. But collecting Pauli had concentrated his mind. For the time being Pauli was the focus of his anxieties. He loved Pauli and had missed him very much.

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Peter. ‘Everyone is being damned vindictive at the moment. Let a few months go by and they will simmer down a little. Instead of hanging people they’ll be giving out shorter and shorter prison sentences. If I can keep you in Nuremberg until the IMT is finished, everyone will be getting bored with de-Nazification. I know the Americans. Do as I say.’

‘Did you tell Fritz Esser to ask for me?’

‘I had someone remind him that it was his right to have any defence lawyer that would agree to serve. He didn’t have to be told that you would be a good choice.’

‘He could have had anyone?’

‘Even a German serving a sentence would be temporarily released.’

‘So it will be a fair trial?’

‘A fair trial? In Nuremberg?’ Peter looked at his younger brother and gave him a weary smile. ‘Yes, they’ll get a fair trial, and then they’ll be hanged.’

‘Do you mean that?’

‘It will be a fiasco,’ said Peter. ‘The Russians are sitting in judgement. The Russians! They were Hitler’s allies. Stalin sent Hitler a message of congratulation when France surrendered to the panzers. Stalin’s concentration camps have slaughtered more victims than Himmler’s have. They will be the judges.’

‘But still…’

‘Wait till you get there; you’ll see. Each of the accused has one lawyer. You won’t even be able to talk to Fritz Esser in private: you’ll be in a noisy room, crowded together with other accused men trying to talk to their lawyers. There will be a guard sitting alongside you to make sure that he hears everything you say. And, to make sure you don’t get close enough to whisper, they’ll put a sheet of armoured glass in front of your face.’

‘That won’t help them…’

‘And you’ll see what the prosecution team is like. There are hundreds of lawyers, and hundreds of researchers, translators and secretarial staff. Money is being spent without restriction; this is the trial that justifies the war, you see. So the prosecution staff are living in the fancy hotels and throwing wild parties every night. French champagne and American rations. Cigarettes by the carton. Oh, yes, the lawyers will have a fair trial; it will be something to talk about when they’re back home in America. But for the accused it will be a travesty of justice.’

‘It can’t be true,’ said Pauli.

‘It’s true. I’m on the prosecution staff, so I know,’ said Peter.

‘Are you trying to depress me?’

‘I just don’t want you to imagine that you are going to go to Nuremberg and do some kind of wonderful legal work and bring Esser out of court a free man. You’re not. Esser will go to the gallows. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg is just a fancy way of sending him there.’

There was a new voice, soft but angry. ‘Is that what you think, Colonel Winter?’ said Brian Samson from the seat behind them.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Peter Winter. He’d known that Samson was listening to him. In fact, his tirade wasn’t entirely designed to disillusion Pauli, but partly to provoke and irritate Brian Samson. And he’d succeeded. The two men knew exactly how to annoy each other. They’d had a lot of practice.

‘Spring will be a little late this year’

The jail was five spokes radiating from a central rotunda, each with three levels of cells. There was heavy-duty wire mesh overhead to frustrate suicide attempts. The guards were uniformed American soldiers, and from the office at the end came the resonant sound of music: ‘Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year’. It was one of the hit tunes. Fritz Esser was on the bottom level, near the end. The cell floor was uneven flagstones, and the walls rough plaster with damp patches under the tiny window set high in the wall. In the corner was a toilet that smelled of a powerful disinfectant.

Pauli entered the prison cell unprepared for the change that the short period of imprisonment had wrought. Fritz Esser was only fifty-two years old and looked at least sixty. He was an old man. He was sitting on the iron frame bed, sallow and shrunken. His elbows were resting on his knees and one hand was propped under his unshaven chin. The prison authorities had taken from him his belt, his braces and his necktie, and the expensive custom-made suit from Berlin’s most famous tailor was now stained and baggy. And yet the dark-underlined eyes were the same, and the pointed cleft chin made him immediately recognizable as a celebrity of the Third Reich, one of Hitler’s most reliable associates.

He waited for Fritz Esser to speak but he said nothing. Finally Pauli said, ‘You sent for me, Herr Reichsminister?’

The prisoner looked up. ‘The Reich is kaputt, Germany is kaputt, and I’m not a minister: I’m just a number.’ Pauli Winter could think of no way to respond to this bitterness. He’d become used to seeing him sitting behind the magnificent hand-carved desk in the tapestry-hung room in the ministry, surrounded by aides, secretaries and assistants. ‘Yes, I sent for you, Herr Doktor Winter. Sit down.’

He sat down. So he’d guessed right, Fritz Esser wanted to keep it all formal: Herr Doktor Winter, not Pauli. Well, that was just as well. It was better kept formal if you were talking to your former boss in prison.

‘I sent for you, Winter, and I’ll tell you why. They told me you were in prison in London awaiting interrogation. They said that any of us on trial here could choose any German national we wanted for our defence counsel, and that if the one we chose was being held in prison they’d release him to do it. It seemed to me that a man in prison might know what it’s like for me in here.’

Pauli looked at him. Fritz reminded Pauli of someone he’d known a long time ago, and as Fritz looked up he realized who: he had become the very image of his father, the pig man. Pauli wondered if he should offer the ex-Reichsminister a cigarette, but when – still undecided – he produced his precious cigarettes, the military policeman in the corridor shouted through the open door, ‘No smoking, buddy!’

The ex-Reichsminister gave no sign of having heard the prison guard’s voice. He carried on with his explanation. ‘Two, you speak American…speak it fluently. Three, you’re a damned good lawyer, as I know from working with you for many years. Four, and this is the most important, you are an Obersturmbannführer in the SS….’ He saw Winter’s face change and said, ‘Is there something wrong, Winter?’

Pauli leaned forward; it was a gesture of confidentiality and commitment. ‘At this very moment, just a few hundred yards from here, there are a hundred or more American lawyers drafting the prosecution’s case for declaring the SS an illegal organization. Such a verdict would mean prison, and perhaps death sentences, for everyone who was ever a member.’

‘Very well,’ said the prisoner testily. He’d always hated what he called ‘unimportant pettifogging details’. ‘But you’re not going to suddenly claim you weren’t a member of the SS, are you?’

For the first time since the message had come that Fritz Esser wanted him as defence counsel, Winter felt alarmed. He looked round the cell to see if there were microphones. There were bound to be. He remembered this building from the time when he’d been working with the Nuremberg Gestapo. That was the summer when old Graf and the rest of them were executed. Half the material used in the trial of the other disgruntled brownshirts had come from shorthand clerks who had listened to the prisoners over hidden microphones. ‘I can’t answer that,’ said Winter softly.

‘Don’t give me that yes-sir, no-sir, I-don’t-know-sir. I don’t want some woolly-minded, fainthearted, Jew-loving liberal trying to get my case thrown out of court on some obscure technicality. I sent for you because you got me into all this. I remembered your hard work for the party. I remembered the good times we had long before we dreamed of coming to power. I remembered the way your father lent me money back when no one else would even let me into their office. Pull yourself together, Winter. Either put your guts into the effort for my defence or get out of here!’

So his father had given money to the party, despite everything that Pauli had done and advised. And Fritz had been the one who handled it: how typical of his father, and typical of Fritz. And typical of the party, too! God, how devious everyone was.

‘Did you hear me?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Pauli smiled encouragement. He admired his old friend’s spirit. Appearances could be deceptive: he wasn’t the broken-spirited shell that Winter had thought; he was still the same ruthless old bastard that he had worked for. He remembered that first political meeting in the Potsdamer Platz in the 1920s and the speech he’d given: ‘Beneath the ashes fires still rage.’ It had been a recurring theme in his speeches right up until 1945.

‘We’ll fight them,’ said Pauli. ‘We’ll grab those judges by the ankles and shake them until their loose change falls to the floor.’

‘That’s right,’ said Esser. It was another one of his pet expressions. Is that what he’d done to Papa: shaken him until the loose change fell to the floor? ‘That’s right,’ repeated Esser and almost smiled. How like a bear he was. Not now the elegant bruin who pawed live fish from fast streams; more like the moth-eaten old specimens behind bars in the zoo. But the claws and teeth were still sharp, and so was the mind.

‘Time’s up, buddy!’

Pauli looked at his watch. There was another two minutes to go. The Americans were like that. Peter’s little outburst on the plane – never since repeated – had been one hundred per cent correct. They talked about justice and freedom, democracy and liberty, but they never gave an inch. There was no point in arguing: they were the victors. The whole damned Nuremberg trial was just a fiasco, just an opportunity for the Americans and the British and the French and the Russians to make an elaborate pretence of legal rectitude before executing the vanquished. But it was better that the ex-Reichsminister didn’t fully realize the inevitable verdict and sentence. Better to fight them all the way and go down fighting. At least that would keep his spirits alive. With this resolved, Pauli felt better, too. It would be a chance to relive the old days, if only in memories.

When Pauli got to the cell door, Esser called out to him. ‘One last thing, Winter.’ Pauli turned to face him. ‘I hear stories about some aggressive American colonel on the prosecution staff, the tall, thin one with the beautifully tailored uniform and the manicured fingernails …A man who speaks perfect German with a Berlin accent. They say he hates all Germans and makes no allowances for anything …he treats everyone to a tongue-lashing every time he sends for them. Now they tell me he’s been sent from Washington just to frame the prosecution’s case against me….’ He paused and stared. He was working himself up into the sort of rage that had caused his voice to echo through the ministry and panic all the staff. ‘Not for Göring, Speer, Hess, or any of the others, just for me. What do you know about that shit-face Schweinehund?’

‘Yes, I know him. It’s my brother.’

He almost enjoyed the consternation on Fritz Esser’s face. ‘Your brother? Peter?’

‘That’s him.’ A prison guard strolled past, whistling tunelessly.

‘The Americans made him a colonel in their army? He’s a German.’

‘The Americans do things differently, Fritz. It takes a bit of getting used to.’

‘Jesus Christ, it does! He was some kind of spy! I saved the bastard’s life. Last year: that night in Berlin. I saved his life. You got him away.’

‘He knows that.’

‘I wonder if he does,’ said Esser.

‘You didn’t do it for him, did you?’ It was a question: not rhetoric. ‘It was for the SS-Reichsführer.’

Esser pointed a stubby finger. ‘You saved his life.’

‘Never mind the pettifogging details,’ said Pauli.

Fritz Esser managed a brief grin. My God! How like the pig man he looked. Pauli wondered if he was now beginning to resemble Harald Winter to the same extent.

‘A good German, a man of honour’

Considering that he’d been left unconscious on the battlefield, suffered shell-splinter wounds, and been identified as a live enemy casualty by an American burial party, Rudolf Freiherr von Kleindorf had made an amazing recovery. But he’d spent five months in hospital, and even now he was subject to giddiness and fainting. That’s why he’d been repatriated and officially made into a civilian at a time when most of the German army were still in Allied prison camps.

Armed with an official pass issued by the Allied Military Command in Berlin, he had come into the Russian Zone of Germany to find a man he’d never met: Baron Wilhelm von Munte, a landed aristocrat who’d lived here, near Bernau, for many generations.

What in former times was a commuter ride from central Berlin had taken von Kleindorf four hours. It was a miserable grey day with low cloud and the easterly wind that always brings low temperatures in that region. The only train that Germans were permitted to use was over an hour late, and he’d had to walk all the way from the station, much of the way in thick mud. Four times he’d been stopped by Russian military policemen, and they not only wanted to see his papers but phoned to their headquarters before allowing him to continue his journey.

Even when he reached the address he’d been given he was held up and questioned by the Russian soldiers, for the Munte family home had been taken over by the Red Army. They were front-line soldiers, curious-looking fellows who toyed with their guns, smoked cheroots, and, unlike the men Kleindorf had commanded, were unshaven and smelled of drink.

Old von Munte was in bed in a room in the tiny gate-lodge. Although his grand mansion had been taken over by the Red Army, they’d not objected to the Muntes’ living nearby. They’d even allowed him to bring a few armfuls of books from his library. The books were stacked on the floor along one wall of this cramped, dark bedroom. But it was too dark to read. There was no electricity anywhere in this part of the country, and none was promised for the immediate future. The Russians were not trying to get the electricity stations going: they were dismantling them and shipping them back to Russia. Heat was sometimes provided by a tiny woodstove that today – despite the bitter cold – was unlit, and light by a big brass oil lamp that was in pieces on top of the side table, waited to be cleaned.

The old man was recovering from some unidentified virus, but he was lucky enough to have a competent local physician to attend him, and even luckier to have his son Walter von Munte looking after him so attentively. It was Walter who answered the door and who warned von Kleindorf that his father was not fit to talk for more than a few minutes.

Walter had been a brilliant student who’d got high marks in his final exams and, by war’s end, a senior position in the Reichsbank. Married very young – because his girlfriend, Ida, became pregnant – he’d lost her when she was killed in Berlin in one of the first of the really bad air raids. She’d been a dancer, and had gone back to work after the baby was born. There had been fierce family rows – the old man had always hated his new daughter-in-law – but Walter worshipped her and now worshipped her memory and the son she’d given him. Then, at the very end of the fighting, came another terrible tragedy. Walter’s young brother had been killed in the fighting. The fifteen-year-old child had been the very essence of the old man’s life. The loss had deprived him of the will to go on. Since then Walter had lived with his father and looked after him – and his own motherless baby son – with great devotion. But it was agony that bound the two men, agony that bordered on the edge of despair.

And so von Kleindorf faced the obstructions of the son, as well as the gloom of the father, in his request that old Wilhelm von Munte come to Hamburg to give evidence at the war-crimes trial of General Alex Horner.

Von Kleindorf was standing, head bent, cautiously avoiding the place where the wooden ceiling beam had already caused him to strike his head. No one had invited him to sit down so he stood, arms at his side in a formal pose that befitted one Prussian aristocrat paying a call upon another.

‘What makes you think it’s not true?’ asked the younger man. Walter was sitting in the corner, a heavily built man balanced on a little wooden kitchen chair. The hard light that comes before a storm lit one side of his face and reflected from the bare floorboards to make golden patterns on the ceiling. For a few moments the room was suffused with a curious shadowless light. It made the old man, propped on the lace-trimmed pillow in the brass bed, look like a long-dead saint, desiccated and displayed for some holy celebration.

Von Kleindorf had been speaking to the old man in the bed, but the old man said nothing. It was always his son who replied. Though the son must be young, he didn’t look young. He was a heavy, saturnine figure, the sort of man who never looked young.

Kleindorf looked at him. What was the fellow up to: was he testing him? ‘I didn’t say it wasn’t true,’ said Kleindorf patiently. ‘I said he wasn’t guilty.’

‘Of shooting the British prisoners?’

‘There was an SS division in Horner’s corps. They shot the prisoners: Australian prisoners.’

‘What does the SS commander say?’

‘The SS commander is dead. The Divisional Headquarters staff fought to the last man. When the Corps Headquarters was overrun, General Horner was using a rifle. It’s an amazing story. They fought to the very end.’

‘The commander gets the blame for any atrocities in his sector,’ said Walter.

‘It’s not right,’ said von Kleindorf. ‘It’s not fair.’

Walter von Munte didn’t bother to respond. Of course it wasn’t right or fair; almost nothing was right or fair. ‘When is this trial?’

‘In about two months’ time. The date’s not fixed yet.’

‘In Hamburg?’

‘Yes, in Hamburg.’ Would the fact that the trial would provide a visit to the British Zone make the old man more interested? he wondered.

‘I fail to see what my father can actually do there.’

Von Kleindorf was tired of having his questions answered by the younger man. He looked directly at Wilhelm, propped up in the bed. ‘Baron Munte,’ he said. ‘You know General Horner. He was in the anti-Hitler conspiracy with you. I simply want you to tell the court that.’

The old man cleared his throat and said, ‘Will the British believe that no anti-Nazi conspirator could shoot prisoners?’ It was a croaky voice and his tone was mocking.

‘I don’t know, Baron Munte. I’m just trying to help a good man, a good German, a man of honour.’

‘All the good Germans are dead,’ said the Baron. It was an old man’s response, a provocative, mischievous dismissal.

Von Kleindorf said nothing.

‘Why did Horner send you?’ asked the old man querulously, as if slighted that the imprisoned general had not come in person.

‘He didn’t send me: I came.’

‘Why you?’

‘It was my duty.’

‘Do you have any cigarettes?’ croaked the old man.

‘No, I can’t afford them,’ said von Kleindorf.

Walter said, ‘The Russians will not allow my father to go.’ Behind him, rain pattered on the window and then developed into a tattoo.

‘The British will request it.’

‘They still won’t allow him to go. When they hear he’s a defence witness for a German, they will obstruct things, the way they always do.’

‘Always do?’ said von Kleindorf. The room had grown much darker, now that the rain was heavy. The figures of the two men were almost lost in the gloom. Only the rails of the brass bedstead shone in the light.

‘You don’t live here in the Russian Zone,’ said the son, ‘or you’d know that already.’

‘Will you agree to come?’ von Kleindorf asked the old man.

Old Wilhelm leaned back and closed his eyes as he thought about it. He was a calculating old devil, wondering to what extent such evidence would be of benefit to his reputation and to that of his family. ‘I will let you know,’ he said.

Kleindorf clicked his heels and bowed. ‘Thank you, Baron Munte.’

‘Perhaps a written deposition,’ offered the son as von Kleindorf turned to go.

‘And no one knows who those three are’

It was one of the American lawyers, Colonel Bill Callaghan, who had made the fuss about Pauli Winter. It was he who suggested that Pauli Winter should be ordered to sign in and out of the accommodation he’d been given, and sign in and out at the Palace of Justice. But for that, no one would have reported him gone before the trial resumed the next morning.

But Pauli Winter didn’t go back to his billet that evening, and Colonel Peter Winter, U.S. Army, disappeared, too. Brian Samson cursed. On paper, Samson was the one responsible for Paul Winter, and here in Nuremberg paper was the only thing that mattered.

It was bright moonlight. Three big trucks, despite their all-weather tyres and four-wheel drives, found the narrow Bavarian country road difficult going in the deep snow. Samson had picked up this hastily assigned detail, and the trucks, from the barracks in Bad Reichenhall. The drivers were not used to the sort of weather to be faced here in the Bavarian Alps at this time of year, and the soldiers were an assorted collection of men from outfits far and wide with nothing in common but a ticket to go home. They were jumpy and ill-tempered at being pulled out of their warm barracks on such a night.

Leading the trucks was a jeep – General Glenn Rensselaer’s Buick staff car would never have made it through this sort of terrain – with Captain Brian Samson and General Rensselaer riding in the back of it. In front, beside the driver, a map and a torch on his knee, was a young pink-faced New Yorker: a first lieutenant of the Counter Intelligence Corps named Busby. He was twenty-eight years old, an ex-cop, pushy the way cops so often become in big cities, but, on the basis of a few hours in his company, Brian Samson had decided that Busby was good at catching fugitives, and that was the task they’d been set.

‘How did you trace them?’ General Rensselaer asked Busby.

‘There’s an engineering battalion repairing that section of the highway near the Chiemsee. Everyone that goes along it has to wait until they give the okay.’

‘And these engineers identified them?’

‘Military Police control the traffic.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘A colonel and a middle-aged German civilian: short and blond. Oh, they’re your guys, all right. Don’t worry.’

Brian Samson stole a glance at General Rensselaer. Rensselaer would probably have preferred a less convincing description. He was still trying to believe that it was all a mistake.

‘It’s happened before,’ said Busby. ‘These sons of bitches head for the Austrian border, hoping eventually to turn west for good old Switzerland, or south into Italy. We usually get them at one of the passes. There are not so many ways through the mountains still open at this time of year. But why the U.S. colonel? Is he a hostage or something?’

‘We don’t know,’ said General Rensselaer hurriedly.

‘That would be a new twist,’ said Busby. ‘Or are they in some kind of racket together? Jesus! I had to arrest a colonel last week: he had a truckload of narcotics, and he tried to bawl me out – can you believe it?’

Rensselaer didn’t respond. Busby used the flashlight for a quick look at the map, then carefully extinguished it again, as regulations dictated. The official instructions were that all transport moving after dark should be on the lookout for units of the werewolf. These werewolf units, the intelligence bulletins said, were highly organized, well-equipped groups of dedicated and specially chosen German soldiers and SS men who’d gone to ground at the end of the war in order to stage a massive uprising against the occupation forces when the time was ripe. The fact that the werewolf existed only in the minds of the Allied intelligence officers had not prevented many soldiers from reporting its activity whenever the night was dark enough and the drink strong.

‘The cops at the Chiemsee roadworks noticed that they had a spade and tools on the jeep,’ added Busby.

‘Don’t all jeeps have a spade?’ Rensselaer asked. ‘This one does.’

‘Yeah, maybe they do. But if they are digging up some of those Reichsbank gold bars we keep hearing about, I’ll call in for metal detectors. The other jeep has a radio.’

‘We won’t need metal detectors,’ said Rensselaer. He turned to Samson and quietly said, ‘What do you make of it, Brian?’

‘Paul Winter was facing serious charges in London. It would be tempting for him to try to escape.’

‘You don’t believe that, Brian?’ It was a plea. ‘And why Peter, too?’

‘I don’t know. General. But Pauli saved his brother’s life, not once but several times. Peter knows that. He carries that obligation like a burden round his neck.’

‘So he’d help, you mean?’

‘Yes, he’d help, General.’

‘I guess you know Peter as well as I do – better, maybe.’

‘You get to know someone when you are shut up in a room together.’

‘And you don’t like him.’

‘I’ve had Germans up to here, General Rensselaer.’ He held a hand up to the level of his nose. ‘When my contract ends I’m going to ask to go somewhere a long way away. Or I’ll go into some other business.’

Rensselaer said, ‘You say that now, but I’ll bet you’ll end your days as a German specialist. Maybe living here in Germany.’

‘God forbid,’ said Samson.

Rensselaer leaned forward to speak to the lieutenant. ‘When we get there, you spread your men out the way I showed you on the map. I’ll go up to the house with Captain Samson. We know these two men. We’ll talk to them.’

‘Whatever way you want it, General,’ said Busby. ‘But you’d better be armed.’

‘Captain Samson has his revolver. That will be enough.’

‘If you say so, General, but I’ll have an awful lot of questions to answer if these sons of bitches nail you.’

‘Just make sure no one gets past.’

‘Sure thing, General. My men won’t let a gopher past. My boys have done all this before. There’s no way your guys can get over to Austria except through Kniepass way to the west, or through Hallein. Even in high summer I doubt if anyone can hike over those mountains. Your Nazis will either have to come back this way or stay where they are until their butts freeze.’

‘They’re not exactly Nazis,’ said Rensselaer gently.

‘No! Sure!’ said Lieutenant Busby. ‘Speaking with these Krauts has convinced me that there were only three Nazis in the whole of Germany, and no one knows who those three are.’

Rensselaer was angry, but he bit his lip and kept his anger under control. It wasn’t appropriate for a general to bawl out a junior officer in such circumstances. And Samson couldn’t be expected to reprimand the lieutenant: Samson wasn’t even in the same army. In any case, it was a touchy subject.

They reached Berchtesgaden. The lights were on, but the curfew had cleared the streets of Germans, and Americans, too, except for a sergeant in a jeep waiting outside the Berchtesgaden Hof, now a rest centre for 101st Airborne Division officers.

‘Hello, Siggi!’ the lieutenant called when they reached the sergeant. There was a brief exchange. Siggi, a master sergeant, was a tiny man: he stood on the running board to talk to Busby. Then he got in his jeep and led the procession.

It was still a distance to go to the Obersalzberg. They were climbing now. The road was steep and twisting, with hairpins. The trucks needed low gear and growled at the dark hillsides, and the snowclad trees growled back.

They passed the roofed gate and sentry box that had once barred the way to the ‘Führer District’; now it was damaged and empty. When they reached some old farm buildings, they slowed down. Then the jeep ahead went bouncing through an open gate and across the cobbled yard. Siggi, arm outstretched from the moving jeep, pointed to show them the trail. It was a long time since the two fugitives had gone across the farm, but their footprints were still visible in the snow.

When the jeep got to the second yard, on the far side of the deserted farm, the convoy halted. There was no road beyond this that the trucks could possibly follow. From here the ground rose sharply, first to thickly forested slopes, and beyond that to where the snowy Hohe Göll and Hohe Brett looked gigantic and threaten ing in the bright moonlight.

The lieutenant jumped out, slung his carbine over his shoulder, and, with the help of his top sergeant, positioned his platoon along the cart track that marked the edge of the high summer pasture. When they were in a long line at the bottom of the slope, he advanced them uphill slowly until they were out of sight. The men had parkas, and the bitter cold made them pull the hoods over their heads and tie the laces tight. They stood under the trees, stamping and thumping their arms against their bodies in an effort to stay warm. More than one of them took a swig from a flask.

Captain Samson took off his overcoat and put it on the back seat of the jeep. Then he strapped his webbing belt, shoulder strap and pistol back on over his battle dress.

‘Good luck, sir,’ said Busby as Rensselaer and Samson started trudging up the steep path.

Over his shoulder Rensselaer said, ‘Just make sure you don’t shoot my ass off, Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Busby, and saluted. His breath came as white smoke on the cold night air.

The path was slippery and the ice cracked underfoot, and lots of snow fell from the trees, so that it seemed as if it had begun to snow again. After about fifteen minutes they were into the dark, thickly forested mountainside. It was not snowy underfoot here; the trees closed overhead.

When they reached a firebreak, Rensselaer stopped to admire the view. Looking back, with the mountainside bathed in moonlight, they could see the whole ‘Führergebiet’: the Hitler Berghof, Bormann’s house characteristically close to his master, Göring’s flamboyant hunting lodge, the austere Party Guest House, and the huge SS barracks blocks surrounding the parade ground. All roofless ruins now, in a c ratered landscape. The snowfall emphasized the destruction.

To the northwest the lights of Berchtesgaden were as clear as the clustered stars. Behind the little town rose the mighty Lattengebirge. There were mountains on every side. It was the view Hitler had had from the terrace of his Berghof. Why did Germans love to hide themselves in such mountain scenery? thought Samson. Was it something to do with their fundamental paranoia?

‘What a view, Brian,’ said Rensselaer, although they both knew that in reality the elder man needed a break to catch his breath. ‘You were smart to leave your overcoat behind.’

Samson nodded.

When they started again, the path was even steeper. Without the snow, it was no longer possible to see the footprints of the two brothers, but even in the depths of winter the underbrush was thick enough to see that no one had recently ventured far off the narrow track.

They stopped again, and this time Rensselaer made no attempt to hide his breathlessness. He unbuttoned his short overcoat and leaned against a tree. ‘If you know what this is all about, Brian, this might be the time to tell me.’

Brian Samson looked at him as if trying to decide what to say. Then he said, ‘I don’t know Paul Winter personally – I only met him briefly a long time ago – but from what I hear he’s never been able to face the real world. Now he’s facing punishment, so he’s running.’

‘You make him sound like a small child,’ said Rensselaer.

‘That’s what everyone tells me he is,’ said Samson.

‘You’re a hard man, Captain Samson,’ said Rensselaer. ‘I wouldn’t like to have you sit in judgement on me.’

‘I’m not sitting in judgement on anyone,’ said Samson. ‘But Winter is in my custody and I’m determined to bring him in.’

‘Everything by the book, eh?’ It wasn’t sarcastic: Rensselaer was trying to understand him.

‘You’re not suggesting that we turn him loose, General?’

‘No. But did you have to sound reveille for this three-ring circus?’

‘Nuremberg C.I.C. office is my official contact number. Lieutenant Busby is the duty-operations officer today.’

‘You could have phoned me, Samson. At my apartment. You have the number.’

‘I have your phone number, General Rensselaer, and I phoned you immediately after talking to the C.I.C.’

‘A pity it wasn’t before you phoned the C.I.C.’

‘That’s not reasonable, General. You know as well as I do that Paul Winter was under surveillance. And that surveillance was ordered by an American officer: Colonel Bill Callaghan. It wasn’t anything that was requested by my superiors, or by me.’

‘How did you come to know that, Captain?’

‘I made it my business to find out, General Rensselaer. When someone interferes with the processing of a prisoner in my custody, I like to know what it’s all about.’

Glenn Rensselaer nodded. This Englishman was an abrasive guy. No wonder Peter had never been able to hit it off with him. But he was right, of course. He knew his facts; that was why it was so miserable to argue with him. It was like trying to talk back to a speak-your-weight machine. ‘I guess you’re right, Captain. I shouldn’t have brought it up.’ He looked up the path and said, ‘Okay. Let’s go, then. The sooner we find out the answers to this mystery, the better.’

The first thing they came to was a little log cabin, primitive accommodation used by the cow herds in the summer months, when the cattle go to graze on the higher slopes. It stood in the middle of a small clearing. At the side of the cabin, cut wood had been stacked in the astonishingly careful way it is always arranged in this part of Europe. The cut ends of the logs made a pattern of golden crescents.

There were a few stone steps and wrought-iron gates on a decorative brickwork porch. Over the porch was a beautifully carved log incised with the words ‘Haus Pauli’, and carved edelweiss flowers each side. Then, beyond the porch, higher up still, was the house that Harald Winter had given to his son. The windows were dark, but the shutters on one window had been opened, as if to let the moonlight in.

Samson drew his Webley service revolver and called, ‘Winter! Come out with your hands up.’

Nothing happened.

Then Rensselaer tried: ‘Pauli, it’s Glenn! Come on out. It’s going to be okay.’

Still nothing.

‘Maybe they can’t hear. The windows are closed.’ Rensselaer walked to the door of the house. It was unlocked. He opened it, but Samson pushed past him and went in, gun ready. It was dark inside. He went through the lobby to the big sitting room. The light through the window showed that the place was empty. Curtains, carpets, books, pictures and furniture had all been stolen by the sort of thieves who call themselves souvenir hunters. Even a gilded lamp bracket had been torn out of the plaster, broken and left dangling.

They went upstairs. It was the same throughout the house. Only one bedroom had been recently occupied. In it was an iron bed, some used bedding, two wooden chairs and a dented metal steamer trunk in the corner. The trunk was dirty and looked as if it had been dug out of the hard, frozen ground. They went across to it, and Rensselaer shone his flashlight inside. It was empty except for an old brass padlock with a key still in it.

‘They collected something,’ said Samson.

‘It looks that way.’ Glenn Rensselaer opened the closet door. There were clothes hanging there: a grey suit and some working trousers. There were women’s clothes, too, black dresses and a petticoat that would fit someone of Inge’s shape and size.

‘They must be Reichsminister Esser’s clothes,’ said Captain Samson. ‘He was arrested in this house.’

‘It’s Pauli Winter’s house,’ said Glenn Rensselaer.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Captain Samson.

‘You know everything, don’t you?’ said Glenn Rensselaer.

‘About Paul Winter? Yes, I do.’

‘Then maybe you could tell me where his wife, Inge, is.’

‘Garmisch: the White Horse Inn.’

‘The what?’

‘It’s an expensive nightclub for black-marketeers and other lowlife. They feature a dance band. She sings there.’

‘Sings! Inge Winter? Jesus, she’s a middle-aged woman.’

‘There’s no law against old ladies’ singing,’ said Samson.

Rensselaer said nothing for fear of showing his anger. He resented Captain Samson’s manner, just as he resented Lieutenant Busby’s impertinence. It had become a young man’s world: courtesy had gone.

After another quick look round the house, the two men came outside, looking for footprints. They found them too late.

The sound of the shooting was loud in the bright, still night. Samson recognized it: a Browning automatic rifle; they made a distinctive noise.

‘Oh my God!’ said Rensselaer. He was a tired old man, but his anxiety made him go hurrying back down the treacherous path, sliding sometimes as he missed his footing.

Captain Samson didn’t hurry. Whatever had happened would be waiting for him when he got there. Right from the start he’d had the feeling that Lieutenant Busby’s men were too damned jumpy.

The two bodies were close together, sprawled in the snow at that place on the mountainside where the trees opened up and gave way to the snow-covered open grass of the upper pastures. One of the men – the blond one – had bled to form a large patch of coloured snow that had melted and quickly refrozen, so that it shone with a smooth, glossy surface. Neither man was armed. Peter was wearing a pale-khaki trenchcoat; it wasn’t easy to distinguish him as an officer in uniform. The coat was unbuttoned and had opened to its full shape, like wings.

Pauli was wearing an old blue overcoat, the same one he’d been wearing for years. It was an expensive loden that Inge had chosen at a time when she chose just about everything.

Pauli was huddled on his side; his arms had twisted under him as he fell. His knees were drawn up in the foetal position, the muscles constricted in the way that so often comes with the final moments of such deaths. Peter, immediately behind him, was spread-eagled, face down. To General Glenn Rensselaer it seemed as if Peter’s arm was reaching out towards his younger brother’s shoulder.

The Eagle Has Flown

For my mother
Henrietta Higgins Bell

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

London Belfast 1975

1

Berlin Lisbon London 1943

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Belfast 1975

16

FOREWORD

For years fans of my work in thousands of letters begged me to write a sequel to The Eagle Has Landed because of the enduring popularity of that book and particularly because of the enormous affection they all seem to have for Liam Devlin, the rogue Irishman in the IRA who was involved in the Churchill plot. Of course the real problem was that Steiner, the gallant German paratroop Colonel, had been shot dead at the end of the original story. I was visiting the Tower of London by chance and was shown where Rudolf Hess had been held prisoner, and I was surprised to learn that other German prisoners had been held there. All I knew at that point was that I would like to write about a prisoner in the Tower, but who would he be? The answer was like a bolt from the blue. Steiner hadn’t died. He had survived surgery, was imprisoned in the Tower, and they wanted him back in Berlin. And who better to take on the job than Liam Devlin. The fact that this would be my fiftieth novel made it a special occasion, and so the Eagle flew again.

Jack Higgins

June 1996

PREFACE

At one o’clock in the morning of Saturday, November 6, 1943, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS and Chief of State Police received a simple message: The Eagle has Landed. It meant that a small force of German paratroopers under the command of Oberstleutnant Kurt Steiner, aided by IRA gunman, Liam Devlin, were at that moment safely in England and poised to snatch the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, from the Norfolk country house where he was spending a quiet weekend near the sea. By the end of the day, thanks to a bloody confrontation in the village of Studley Constable between American Rangers and the Germans, the mission was a failure, Liam Devlin apparently the only survivor. As for Kurt Steiner …

LONDON
•
BELFAST

1975

1

There was an Angel of Death on top of an ornate mausoleum in one corner, arms extended. I remember that well because someone was practising the organ and light drifted across the churchyard in coloured bands through stained-glass windows. The church wasn’t particularly old, built on a high tide of Victorian prosperity like the tall houses surrounding it. St Martin’s Square. A good address once. Now, just a shabby backwater in Belsize Park, but a nice, quiet area where a woman alone might walk down to the corner shop at midnight in safety and people minded their own business.

The flat at number thirteen was on the ground floor. My agent had borrowed it for me from a cousin who had gone to New York for six months. It was old-fashioned and comfortable and suited me fine. I was on the downhill slope of a new novel and needed to visit the Reading Room at the British Museum most days.

But that November evening, the evening it all started, it was raining heavily and just after six I passed through the iron gates and followed the path through the forest of Gothic monuments and gravestones. In spite of my umbrella the shoulders of my trenchcoat were soaked, not that it bothered me. I’ve always liked the rain, the city at night, wet streets stretching into winter darkness, a peculiar feeling of freedom that it contains. And things had gone well that day with the work, the end was very definitely in sight.

The Angel of Death was closer now, shadowed in the half-light from the church, the two marble attendants on guard at the mausoleum’s bronze doors, everything as usual except that tonight, I could have sworn that there was a third figure and that it moved out of the darkness towards me.

For a moment I knew genuine fear and then, as it came into the light, I saw a young woman, quite small and wearing a black beret and soaked raincoat. She had a briefcase in one hand. The face was pale, the eyes dark and somehow anxious.

‘Mr Higgins? You are Jack Higgins, aren’t you?’

She was American, that much was obvious. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. ‘That’s right. What can I do for you?’

‘I must talk to you, Mr Higgins. Is there somewhere we could go?’

I hesitated, reluctant for all sorts of obvious reasons to take this any further and yet there was something quite out of the ordinary about her. Something not to be resisted.

I said, ‘My flat’s just over the square there.’

‘I know,’ she said. I still hesitated and she added, ‘You won’t regret it, believe me. I’ve information of vital importance to you.’

‘About what?’ I asked.

‘What really happened afterwards at Studley Constable. Oh, lots of things you don’t know.’

Which was enough. I took her arm and said, ‘Right, let’s get in out of this damn rain before you catch your death and you can tell me what the hell this is all about.’

The house interior had changed very little, certainly not in my flat where the tenant had stayed with a late Victorian decor, lots of mahogany furniture, red velvet curtains at the bow window and a sort of Chinese wallpaper in gold and green, heavily patterned with birds. Except for the central heating radiators, the only other concession to modern living was the kind of gas fire which made it seem as if logs burned brightly in a stainless steel basket.

‘That’s nice,’ she said and turned to face me, even smaller than I had thought. She held out her right hand awkwardly, still clutching the briefcase in the other. ‘Cohen,’ she said. ‘Ruth Cohen.’

I said, ‘Let’s have that coat. I’ll put it in front of one of the radiators.’

‘Thank you.’ She fumbled at her belt with one hand and I laughed and took the briefcase from her.

‘Here, let me.’ As I put it down on the table I saw that her initials were etched on the flap in black. The only difference was that it said Ph.D. at the end of it.

‘Ph.D.?’ I said.

She smiled slightly as she struggled out of the coat. ‘Harvard, modern history.’

‘That’s interesting,’ I said. ‘I’ll make some tea, or would you prefer coffee?’

She smiled again. ‘Six months’ post doc at London University, Mr Higgins. I’d very definitely prefer your tea.’

I went through to the kitchen and put on the kettle and made a tray ready. I lit a cigarette as I waited and turned to find her leaning on the doorway, arms folded.

‘Your thesis,’ I said. ‘For your doctorate. What was the subject?’

‘Certain aspects of the Third Reich in the Second World War.’

‘Interesting. Cohen – are you Jewish?’ I turned to make the tea.

‘My father was a German Jew. He survived Auschwitz and made it to the US, but died the year after I was born.’

I could think of no more than the usual inadequate response. ‘I’m sorry.’

She stared at me blankly for a moment, then turned and went back to the sitting room. I followed with the tray, placed it on a small coffee table by the fire and we sat opposite each other in wingback chairs.

‘Which explains your interest in the Third Reich,’ I said as I poured the tea.

She frowned and took the cup of tea I handed her. ‘I’m just an historian. No axe to grind. My particular obsession is with the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence. Why they were so good and why they were so bad at the same time.’

‘Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and his merry men?’ I shrugged. ‘I’d say his heart was never in it, but as the SS hanged him at Flossenburg concentration camp in April forty-five, we’ll never know.’

‘Which brings me to you,’ she said. ‘And your book The Eagle Has Landed.’

‘A novel, Dr Cohen,’ I said. ‘Pure speculation.’

‘At least fifty per cent of which is documented historical fact, you claim that yourself at the beginning of the book.’

She leaned forward, hands clenched on her knees, a kind of fierceness there. I said softly, ‘All right, so what exactly are you getting at?’

‘Remember how you found out about the affair in the first place?’ she said. ‘The thing that started you off?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The monument to Steiner and his men the villagers of Studley Constable had hidden under the tombstone in the churchyard.’

‘Remember what it said?’

‘Hier ruhen Oberstleutnant Kurt Steiner und 13 Deutsche Fallschirmjäger gefallen am 6 November 1943.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Here lies Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Steiner and thirteen German paratroopers killed in action on sixth November, nineteen forty-three.’

‘So what’s your point?’

‘Thirteen plus one makes fourteen, only there aren’t fourteen bodies in that grave. There are only thirteen.’

I stared at her incredulously. ‘How in the hell do you make that out?’

‘Because Kurt Steiner didn’t die that night on the terrace at Meltham House, Mr Higgins.’ She reached for the briefcase, had it open in a second and produced a brown manilla folder. ‘And I have the proof right here.’

Which very definitely called for Bushmills whiskey. I poured one and said, ‘All right, do I get to see it?’

‘Of course, that’s why I’m here, but first let me explain. Any study of Abwehr intelligence affairs during the Second World War constantly refers to the work of SOE, the Special Operations Executive set up by British Intelligence in 1940 on Churchill’s instructions to coordinate resistance and the underground movement in Europe.’

‘Set Europe ablaze, that’s what the old man ordered,’ I said.

‘I was fascinated to discover that a number of Americans worked for SOE before America came into the war. I thought there might be a book in it. I arranged to come over here to do the research and a name that came up again and again was Munro – Brigadier Dougal Munro. Before the war he was an archaeologist at Oxford. At SOE he was head of Section D. What was commonly known as the dirty tricks department.’

‘I had heard of him,’ I said.

‘I did most of my research at the Public Records Office. As you know, few files dealing with intelligence matters are immediately available. Some are on a twenty-five-year hold, some fifty …’

‘And exceptionally sensitive material, a hundred years,’ I said.

‘That’s what I have here.’ She held up the folder. ‘A hundred-year-hold file concerning Dougal Munro, Kurt Steiner, Liam Devlin and others. Quite a story, believe me.’

She passed it across and I held it on my knees without opening it. ‘How on earth did you come by this?’

‘I checked out some files concerning Munro yesterday. There was a young clerk on duty on his own. Got careless, I guess. I found the file sandwiched in between two others, sealed, of course. You have to do your research on the premises at the Records Office, but since it wasn’t on the booking-out form, I slipped it into my briefcase.’

‘A criminal offence under the Defence of the Realm Act,’ I told her.

‘I know. I opened the seals as carefully as I could and read the file. It’s only a thirty-page résumé of certain events – certain astonishing events.’

‘And then?’

‘I photocopied it.’

‘The wonders of modern technology allow them to tell when that’s been done.’

‘I know. Anyway, I resealed the file and took it back this morning.’

‘And how did you manage to return it?’ I asked.

‘Checked out the same file yesterday. Took the Munro file back to the desk and told the duty clerk there’d been an error.’

‘Did he believe you?’

‘I suppose so. I mean, why wouldn’t he?’

‘The same clerk?’

‘No – an older man.’

I sat there thinking about it, feeling decidedly uneasy. Finally I said, ‘Why don’t you make us some fresh tea while I have a go at this?’

‘All right.’

She took the tray and went out. I hesitated, then opened the file and started to read.

I wasn’t even aware that she was there, so gripped was I by the events recorded in that file. When I was finished, I closed it and looked up. She was back in the other chair watching me, a curiously intent look on her face.

I said, ‘I can understand the hundred-year hold. The powers that be wouldn’t want this to come out, not even now.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Can I hang on to it for a while?’

She hesitated, then nodded. ‘Till tomorrow if you like. I’m going back to the States on the evening flight. Pan Am.’

‘A sudden decision?’

She went and got her raincoat. ‘That’s right. I’ve decided I’d rather be back in my own country.’

‘Worried?’ I asked.

‘I’m probably being hypersensitive, but sure. I’ll pick the file up tomorrow afternoon. Say three o’clock on my way to Heathrow?’

‘Fine.’ I put the file down on top of my coffee table.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour, seven thirty, as I walked her to the door. I opened it and we stood for a moment, rain driving down hard.

‘Of course there is someone who could confirm the truth of that file,’ she said. ‘Liam Devlin. You said in your book he was still around, operating with the Provisional IRA in Ireland.’

‘Last I heard,’ I said. ‘Sixty-seven he’ll be now, but lively with it.’

‘Well, then.’ She smiled again. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’

She went down the steps and walked away through the rain, vanishing in the early evening mist at the end of the street.

I sat by the fire and read the file twice, then I went back into the kitchen, made myself some more tea and a chicken sandwich and sat at the table, eating the sandwich and thinking about things.

Extraordinary how events coming right out of the blue can change things. It had happened to me once before, the discovery of that hidden memorial to Steiner and his men in the churchyard at Studley Constable. I’d been researching an article for an historical magazine. Instead, I’d found something unlooked for that had changed the course of my entire life. Produced a book which had gone round the world from New York to Moscow, made me rich. Now this – Ruth Cohen and her stolen file, and I was filled with the same strange, tingling excitement.

I needed to come down. Get things in perspective. So, I went to have a shower, took my time over it, shaved and dressed again. It was only eight-thirty and it didn’t seem likely that I’d go to bed early, if I went at all.

I didn’t have any more whiskey as I needed to think, so I made even more tea and settled on the chair again by the fire, lit a cigarette and started to work my way through the file again.

The doorbell rang, shaking me from my reverie. I glanced at the clock. It was just before nine. The bell rang again insistently and I replaced the file in the folder, put it on the coffee table and went out into the hall. It occurred to me that it might be Ruth Cohen again, but I couldn’t have been more wrong, for when I opened the door I found a young police constable standing there, his navy-blue mac wet with rain.

‘Mr Higgins?’ He looked at a piece of paper in his left hand. ‘Mr Jack Higgins?’

Strange the certainty of bad news so that we don’t even need to be told. ‘Yes,’ I said.

He stepped into the hall. ‘Sorry to trouble you, sir, but I’m making an enquiry relevant to a Miss Ruth Cohen. Would you be a friend of hers, sir?’

‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘I’m afraid the young lady’s dead, sir. Hit-and-run accident at the back of the British Museum an hour ago.’

‘My God!’ I whispered.

‘The thing is sir, we found your name and address on a card in her handbag.’

It was so difficult to take in. She’d stood there at the door where he was such a short time before. He was no more than twenty-one or -two. Still young enough to feel concern and he put a hand on my arm.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

I said, ‘Rather shocked, that’s all.’ I took a deep breath. ‘What is it you want of me?’

‘It seems the young lady was at London University. We’ve checked the student accommodation she was using. No one there with it being the weekend. It’s a question of official identification. For the Coroner’s Office.’

‘And you’d like me to do it?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir. It’s not far. She’s at Kensington Mortuary.’

I took another deep breath to steady myself. ‘All right. Just let me get my raincoat.’

The mortuary was a depressing-looking building in a side street, more like a warehouse than anything else. When we went into the foyer, there was a uniformed porter on duty at the desk and a small dark man in his early fifties standing at the window looking out at the rain, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He wore a trilby hat and trenchcoat.

He turned to meet me, hands in pockets. ‘Mr Higgins, is it?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He didn’t take his hands out of his pockets and coughed, ash falling from the tip of his cigarette on to his coat. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Fox. An unfortunate business, sir.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘This young lady, Ruth Cohen, was she a friend of yours?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I only met her for the first time earlier this evening.’

‘Your name and address were in her handbag.’ Before I could reply he carried on, ‘Anyway, best to get it over with. If you’d come this way.’

The room they took me into was walled with white tiles and bright with fluorescent lighting. There was a line of operating tables. The body was on the end one covered with a white rubber sheet. Ruth Cohen looked very calm, eyes closed, but her head was enclosed in a rubber hood and blood seeped through.

‘Would you formally identify the deceased as Ruth Cohen, sir?’ the constable asked.

I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s her,’ and he replaced the sheet.

When I turned Fox was sitting on the end of the table in the corner, lighting another cigarette. ‘As I said, we found your name in her handbag.’

It was then, as if something had gone click in my head, that I came back to reality. Hit and run – a serious offence, but when had it merited the attention of a Detective Chief Superintendent? And wasn’t there something about Fox with his saturnine face and dark, watchful eyes? This was no ordinary policeman. I smelled Special Branch.

It always pays to stick as closely to the truth as possible, I found that out a long time ago. I said, ‘She told me she was over from Boston, working at London University, researching a book.’

‘About what, sir?’

Which confirmed my suspicions instantly. ‘Something to do with the Second World War, Superintendent, which happens to be an area I’ve written about myself.’

‘I see. She was looking for help, advice, that sort of thing?’

Which was when I lied totally. ‘Not at all. Hardly needed it. A Ph.D., I believe. The fact is, Superintendent, I wrote a rather successful book set during the Second World War. She simply wanted to meet me. As I understood it she was flying back to the States tomorrow.’

The contents of her handbag and briefcase were on the table beside him, the Pan Am ticket conspicuous. He picked it up. ‘So it would appear.’

‘Can I go now?’

‘Of course. The constable will run you home.’

We went out into the foyer and paused at the door. He coughed as he lit another cigarette. ‘Damn rain. I suppose the driver of that car skidded. An accident really, but then he shouldn’t have driven away. We can’t have that, can we?’

‘Good night, Superintendent,’ I told him and went down the steps to the police car.

I’d left the light on in the hall. When I went in, I carried on into the kitchen without taking my coat off, put the kettle on and then went into the living room. I poured a Bushmills into a glass and turned towards the fire. It was then that I saw that the folder I’d left on the coffee table was gone. For a wild moment I thought I’d made a mistake, had put it elsewhere, but that was nonsense of course.

I put the glass of whiskey down and lit a cigarette, thinking about it. The mysterious Fox – I was more certain than ever that he was Special Branch now – that wretched young woman lying there in the mortuary, and I remembered my unease when she’d told me how she had returned that file at the Records Office. I thought of her walking along the pavement and crossing that street in the rain at the back of the British Museum and then the car. A wet night and a skidding car, as Fox had said. It could have been an accident, but I knew that was hardly likely, not with the file missing. Which raised the problem of my own continued existence.

Time to move on for a while, but where? And then I remembered what she had said. There was one person still left who could confirm the story in that file. I packed an overnight bag and went and checked the street through a chink in the curtain. Cars parked everywhere so it was impossible to see if I was being watched.

I left by the kitchen door at the rear of the house, walked cautiously up the back alley and quickly worked my way through a maze of quiet back streets thinking about it. It had to be a security matter, of course. Some anonymous little department at DI5 that took care of people who got out of line, but would that necessarily mean they’d have a go at me? After all, the girl was dead, the file back in the Records Office, the only copy recovered. What could I say that could be proved or in any way believed? On the other hand, I had to prove it to my own satisfaction and I hailed a cab on the next corner.

The Green Man in Kilburn, an area of London popular with the Irish, featured an impressive painting of an Irish tinker over the door which indicated the kind of custom the place enjoyed. The bar was full, I could see that through the saloon window and I went round to the yard at the rear. The curtains were drawn and Sean Riley sat at a crowded desk doing his accounts. He was a small man with cropped white hair, active for his age, which I knew was seventy-two. He owned the Green Man, but more importantly, was an organizer for Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, in London. I knocked at the window, he got up and moved to peer out. He turned and moved away. A moment later the door opened.

‘Mr Higgins. What brings you here?’

‘I won’t come in, Sean. I’m on my way to Heathrow.’

‘Is that a fact. A holiday in the sun, is it?’

‘Not exactly. Belfast. I’ll probably miss the last shuttle, but I’ll be on the breakfast plane. Get word to Liam Devlin. Tell him I’ll be staying at the Europa Hotel and I must see him.’

‘Jesus, Mr Higgins, and how would I be knowing such a desperate fella as that?’

Through the door I could hear the music from the bar. They were singing ‘Guns of the IRA’. ‘Don’t argue, Sean, just do it,’ I said. ‘It’s important.’

I knew he would, of course, and turned away without another word. A couple of minutes later I hailed a cab and was on my way to Heathrow.

The Europa Hotel in Belfast was legendary amongst newspaper men from all over the world. It had survived numerous bombing attacks by the IRA and stood in Great Victoria Street next to the railway station. I stayed in my room on the eighth floor for most of the day, just waiting. Things seemed quiet enough, but it was an uneasy calm and in the late afternoon, there was a crump of a bomb and when I looked out of the window I saw a black pall of smoke in the distance.

Just after six, with darkness falling, I decided to go down to the bar for a drink, was pulling on my jacket when the phone went. A voice said, ‘Mr Higgins? Reception here, sir. Your taxi’s waiting.’

It was a black cab, the London variety, and the driver was a middle-aged woman, a pleasant-faced lady who looked like your favourite aunty. I pulled back the glass panel between us and gave her the ritual Belfast greeting.

‘Good night to you.’

‘And you.’

‘Not often I see a lady cab driver, not in London anyway.’

‘A terrible place that. What would you expect? You sit quiet now like a good gentleman and enjoy the trip.’

She closed the panel with one hand. The journey took no more than ten minutes. We passed along the Falls Road, a Catholic area I remembered well from boyhood and turned into a warren of mean side streets, finally stopping outside a church. She opened the glass panel.

‘The first confessional box on the right as you go in.’

‘If you say so.’

I got out and she drove away instantly. The board said ‘Church of the Holy Name’ and it was in surprisingly good condition, the times of Mass and confession listed in gold paint. I opened the door at the top of the steps and went in. It was not too large and dimly lit, candles flickering down at the altar, the Virgin in a chapel to one side. Instinctively, I dipped my fingers in the holy water and crossed myself, remembering the Catholic aunt in South Armagh who’d raised me for a while as a child and had anguished over my black little Protestant soul.

The confessional boxes stood to one side. No one waited, which was hardly surprising, for according to the board outside I was an hour early. I went in the first on the right and closed the door. I sat there in the darkness for a moment and then the grill slid open.

‘Yes?’ a voice asked softly.

I answered automatically. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘You certainly have, my old son.’ The light was switched on in the other box and Liam Devlin smiled through at me.

He looked remarkably well. In fact, rather better than he’d seemed the last time I’d seen him. Sixty-seven, but as I’d said to Ruth Cohen, lively with it. A small man with enormous vitality, hair as black as ever, and vivid blue eyes. There was the scar of an old bullet wound on the left side of his forehead and a slight, ironic smile was permanently in place. He wore a priest’s cassock and clerical collar and seemed perfectly at home in the sacristy at the back of the church to which he’d taken me.

‘You’re looking well, son. All that success and money.’ He grinned. ‘We’ll drink to it. There’s a bottle here surely.’

He opened a cupboard and found a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses. ‘And what would the usual occupant think of all this?’ I asked.

‘Father Murphy?’ He splashed whiskey into the glasses. ‘Heart of corn, that one. Out doing good, as usual.’

‘He looks the other way, then?’

‘Something like that.’ He raised his glass. ‘To you, my old son.’

‘And you, Liam.’ I toasted him back. ‘You never cease to amaze me. On the British Army’s most wanted list for the last five years and you still have the nerve to sit here in the middle of Belfast.’

‘Ah, well, a man has to have some fun.’ He took a cigarette from a silver case and offered me one. ‘Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’

‘Does the name Dougal Munro mean anything to you?’

His eyes widened in astonishment. ‘What in the hell have you come up with now? I haven’t heard that old bastard’s name mentioned in years.’

‘Or Schellenberg?’

‘Walter Schellenberg? There was a man for you. General at thirty. Schellenberg – Munro? What is this?’

‘And Kurt Steiner?’ I said, ‘Who, according to everyone, including you, died trying to shoot the fake Churchill on the terrace at Meltham House.’

Devlin swallowed some of his whiskey and smiled amiably. ‘I was always the terrible liar. Now tell me what is this all about?’

So, I told him about Ruth Cohen, the file and its contents, everything, and he listened intently without interrupting.

When I was finished, he said, ‘Convenient, the girl’s death, you were right about that.’

‘Which doesn’t look too good for me.’

There was an explosion not too far away and as he got up and opened the door to the rear yard, the rattle of small arms fire.

‘It sounds like a lively night,’ I said.

‘Oh, it will be. Safer off the streets at the moment.’

He closed the door and turned to face me. I said, ‘The facts in that file. Were they true?’

‘A good story.’

‘In outline.’

‘Which means you’d like to hear the rest?’

‘I need to hear it.’

‘Why not.’ He smiled, sat down at the table again and reached for the Bushmills. ‘Sure and it’ll keep me out of mischief for a while. Now, where would you like me to begin?’

Berlin
•
Lisbon
•
London

1943

2

Brigadier Dougal Munro’s flat in Haston Place was only ten minutes’ walk from the London headquarters of SOE in Baker Street. As head of Section D, he needed to be on call twenty-four hours a day and besides the normal phone had a secure line routed directly to his office. It was that particular phone he answered on that late November evening as he sat by the fire working on some files.

‘Carter here, Brigadier. Just back from Norfolk.’

‘Good,’ Munro told him. ‘Call in on your way home and tell me about it.’

He put the phone down and went and got himself a malt whisky, a squat, powerful-looking man with white hair who wore steel-rimmed spectacles. Strictly a non-professional, his rank of brigadier was simply for purposes of authority in certain quarters and at sixty-five, an age when most men faced retirement, even at Oxford, the war had been the saving of him, that was the blunt truth. He was thinking about that when the doorbell rang and he admitted Captain Jack Carter.

‘You look frozen, Jack. Help yourself to a drink.’

Jack Carter leaned his walking stick against a chair and shrugged off his greatcoat. He was in the uniform of a captain in the Green Howards, the ribbon of the Military Cross on his battledress. His false leg was a legacy of Dunkirk and he limped noticeably as he went to the drinks cupboard and poured a whisky.

‘So, what’s the situation at Studley Constable?’ Munro asked.

‘Back to normal, sir. All the German paratroopers buried in a common grave in the churchyard.’

‘No marker of course?’

‘Not at the moment, but they’re a funny lot, those villagers. They actually seem to think quite highly of Steiner.’

‘Yes, well, one of his sergeants was killed saving the lives of two village children who fell into the mill race, remember. In fact, that single action was the one thing that blew their cover, caused the failure of the entire operation.’

‘And he did let the villagers go before the worst of the fighting started,’ Carter said.

‘Exactly. Have you got the file on him?’

Carter got his briefcase and extracted a couple of sheets stapled together. Munro examined it. ‘Oberstleutnant Kurt Steiner, age twenty-seven. Remarkable record. Crete, North Africa, Stalingrad. Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves.’

‘I’m always intrigued by his mother, sir. Boston socialite. What they call “Boston Brahmin”.’

‘All very fine, Jack, but don’t forget his father was a German general and a damn good one. Now, what about Steiner? How is he?’

‘There seems no reason to doubt a complete recovery. There’s an RAF hospital for bomber crews with burns problems just outside Norwich. Rather small. Used to be a nursing home. We have Steiner there under secure guard. The cover story is that he’s a downed Luftwaffe pilot. Rather convenient that German paratroopers and Luftwaffe aircrews wear roughly the same uniform.’

‘And his wounds?’

‘He was damn lucky there, sir. One round hit him in the right shoulder, at the rear. The second was a heart shot, but it turned on the breastbone. The surgeon doesn’t think it will take long, especially as he’s in remarkable physical shape.’

Munro went and got another small whisky. ‘Let’s go over what we know, Jack. The whole business, the plot to kidnap Churchill, the planning. Everything was done without Admiral Canaris’s knowledge?’

‘Apparently so, sir, all Himmler’s doing. He pressured Max Radl at Abwehr headquarters to plan it all behind the Admiral’s back. At least that’s what our sources in Berlin tell us.’

‘He knows all about it now, though?’ Munro said. ‘The Admiral I mean?’

‘Apparently, sir, and not best pleased, not that there’s anything he can do about it. Can’t exactly go running to the Führer.’

‘And neither can Himmler,’ Munro said. ‘Not when the whole project was mounted without the Führer’s knowledge.’

‘Of course Himmler did give Max Radl a letter of authorization signed by Hitler himself,’ Carter said.

‘Purporting to be signed by Hitler, Jack. I bet that was the first thing to go into the fire. No, Himmler won’t want to advertise this one.’

‘And we don’t exactly want it on the front of the Daily Express, sir. German paratroopers trying to grab the Prime Minister, battling it out with American Rangers in an English country village?’

‘Yes, it wouldn’t exactly help the war effort.’ Munro looked at the file again. ‘This IRA chap, Devlin. Quite a character. You say that your information is that he was wounded?’

‘That’s right, sir. He was in hospital in Holland and simply took off one night. We understand he’s in Lisbon.’

‘Probably hoping to make it to the States in some way. Are we keeping an eye on him? Who’s the SOE’s man in Lisbon?’

‘Major Arthur Frear, sir. Military attaché at the Embassy. He’s been notified,’ Carter told him.

‘Good.’ Munro nodded.

‘So what do we do about Steiner, sir?’

Munro frowned, thinking about it. ‘The moment he’s fit enough, bring him up to London. Do we still house German prisoners of war in the Tower?’

‘Only occasionally, sir, transients passing through the small hospital. Not like the early days of the war when most of the captured U-boat people were housed there.’

‘And Hess.’

‘A special case, sir?’

‘All right. We’ll have Steiner at the Tower. He can stay in the hospital till we decide on a safe house. Anything else?’

‘One development, sir. Steiner’s father was involved, as you know, in a series of army plots aimed at assassinating Hitler. The punishment is statutory. Hanging by piano wire and by the Führer’s orders the whole thing is recorded on film.’

‘How unpleasant,’ Munro said.

‘The thing is, sir, we’ve received a film of General Steiner’s death. One of our Berlin sources got it out via Sweden. I don’t know if you’ll want to see it. It’s not very nice.’

Munro was angry, got up and paced the room. He paused suddenly, a slight smile on his mouth. ‘Tell me, Jack, is that little toad Vargas still at the Spanish Embassy?’

‘José Vargas, sir, trade attaché. We haven’t used him in a while.’

‘But German Intelligence are convinced he’s on their side?’

‘The only side Vargas is on is the one with the biggest bank book, sir. Works through his cousin at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin.’

‘Excellent.’ Munro was smiling now. ‘Tell him to pass the word to Berlin that we have Kurt Steiner. Tell him to say in the Tower of London. Sounds very dramatic. Most important, he makes sure that both Canaris and Himmler get the information. That should get them stirred up.’

‘What on earth are you playing at, sir?’ Carter asked.

‘War, Jack, war. Now have another drink, then get yourself off home to bed. You’re going to have a full day tomorrow.’

Near Paderborn in Westphalia in the small town of Wewelsburg was the castle of that name which Heinrich Himmler had taken over from the local council in 1934. His original intention had been to convert it into a school for Reich SS leaders, but by the time the architects and builders had finished and many millions of marks had been spent, he had created a Gothic monstrosity worthy of stage six at MGM, a vast film set of the kind Hollywood was fond of when historical pictures were the vogue. The castle had three wings, towers, a moat and in the southern wing the Reichsführer had his own apartments and his especial pride, the enormous dining hall where selected members of the SS would meet in a kind of Court of Honour. The whole thing had been influenced by Himmler’s obsession with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, with a liberal dose of occultism thrown in.

Ten miles away on that December evening, Walter Schellenberg lit a cigarette in the back of the Mercedes which was speeding him towards the castle. He’d received the order to meet the Reichsführer in Berlin that afternoon. The reason had not been specified. He certainly didn’t take it as any evidence of preferment.

He’d been to Wewelsburg on several occasions, had even inspected the castle’s plans at SD headquarters, so knew it well. He also knew that the only men to sit round that table with the Reichsführer were cranks like Himmler himself who believed all the dark-age twaddle about Saxon superiority, or time-servers who had their own chairs with names inscribed on a silver plate. The fact that King Arthur had been Romano-British and engaged in a struggle against Saxon invaders made the whole thing even more nonsensical, but Schellenberg had long since ceased to be amused by the excesses of the Third Reich.

In deference to the demands of Wewelsburg, he wore the black dress uniform of the SS, the Iron Cross First Class pinned to the left side of his tunic.

‘What a world we live in,’ he said softly as the car took the road up to the castle, snow falling gently. ‘I sometimes really do wonder who is running the lunatic asylum.’

He smiled as he sat back, looking suddenly quite charming although the duelling scar on one cheek hinted at a more ruthless side to his nature. It was a relic of student days at the University of Bonn. In spite of a gift for languages, he’d started in the Faculty of Medicine, had then switched to law. But in Germany in 1933 times were hard, even for well-qualified young men just out of university.

The SS were recruiting gifted young scholars for their upper echelons. Like many others, Schellenberg had seen it as employment, not as a political ideal, and his rise had been astonishing. Because of his language ability, Heydrich himself had pulled him into the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS security service, known as the SD. His main responsibility had always been intelligence work, abroad, often a conflict with the Abwehr, although his personal relationship with Canaris was excellent. A series of brilliant intelligence coups had pushed him up the ladder rapidly. By the age of thirty, he was an SS Brigadeführer and Major General of Police.

The really astonishing thing was that Walter Schellenberg didn’t consider himself a Nazi, looked on the Third Reich as a sorry charade, its main protagonists actors of a very low order indeed. There were Jews who owed their survival to him, intended victims of the concentration camps rerouted to Sweden and safety. A dangerous game, a sop to his conscience, he told himself, and he had his enemies. He had survived for one reason only. Himmler needed his brains and his considerable talents and that was enough.

There was only a powdering of snow in the moat, no water. As the Mercedes crossed the bridge to the gate, he leaned back and said softly, ‘Too late to get off the roundabout now, Walter, far too late.’

Himmler received him in his private sitting room in the south wing. Schellenberg was escorted there by an SS sergeant in dress uniform and found Himmler’s personal aide, a Sturmbannführer named Rossman, sitting at a table outside the door, also in dress uniform.

‘Major.’ Schellenberg nodded.

Rossman dismissed the sergeant. ‘A pleasure to see you, General. He’s waiting. The mood isn’t good, by the way.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

Rossman opened the door and Schellenberg entered a large room with a vaulted ceiling and flagged floor. There were tapestries on the walls and lots of dark oak furniture. A log fire burned on a great stone hearth. The Reichsführer sat at an oak table working his way through a mound of papers. He was not in uniform, unusual for him, wore a tweed suit, white shirt and black tie. The silver pince-nez gave him the air of a rather unpleasant schoolmaster.

Unlike Heydrich who had always addressed Schellenberg by his Christian name, Himmler was invariably formal. ‘General Schellenberg.’ He looked up. ‘You got here.’

There was an implied rebuke and Schellenberg said, ‘I left Berlin the moment I received your message, Reichsführer. In what way can I serve you?’

‘Operation Eagle, the Churchill affair. I didn’t employ you on that business because you had other duties. However, by now you will be familiar with most of the details.’

‘Of course, Reichsführer.’

Himmler abruptly changed the subject. ‘Schellenberg, I am increasingly concerned at the treasonable activities of many members of the High Command. As you know, some wretched young major was blown up in his car outside the entrance to the Führer’s headquarters at Rastenburg last week. Obviously another attempt on our Führer’s life.’

‘I’m afraid so, Reichsführer.’

Himmler stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You and I, General, are bound by a common brotherhood, the SS. We are sworn to protect the Führer and yet are constantly threatened by this conspiracy of generals.’

‘There is no direct proof, Reichsführer,’ Schellenberg said, which was not strictly true.

Himmler said, ‘General von Stulpnagel, von Falk-enhausen, Stief, Wagner and others, even your good friend Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Schellenberg. Would that surprise you?’

Schellenberg tried to stay calm, envisaging the distinct possibility that he might be named next. ‘What can I say, Reichsführer?’

‘And Rommel, General, the Desert Fox himself. The people’s hero.’

‘My God!’ Schellenberg gasped, mainly because it seemed the right thing to do.

‘Proof.’ Himmler snorted. ‘I’ll have my proof before I’m done. They have a date with the hangman, all of them. But to other things.’ He returned to the table and sat. ‘Have you ever had any dealings with an agent named Vargas?’ He examined a paper in front of him. ‘José Vargas.’

‘I know of him. An Abwehr contact. A commercial attaché at the Spanish Embassy in London. As far as I know, he has only been used occasionally.’

‘He has a cousin who is also a commercial attaché at the Spanish Embassy here in Berlin. One Juan Rivera.’ Himmler glanced up. ‘Am I right?’

‘So I understand, Reichsführer. Vargas would use the Spanish diplomatic bag from London. Most messages would reach his cousin here in Berlin within thirty-six hours. Highly illegal, of course.’

‘And thank God for it,’ Himmler said. ‘This Operation Eagle affair. You say you are familiar with the details?’

‘I am, Reichsführer,’ Schellenberg said smoothly.

‘There is a problem here, General. Although the idea was suggested by the Führer, it was, how shall I put it, more a flight of fancy than anything else? One couldn’t rely on Canaris to do anything about it. I’m afraid that total victory for the Third Reich is low on his list of priorities. That is why I personally put the plan into operation, aided by Colonel Radl of the Abwehr, who’s had a heart attack, I understand, and is not expected to live.’

Schellenberg said cautiously, ‘So the Führer knows nothing of the affair?’

‘My dear Schellenberg, he carries the responsibility for the war, its every aspect, on his own shoulders. It is our duty to lighten that load as much as possible.’

‘Of course, Reichsführer.’

‘Operation Eagle, however brilliantly conceived, ended in failure, and who would wish to take failure into the Führer’s office and place it on his desk?’ Before Schellenberg could reply, he carried on. ‘Which brings me to this report which has reached me from Vargas in London via his cousin here in Berlin, the man Rivera.’

He handed across a signal flimsy and Schellenberg glanced at it. ‘Incredible!’ he said. ‘Kurt Steiner alive.’

‘And in the Tower of London.’ Himmler took the signal back.

‘They won’t keep him there for very long,’ Schellenberg said. ‘It may sound dramatic, but the Tower isn’t really suitable to house high-security prisoners long term. They’ll move him to some safe house just as they did with Hess.’

‘Have you any other opinion in the matter?’

‘Only that the British will keep quiet about the fact that he’s in their hands.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Operation Eagle almost succeeded.’

‘But Churchill wasn’t Churchill,’ Himmler reminded him. ‘Our Intelligence people discovered that.’

‘Of course, Reichsführer, but German paratroopers did land on English soil and fought a bloody battle. If the story was publicized, the effect on the British people at this stage of the war would be appalling. The very fact that it’s SOE and their Brigadier Munro who are handling the matter, is further proof.’

‘You know the man?’

‘Know of him only, Reichsführer. A highly capable intelligence officer.’

Himmler said, ‘My sources indicate that Rivera has also passed this news on to Canaris. How do you think he will react?’

‘I’ve no idea, Reichsführer.’

‘You can see him when you get back to Berlin. Find out. My opinion is that he will do nothing. He certainly won’t go running to the Führer.’ Himmler examined another sheet in front of him. ‘I’ll never understand men like Steiner. A war hero. Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, a brilliant soldier, and yet he ruined his career, risked failure, everything, for the sake of some little Jewish bitch he tried to help in Warsaw. It was only Operation Eagle that saved him and his men from the penal unit they were serving in.’ He put the sheet down. ‘The Irishman, of course, is a different matter.’

‘Devlin, Reichsführer?’

‘Yes, a thoroughly obnoxious man. You know what the Irish are like, Schellenberg? Everything a joke.’

‘I must say that from all reports he seems to know his business.’

‘I agree, but then he was only in it for the money. Someone was singularly careless to allow him to walk out of that hospital in Holland.’

‘I agree, Reichsführer.’

‘My reports indicate that he’s in Lisbon now,’ Himmler said. He pushed another sheet across. ‘You’ll find the details there. He’s trying to get to America, but no money. According to that, he’s been working as a barman.’

Schellenberg examined the signal quickly then said, ‘What would you like me to do on this matter, Reichsführer?’

‘You’ll return to Berlin tonight, fly to Lisbon tomorrow. Persuade this rogue Devlin to return with you. I shouldn’t think that would prove too difficult. Radl gave him twenty thousand pounds for taking part in Operation Eagle. It was paid into a numbered account in Geneva.’ Himmler smiled thinly. ‘He’ll do anything for money. He’s that sort. Offer him the same – more if you have to. I’ll authorize payments up to thirty thousand pounds.’

‘But for what, Reichsführer?’

‘Why, to arrange Steiner’s escape, of course. I should have thought that’s obvious. The man is a hero of the Reich, a true hero. We can’t leave him in British hands.’

Remembering how General Steiner had met his end in the Gestapo cellars at Prinz Albrechtstrasse, it seemed likely to Schellenberg that Himmler might have other reasons. He said calmly, ‘I take your point, Reichsführer.’

‘You know the confidence I repose in you, General,’ Himmler said. ‘And you’ve never let me down. I leave the whole matter in your capable hands.’ He passed an envelope across. ‘You’ll find a letter of authorization in there that should take care of all contingencies.’

Schellenberg didn’t open it. Instead he said, ‘You said you wanted me to go to Lisbon tomorrow, Reichsführer. May I remind you it’s Christmas Eve?’

‘What on earth has that got to do with anything?’ Himmler seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Speed is of the essence here, Schellenberg, and reminding you of your oath as a member of the SS, I will now tell you why. In approximately four weeks, the Führer will fly to Cherbourg in Normandy. January twenty-first. I shall accompany him. From there, we proceed to a chateau on the coast. Belle Ile. Such strange names the French employ.’

‘May I ask the purpose of the visit?’

‘The Führer intends to meet with Field Marshal Rommel personally, to confirm his appointment as Commander of Army Group B. This will give him direct responsibility for the Atlantic Wall defences. The meeting will be concerned with the strategy necessary if our enemies decide to invade next year. The Führer has given to me the honour of organizing the conference and, of course, responsibility for his safety. It will be purely an SS matter. As I’ve said, Rommel will be there, probably Canaris. The Führer particularly asked for him.’

He started to sort his papers into a neat pile, putting some of them into a briefcase. Schellenberg said, ‘But the urgency on the Steiner affair, Reichsführer, I don’t understand.’

‘I intend to introduce him to the Führer at that meeting, General. A great coup for the SS, his escape and near victory. His presence, of course, will make things rather difficult for Canaris which will be all to the good.’ He closed the briefcase and his eyes narrowed. ‘That is all you need to know.’

Schellenberg, who felt that he was only hanging on to his sanity by his fingernails, said, ‘But, Reichsführer, what if Devlin doesn’t wish to be persuaded?’

‘Then you must take appropriate action. To that end, I have selected a Gestapo man I wish to accompany you to Lisbon as your bodyguard.’ He rang a bell on the desk and Rossman entered. ‘Ah, Rossman. I’ll see Sturmbannführer Berger now.’

Schellenberg waited, desperate for a cigarette, but aware also of how totally Himmler disapproved of smoking and then the door opened and Rossman appeared with another man. Something of a surprise, this one. A young man, only twenty-five or -six, with blond hair that was almost white. Good-looking once, but one side of his face had been badly burned. Schellenberg could see where the skin graft stretched tightly.

He held out his hand. ‘General Schellenberg. Horst Berger. A pleasure to work with you.’

He smiled, looking with that marred face like the Devil himself and Schellenberg said, ‘Major.’ He turned to Himmler. ‘May I get started, Reichsführer?’

‘Of course. Berger will join you in the courtyard. Send Rossman in.’ Schellenberg got the door open and Himmler added, ‘One more thing. Canaris is to know nothing. Not Devlin, not our intentions regarding Steiner and for the moment, no mention of Belle Ile. You understand the importance of this?’

‘Of course, Reichsführer.’

Schellenberg told Rossman to go in and walked along the corridor. On the next floor, he found a toilet, slipped in and lit a cigarette, then took the envelope Himmler had given him from his pocket and opened it.

FROM THE LEADER AND CHANCELLOR OF THE STATE

General Schellenberg acts upon my direct and personal orders in a matter of the utmost importance to the Reich. He is answerable only to me. All personnel, military and civil, without distinction of rank will assist him in any way he sees fit.

Adolf Hitler

Schellenberg shivered and put it back in the envelope. The signature certainly looked right, he’d seen it often enough, but then it would be easy for Himmler to get the Führer’s signature on something, just one document amongst many.

So, Himmler was giving him the same powers as he had given Max Radl for Operation Eagle. But why? Why was it so important to get Steiner back and in the time scale indicated?

There had to be more to the whole business than Himmler was telling him, that much was obvious. He lit another cigarette and left, losing his way at the end of the corridor. He hesitated, uncertain, then realized that the archway at the end led on to the balcony above the great hall. He was about to turn and go the other way when he heard voices. Intrigued, he moved forward on to the balcony and peered down cautiously. Himmler was standing at the head of the great table flanked by Rossman and Berger. The Reichsführer was speaking.

‘There are those, Berger, who are more concerned with people than ideas. They became sentimental too easily. I do not think you are one of them.’

‘No, Reichsführer,’ Berger said.

‘Unfortunately, General Schellenberg is. That’s why I’m sending you with him to Lisbon. The man, Devlin, comes whether he likes it or not. I look to you to see to it.’

‘Is the Reichsführer doubting General Schellenberg’s loyalty?’ Rossman asked.

‘He has been of great service to the Reich,’ Himmler said. ‘Probably the most gifted officer to serve under my command, but I’ve always doubted his loyalty to the Party. But there is no problem here, Rossman. He is too useful for me to discard at the present time. We must put all our energies into the preparation for Belle Ile while Schellenberg busies himself with the Steiner affair.’ He turned to Berger. ‘You’d better be off.’

‘Reichsführer.’

Berger clicked his heels and turned away. When he was halfway across the hall, Himmler called, ‘Show me what you can do, Sturmbannführer.’

Berger had the flap of his holster open, turned with incredible speed, arm extended. There was a fresco of knights on the far wall done in medieval style in plaster. He fired three times very fast and three heads disintegrated. The shots echoed through the hall as he replaced his weapon.

‘Excellent,’ Himmler said.

Schellenberg was already on his way. He was good himself, maybe as good as Berger, but that wasn’t the point. In the hall he retrieved his greatcoat and cap, was sitting in the rear of the Mercedes when Berger joined him five minutes later.

‘Sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, General,’ he said as he got in.

‘No problem,’ Schellenberg said and nodded to the driver who drove away. ‘Smoke if you like.’

‘No vices, I’m afraid,’ Berger said.

‘Really? Now that is interesting.’ Schellenberg turned up the collar of his greatcoat and leaned back in the corner pulling the peak of his cap over his eyes. ‘A long way to Berlin. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get some sleep.’

He did just that. Berger watched him for a while, and then he also pulled up the collar of his greatcoat and turned into the corner.

Schellenberg’s office at Prinz Albrechtstrasse had a military camp bed in one corner for he often spent the night there. He was in the small bathroom adjacent to it shaving when his secretary, Ilse Huber, entered. She was forty-one at that time, already a war widow, a sensual, attractive woman in white blouse and black skirt. She had once been Heydrich’s secretary and Schellenberg, to whom she was devoted, had inherited her.

‘He’s here,’ she said.

‘Rivera?’ Schellenberg wiped soap from his face. ‘And Canaris?’

‘The Herr Admiral will be riding in the Tiergarten at ten o’clock as usual. Will you join him?’

Schellenberg frequently did, but when he went to the window and saw the powdering of snow in the streets he laughed. ‘Not this morning, thank you, but I must see him.’

Dedicated as she was to Schellenberg’s welfare, she had an instinct about things. She went and poured coffee from the pot on the tray she had put on his desk. ‘Trouble, General?’

‘In a way, my love.’ He drank some of the coffee and smiled, that ruthless, dangerous smile of his that made the heart turn over in her. ‘But don’t worry. Nothing I can’t handle. I’ll fill you in on the details before I leave. I’m going to need your help with this one. Where’s Berger, by the way?’

‘Downstairs in the canteen, last I saw of him.’

‘All right. I’ll see Rivera now.’

She paused at the door and turned. ‘He frightens me that one. Berger, I mean.’

Schellenberg went and put an arm around her. ‘I told you not to worry. After all, when has the great Schellenberg ever failed to manage?’

His self-mockery, as always, made her laugh. He gave her a squeeze and she was out of the door smiling. Schellenberg buttoned his tunic and sat down. A moment later the door opened and Rivera came in.

He wore a dark brown suit, an overcoat over one arm, a small man, sallow skin, black hair carefully parted. Just now he looked decidedly anxious.

‘You know who I am?’ Schellenberg asked him.

‘Of course, General. An honour to meet you.’

Schellenberg held up a piece of paper which was actually some stationery from the hotel he’d stayed at in Vienna the previous week. ‘This message you received from your cousin, Vargas, at the London Embassy concerning the whereabouts of a certain Colonel Steiner. Have you discussed it with anyone?’

Rivera seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Not a living soul, General. Before God I swear this.’ He spread his hands dramatically. ‘On my mother’s life.’

‘Oh, I don’t think we need to bring her into it. She’s quite comfortable in that little villa you bought her in San Carlos.’ Rivera looked startled and Schellenberg said, ‘You see, there is nothing about you I don’t know. There is no place you could go where I couldn’t reach you. Do you understand me?’

‘Perfectly, General.’ Rivera was sweating.

‘You belong to the SD now and Reichsführer Himmler, but it is me you answer to and no one else, so to start with: this message from your cousin in London. Why did you also send it to Admiral Canaris?’

‘My cousin’s orders, General. In these matters there is always the question of payment and in this case …’ He shrugged.

‘He thought you might get paid twice?’ Schellenberg nodded. It made sense and yet he had learned never to take anything for granted in this game. ‘Tell me about your cousin.’

‘What can I say that the General doesn’t know? José’s parents died in the influenza epidemic just after the First World War. My parents raised him. We were like brothers. Went to the University of Madrid together. Fought in the same regiment in the Civil War. He’s one year older than me, thirty-three.’

‘He isn’t married, you are,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Does he have a girlfriend in London?’

Rivera spread his hands. ‘As it happens, José’s tastes do not run to women, General.’

‘I see.’ Schellenberg brooded about it for a moment. He had nothing against homosexuals, but such people were susceptible to blackmail and that was a weakness for anyone engaged in intelligence work. A point against Vargas, then.

‘You know London?’

Rivera nodded. ‘I served at the Embassy there with José in thirty-nine for one year. I left my wife in Madrid.’

‘I know London also,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Tell me about his life. Does he live at the Embassy?’

‘Officially he does, General, but for the purposes of his private life he has a small apartment, a flat as the English call it. He took a seven-year lease on the place while I was there so he must still have it.’

‘Where would that be?’

‘Stanley Mews, quite close to Westminster Abbey.’

‘And convenient for the Houses of Parliament. A good address. I’m impressed.’

‘José always did like the best.’

‘Which must be paid for.’ Schellenberg got up and went to the window. It was snowing lightly. He said, ‘Is he reliable, this cousin of yours? Any question of him ever having had any dealings with our British friends?’

Rivera looked shocked again. ‘General Schellenberg, I assure you, José, like me, is a good Fascist. We fought together with General Franco in the Civil War. We …’

‘All right, I was just making the point. Now listen to me carefully. We may well decide to attempt to rescue Colonel Steiner.’

‘From the Tower of London, señor?’ Rivera’s eyes bulged.

‘In my opinion, they’ll move him to some sort of safe house. May well have done so already. You will send a message to your cousin today asking for all possible information.’

‘Of course, General.’

‘Get on with it then.’ As Rivera reached the door Schellenberg added, ‘I need hardly say that if one word of this leaks out you will end up in the River Spree, my friend, and your cousin in the Thames. I have an extraordinarily long arm.’

‘General, I beg of you.’ Rivera started to protest again.

‘Spare me all that stuff about what a good Fascist you are. Just think about how generous I’m going to be. A much sounder basis for our relationship.’

Rivera departed and Schellenberg phoned down for his car, pulled on his overcoat and went out.

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was fifty-six. A U-boat captain of distinction in the First World War, he had headed the Abwehr since 1935 and despite being a loyal German had always been unhappy with National Socialism. Although he was opposed to any plan to assassinate Hitler, he had been involved with the German resistance movement for some years, treading a dangerous path that was eventually to lead to his downfall and death.

That morning, as he galloped along the ride between the trees in the Tiergarten, his horse’s hooves kicked up the powdered snow filling him with a fierce joy. The two dachshunds which accompanied him everywhere, followed with surprising speed. He saw Schellenberg standing beside his Mercedes, waved and turned towards him.

‘Good morning, Walter. You should be with me.’

‘Not this morning,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘I’m off on my travels again.’

Canaris dismounted and Schellenberg’s driver held the horse’s reins. Canaris offered Schellenberg a cigarette and they went and leaned on a parapet overlooking the lake.

‘Anywhere interesting?’ Canaris asked.

‘No, just routine,’ Schellenberg said.

‘Come on, Walter, out with it. There’s something on your mind.’

‘All right. The Operation Eagle affair.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ Canaris told him. ‘The Führer came up with the idea. What nonsense! Kill Churchill when we’ve already lost the war.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say that sort of thing out loud,’ Schellenberg said gently.

Canaris ignored him. ‘I was ordered to prepare a feasibility study. I knew the Führer would forget it within a matter of days and he did, only Himmler didn’t. Wanted to make life disagreeable for me as usual. Went behind my back, suborned Max Radl, one of my most trusted aides. And the whole thing turned out to be the shambles I knew it would.’

‘Of course Steiner almost pulled it off,’ Schellenberg said.

‘Pulled what off? Come off it, Walter, I’m not denying Steiner’s audacity and bravery, but the man they were after wasn’t even Churchill. Would have been quite something if they’d brought him back. The look on Himmler’s face would have been a joy to see.’

‘And now we hear that Steiner didn’t die,’ Schellenberg said. ‘That they have him in the Tower of London.’

‘Ah, so Rivera has passed on his dear cousin’s message to the Reichsführer also?’ Canaris smiled cynically. ‘Doubling up their reward as usual.’

‘What do you think the British will do?’

‘With Steiner? Lock him up tight until the end of the war like Hess, only they’ll keep quiet about it. Wouldn’t look too good, just as it wouldn’t look too good to the Führer if the facts came to his attention.’

‘Do you think they’re likely to?’ Schellenberg asked.

Canaris laughed out loud. ‘You mean from me? So that’s what all this is about? No, Walter, I’m in enough trouble these days without looking for more. You can tell the Reichsführer that I’ll keep quiet if he will.’

They started to walk back to the Mercedes. Schellenberg said, ‘I suppose he’s to be trusted, this Vargas? We can believe him?’

Canaris took the point seriously. ‘I’m the first to admit our operations in England have gone badly. The British secret service came up with a stroke of some genius when they stopped having our operatives shot when they caught them and simply turned them into double agents.’

‘And Vargas?’

‘One can never be sure, but I don’t think so. His position at the Spanish Embassy, the fact that he has only worked occasionally and as a freelance. No contacts with any other agents in England, you see.’ They had reached the car. He smiled, ‘Anything else?’

Schellenberg couldn’t help saying it, he liked the man so much. ‘As you well know, there was another attempt on the Führer’s life at Rastenburg. As it happened, the bombs the young officer involved was carrying, went off prematurely.’

‘Very careless of him. What’s your point, Walter?’

‘Take care, for God’s sake. These are dangerous times.’

‘Walter. I have never condoned the idea of assassinating the Führer.’ The Admiral climbed back into the saddle and gathered his reins. ‘However desirable that possibility may seem to some people, and shall I tell you why, Walter?’

‘I’m sure you’re going to.’

‘Stalingrad, thanks to the Führer’s stupidity, lost us more than three hundred thousand dead. Ninety-one thousand taken prisoner including twenty-four generals. The greatest defeat we’ve ever known. One balls-up after another, thanks to the Führer.’ He laughed harshly. ‘Don’t you realize the truth of it, my friend? His continued existence actually shortens the war for us.’

He put his spurs to his horse, the dachshunds yapping at his heels, and galloped into the trees.

Back at the office, Schellenberg changed into a light grey flannel suit in the bathroom, speaking through the other door to Ilse Huber as he dressed, filling her in on the whole business.

‘What do you think?’ he asked as he emerged. ‘Like a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm?’

‘More like a horror story,’ she said as she held his black leather coat for him.

‘We’ll refuel in Madrid and carry straight on. Should be in Lisbon by late afternoon.’

He pulled on the coat, adjusted a slouch hat and picked up the overnight bag she had prepared. ‘I expect news from Rivera within two days at the outside. Give him thirty-six hours then apply pressure.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Take care, Ilse. See you soon,’ and he was gone.

The plane was a JU52 with its famous three engines and corrugated metal skin. As it lifted from the Luftwaffe fighter base outside Berlin, Schellenberg undid his seat belt and reached for his briefcase. Berger, on the other side of the aisle, smiled.

‘The Herr Admiral was well, General?’

Now that isn’t very clever, Schellenberg thought. You weren’t supposed to know I was seeing him.

He smiled back. ‘He seemed his usual self.’

He opened his briefcase, started to read Devlin’s background report and examined a photo of him. After a while he stopped and looked out of the window remembering what Canaris had said about Hitler.

His continued existence actually shortens the war for us.

Strange how that thought went round and round in his brain and wouldn’t go away.

3

Baron Oswald von Hoyningen-Heune, the Minister to the German Legation in Lisbon, was a friend, an aristocrat of the old school who was also no Nazi. He was delighted to see Schellenberg and showed it.

‘My dear Walter. Good to see you. How’s Berlin at the moment?’

‘Colder than this,’ Schellenberg told him as they moved out through French windows and sat at a table on the pleasant terrace. The garden was a sight to see, flowers everywhere. A houseboy in white jacket brought coffee on a tray and Schellenberg sighed. ‘Yes, I can understand you hanging on here instead of coming back to Berlin. The best place to be these days, Lisbon.’

‘I know,’ the Baron told him. ‘The constant worry all my staff have is of being transferred.’ He poured the coffee. ‘A strange time to arrive, Walter, Christmas Eve.’

‘You know Uncle Heini when he gets the bit between his teeth,’ Schellenberg told him, using the nickname common in the SS behind Himmler’s back.

‘It must be important,’ the Baron said. ‘Especially if he sends you.’

‘There’s a man we want, an Irishman – Liam Devlin.’

Schellenberg took Devlin’s photo from his wallet and passed it across. ‘He worked for Abwehr for a while. The IRA connection. Walked out of a hospital in Holland the other week. Our information is that he’s here, working as a waiter at a club in Alfama.’

‘The old quarter?’ The Baron nodded. ‘If he’s Irish, this man, I hardly need to point out that makes him officially a neutral. A situation of some delicacy.’

‘No rough stuff needed,’ Schellenberg said. ‘I hope we can persuade him to come back peaceably. I have a job to offer him that could be rather lucrative.’

‘Fine,’ the Baron said. ‘Just remember that our Portuguese friends really do value their neutrality. Even more so now that victory seems to be slipping away from us. However, Captain Eggar, my police attaché here, should be able to assist you.’ He picked up his phone and spoke to an aide. As he put it down he said, ‘I caught a glimpse of your companion.’

‘Sturmbannführer Horst Berger – Gestapo,’ Schellenberg said.

‘Doesn’t look your sort.’

‘A Christmas present from the Reichsführer. I didn’t have much choice.’

‘Like that, is it?’

There was a knock at the door and a man in his forties slipped in. He had a heavy moustache and wore a brown gaberdine suit that didn’t fit too well. A professional policeman, Schellenberg recognized the type.

‘Ah, there you are, Eggar. You know General Schellenberg, don’t you?’

‘Of course. A great pleasure to see you again. We met during the course of the Windsor affair in nineteen forty.’

‘Yes, well we prefer to forget all about that these days.’ Schellenberg passed Devlin’s photo across. ‘Have you seen this man?’

Eggar examined it. ‘No, General.’

‘He’s Irish, ex-IRA if you ever can be ex-IRA, age thirty-five. He worked for Abwehr for a while. We want him back. Our latest information is that he’s been working as a waiter at a bar called Flamingo.’

‘I know the place.’

‘Good. You’ll find my aide, Major Berger of the Gestapo, outside. Bring him in.’ Eggar went out and returned with Berger and Schellenberg made the introductions. ‘Baron von Hoyningen-Heune, Minister to the Legation and Captain Eggar, police attaché. Sturmbannführer Berger.’ Berger, in his dark suit with that ravaged face of his, was a chilling presence as he nodded formally and clicked his heels. ‘Captain Eggar knows this Flamingo place. I want you to go there with him and check if Devlin still works there. If he does, you will not, I repeat not, contact him in any way. Simply report to me.’ Berger showed no emotion, and turned to the door. As he opened it Schellenberg called, ‘During the nineteen thirties Liam Devlin was one of the most notorious gunmen in the IRA. You gentlemen would do well to remember that fact ‘

The remark, as Berger immediately knew, was aimed at him. He smiled faintly, ‘We will, General,’ turned and went out followed by Eggar.

‘A bad one that. You’re welcome to him. Still …’ The Baron checked his watch. ‘Just after five, Walter. How about a glass of champagne?’

Major Arthur Frear was fifty-four and looked older, with his crumpled suit and white hair. He’d have been retired by now on a modest pension leading a life of genteel poverty in Brighton or Torquay. Instead, thanks to Adolf Hitler, he was employed as military attaché at the British Embassy in Lisbon where he unofficially represented SOE.

The Lights of Lisbon at the southern edge of the Alfama district was one of his favourite places. How convenient that Devlin was playing piano there although there was no sign of him at the moment. Devlin, in fact, was watching him through a bead curtain at the rear. He wore a linen suit in off-white, dark hair falling across his forehead, the vivid blue eyes full of amusement as they surveyed Frear. The first Frear knew of his presence was when Devlin slid on the stool next to him and ordered a beer.

‘Mr Frear, isn’t it?’ He nodded to the barman. ‘José here tells me you’re in the port business.’

‘That’s right,’ Frear said jovially. ‘Been exporting it to England for years, my firm.’

‘Never been my taste,’ Devlin told him. ‘Now if it was Irish whiskey you were talking about …’

‘Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.’ Frear laughed again. ‘I say, old man, do you realize you’re wearing a Guards Brigade tie?’

‘Is that a fact? Fancy you knowing that.’ Devlin smiled amiably. ‘And me buying it from a stall in the flea market only last week.’

He slid off the stool and Frear said, ‘Aren’t you going to give us a tune?’

‘Oh, that comes later.’ Devlin moved to the door and grinned. ‘Major,’ he added, and was gone.

The Flamingo was a shabby little bar and restaurant. Berger was forced to leave things to Eggar who spoke the language fluently. At first they drew a blank. Yes, Devlin had worked there for a while, but he’d left three days ago. And then a woman who had come in to sell flowers to the customers overheard their conversation and intervened. The Irishman was working another establishment she called at, the Lights of Lisbon, only he was employed not as a waiter but as a pianist in the bar. Eggar tipped her and they moved outside.

‘Do you know the place?’ Berger said.

‘Oh yes, quite well. Also in the old quarter. I should warn you, the customers tend to the rougher side. Rather common round here.’

‘The scum of this life never give me a problem,’ Berger said. ‘Now show me the way.’

The high walls of the Castelo de São Jorge lifted above them as they worked their way through a maze of narrow alleys and then, as they came into a small square in front of a church, Devlin emerged from an alley and crossed the cobbles before them towards a café.

‘My God, it’s him,’ Eggar muttered. ‘Exactly like his photo.’

‘Of course it is, you fool,’ Berger said. ‘Is this the Lights of Lisbon?’

‘No, Major, another café. One of the most notorious in Alfama. Gypsies, bullfighters, criminals.’

‘A good job we’re armed then. When we go in, have your pistol in your right pocket and your hand on it.’

‘But General Schellenberg gave us express instructions to …’

‘Don’t argue. I’ve no intention of losing this man now. Do as I say and follow me,’ and Berger led the way towards the café where they could hear guitar music.

Inside, the place was light and airy in spite of the fact that dusk was falling. The bar top was marble, bottles ranged against an old-fahioned mirror behind it. The walls were whitewashed and covered with bullfighting posters. The bartender, squat and ugly with one white eye, wore an apron and soiled shirt and sat at a high stool reading a newspaper. Four other men played poker at another table, swarthy, fierce-looking gypsies. A younger man leaned against the wall and fingered a guitar.

The rest of the place was empty except for Devlin who sat at a table against the far wall reading a small book, a glass of beer at his hand. The door creaked open and Berger stepped in, Eggar at his back. The guitarist stopped playing, and all conversation died as Berger stood just inside the door, death come to visit them. Berger moved past the men who were playing cards. Eggar went closer as well, standing to the left.

Devlin glanced up, smiling amiably and picked up the glass of beer in his left hand. ‘Liam Devlin?’ Berger asked.

‘And who might you be?’

‘I am Sturmbannführer Horst Berger of the Gestapo.’

‘Jesus and why didn’t they send the Devil? I’m on reasonable terms there.’

‘You’re smaller than I thought you’d be,’ Berger told him. ‘I’m not impressed.’

Devlin smiled again. ‘I get that all the time, son.’

‘I must ask you to come with us.’

‘And me only halfway through my book. The Midnight Court and in Irish. Would you believe I found it on a stall in the flea market only last week?’

‘Now!’ Berger said.

Devlin drank some more beer. ‘You remind me of a medieval fresco I saw on a church in Donegal once. People running in terror from a man in a hood. Everyone he touched got the Black Death, you see.’

‘Eggar!’ Berger commanded.

Devlin fired through the table top, chipping the wall beside the door. Eggar tried to get the pistol out of his pocket. The Walther Devlin had been holding on his knee appeared above the table now and he fired again, shooting Eggar through the right hand. The police attaché cried out, falling against the wall and one of the gypsies grabbed for his gun as he dropped it.

Berger’s hand went inside his jacket, reaching for the Mauser he carried in a shoulder holster there. Devlin tossed the beer in his face and upended the table against him, the edge catching the German’s shins so that he staggered forward. Devlin rammed the muzzle of the Walther into his neck and reached inside Berger’s coat, removing the Mauser which he tossed on to the bar.

‘Present for you, Barbosa.’ The barman grinned and picked the Mauser up. The gypsies were on their feet, two of them with knives in their hands. ‘Lucky for you you picked on the sort of place where they don’t call the peelers,’ Devlin said. ‘A real bad lot, these fellas. Even the man in the hood doesn’t count for much with them. Barbosa there used to meet him most afternoons in the bullrings in Spain. That’s where he got the horn in the eye.’

The look on Berger’s face was enough. Devlin slipped the book into his pocket, stepped around him, holding the Walther against his leg and reached for Eggar’s hand. ‘A couple of knuckles gone. You’re going to need a doctor.’ He slipped the Walther into his pocket and turned to go.

Berger’s iron control snapped. He ran at him, hands outstretched. Devlin swayed, his right foot flicking forward, catching Berger under the left kneecap. As the German doubled over, he raised a knee in his face, sending him back against the bar. Berger pulled himself up, hanging on to the marble top and the gypsies started to laugh.

Devlin shook his head, ‘Jesus, son, but I’d say you should find a different class of work, the both of you,’ and he turned and went out.

When Schellenberg went into the small medical room, Eggar was sitting at the desk while the Legation’s doctor taped his right hand.

‘How is he?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘He’ll live.’ The doctor finished and cut off the end of the tape neatly. ‘He may well find it rather stiffer in future. Some knuckle damage.’

‘Can I have a moment?’ The doctor nodded and went out and Schellenberg lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the desk. ‘I presume you found Devlin?’

‘Hasn’t the Herr General been told?’ Eggar asked.

‘I haven’t spoken to Berger yet. All I heard was that you’d come back in a taxi the worse for wear. Now tell me exactly what happened.’

Which Eggar did for as the pain increased, so did his anger. ‘He wouldn’t listen, Herr General. Had to do it his way.’

Schellenberg put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not your fault, Eggar. I’m afraid Major Berger sees himself as his own man. Time he was taught a lesson.’

‘Oh, Devlin took care of that,’ Eggar said. ‘When I last saw it, the Major’s face didn’t look too good.’

‘Really?’ Schellenberg smiled. ‘I didn’t think it could look worse.’

Berger stood stripped to the waist in front of the wash-basin in the small bedroom he had been allocated and examined his face in the mirror. A bruise had already appeared around his left eye and his nose was swollen. Schellenberg came in, closed the door and leaned against it.

‘So, you disobeyed my orders.’

Berger said, ‘I acted for the best. I didn’t want to lose him.’

‘And he was better than you are. I warned you about that.’

There was rage on Berger’s face in the mirror as he touched his cheek. ‘That little Irish swine. I’ll fix him next time.’

‘No you won’t because from now on I’ll handle things myself,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Unless, of course, you’d prefer me to report to the Reichsführer that we lost this man because of your stupidity.’

Berger swung round. ‘General Schellenberg, I protest.’

‘Get your feet together when you speak to me, Sturmbannführer,’ Schellenberg snapped. Berger did as he was told, the iron discipline of the SS taking control. ‘You took an oath on joining the SS. You vowed total obedience to your Führer and to those appointed to lead you. Is this not so?’

‘Jawohl, Brigadeführer.’

‘Excellent,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘You’re remembering. Don’t forget again. The consequences could be disastrous.’ He moved to the door, opened it and shook his head. ‘You look awful, Major. Try and do something about your face before going down to dinner.’

He went out and Berger turned back to the mirror. ‘Bastard!’ he said softly.

Liam Devlin sat at the piano in the Lights of Lisbon, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, a glass of wine on one side. It was ten o’clock, only two hours till Christmas Day and the café was crowded and cheerful. He was playing a number called ‘Moonlight on the Highway’, a particular favourite, very slow, quite haunting. He noticed Schellenberg the moment he entered, not because he recognized him, only the kind of man he was. He watched him go to the bar and get a glass of wine, looked away, aware that he was approaching.

Schellenberg said, ‘“Moonlight on the Highway”. I like that. One of Al Bowlly’s greatest numbers,’ he added, mentioning the name of the man who had been England’s most popular crooner until his death.

‘Killed in the London Blitz, did you know that?’ Devlin asked. ‘Would never go down to the cellars like everyone else when the air raid siren went. They found him dead in bed from the bomb blast.’

‘Unfortunate,’ Schellenberg said.

‘I suppose it depends which side you’re on.’

Devlin moved into ‘A Foggy Day in London Town’ and Schellenberg said, ‘You are a man of many talents, Mr Devlin.’

‘A passable bar room piano, that’s all,’ Devlin told him. ‘Fruits of a misspent youth.’ He reached for his wine, continuing to play one-handed. ‘And who might you be, old son?’

‘My name is Schellenberg – Walter Schellenberg. You may have heard of me?’

‘I certainly have.’ Devlin grinned. ‘I lived long enough in Berlin for that. General now, is it, and the SD at that? Are you something to do with the two idiots who had a try at me earlier this evening?’

‘I regret that, Mr Devlin. The man you shot is the police attaché at the Legation. The other, Major Berger, is Gestapo. He’s with me only because the Reichsführer ordered it.’

‘Jesus, are we into old Himmler again? Last time I saw him he didn’t exactly approve of me.’

‘Well he needs you now.’

‘For what?’

‘To go to England for us, Mr Devlin. To London, to be more precise.’

‘No thanks. I’ve worked for German Intelligence twice in this war. The first time in Ireland where I nearly got my head blown off.’ He tapped the bullet scar on the side of his forehead.

‘And the second time in Norfolk you took a bullet in the right shoulder and only got away by the skin of your teeth, leaving Kurt Steiner behind.’

‘Ah, so you know about that?’

‘Operation Eagle? Oh, yes.’

‘A good man, the Colonel. He wasn’t much of a Nazi …’

‘Did you hear what happened to him?’

‘Sure – they brought Max Radl into the hospital I was in in Holland after his heart attack. He got some sort of report from intelligence sources in England that Steiner was killed at a place called Meltham House trying to get at Churchill.’

‘Two things wrong about that,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘Two things Radl didn’t know. It wasn’t Churchill that weekend. He was on his way to the Tehran conference. It was his double. Some music hall actor.’

‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary!’ Devlin stopped playing.

‘And more importantly, Kurt Steiner didn’t die. He’s alive and well and at present in the Tower of London which is why I want you to go to England for me. You see I’ve been entrusted with the task of getting him safely back to the Reich and I’ve little more than three weeks to do it in.’

Frear had entered the café a couple of minutes earlier and had recognized Schellenberg instantly. He retreated to a side booth where he summoned a waiter, ordered a beer, and watched as the two men went out into the garden at the rear. They sat at a table and looked down at the lights of the shipping in the Tagus.

‘General, you’ve lost the war,’ Devlin said. ‘Why do you keep trying?’

‘Oh, we all have to do the best we can until the damn thing is over. As I keep saying, it’s difficult to jump off the merry-go-round once it’s in motion. A game we play.’

‘Like the old sod with the white hair in the end booth watching us now,’ Devlin observed.

Schellenberg looked round casually. ‘And who might he be?’

‘Pretends to be in the port business. Name of Frear. My friends tell me he’s military attaché at the Brit Embassy here.’

‘Indeed.’ Schellenberg carried on calmly. ‘Are you interested?’

‘Now why would I be?’

‘Money. You received twenty thousand pounds for your work on Operation Eagle paid into a Geneva account.’

‘And me stuck here without two pennies to scratch myself with.’

‘Twenty-five thousand pounds, Mr Devlin. Paid anywhere you wish.’

Devlin lit another cigarette and leaned back. ‘What do you want him for? Why go to all the trouble?’

‘A matter of security is involved.’

Devlin laughed harshly. ‘Come off it, General. You want me to go jumping out of Dorniers again at five thousand feet in the dark like last time over Ireland and you try to hand me that kind of bollocks.’

‘All right.’ Schellenberg put up a hand defensively. ‘There’s a meeting in France on the twenty-first of January. The Führer, Rommel, Canaris and Himmler. The Führer doesn’t know about Operation Eagle. The Reichsführer would like to produce Steiner at that meeting. Introduce him.’

‘And why would he want to do that?’

‘Steiner’s mission ended in failure, but he led German soldiers in battle on English soil. A hero of the Reich.’

‘And all that old balls?’

‘Added to which the Reichsführer and Admiral Canaris do not always see eye to eye. To produce Steiner.’ He shrugged. ‘The fact that his escape had been organized by the SS …’

‘Would make Canaris look bad?’ Devlin shook his head. ‘What a crew. I don’t much care for any of them or that old crow Himmler’s motives, but Kurt Steiner’s another thing. A great man, that one. But the bloody Tower of London …’

He shook his head and Schellenberg said, ‘They won’t keep him there. My guess is they’ll move him to one of their London safe houses.’

‘And how can you find that out?’

‘We have an agent in London working out of the Spanish Embassy.’

‘Can you be sure he’s not a double?’

‘Pretty sure in this case.’ Devlin sat there frowning and Schellenberg said, ‘Thirty thousand pounds.’ He smiled. ‘I’m good at my job, Mr Devlin. I’ll prepare a plan for you that will work.’

Devlin nodded. ‘I’ll think about it.’ He stood up.

‘But time is of the essence. I need to get back to Berlin.’

‘And I need time to think, and it’s Christmas. I’ve promised to go up country to a bull ranch a friend of mine called Barbosa runs. Used to be a great torero in Spain where they like sharp horns. I’ll be back in three days.’

‘But Mr Devlin,’ Schellenberg tried again.

‘If you want me, you’ll have to wait.’ Devlin clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come on now, Walter, Christmas in Lisbon? Lights, music, pretty girls? At this present moment they’ve got a blackout in Berlin and I bet it’s snowing. Which would you rather have?’

Schellenberg started to laugh helplessly and behind them, Frear got up and went out.

Urgent business had kept Dougal Munro at his office at SOE Headquarters on the morning of Christmas Day. He was about to leave when Jack Carter limped in. It was just after noon.

Munro said, ‘I hope it’s urgent, Jack. I’m due for Christmas lunch with friends at the Garrick.’

‘I thought you’d want to know about this, sir.’ Carter held up a signal flimsy. ‘From Major Frear, our man in Lisbon. Friend Devlin.’

Munro paused. ‘What about him?’

‘Guess who he was locked in conversation with last night at a Lisbon club? Walter Schellenberg.’

Munro sat down at his desk. ‘Now what in the hell is the good Walter playing at?’

‘God knows, sir.’

‘The Devil, more like. Signal Frear most immediate. Tell him to watch what Schellenberg gets up to. If he and Devlin leave Portugal together I want to know at once.’

‘I’ll get right on to it, sir,’ Carter told him and hurried out.

It had tried to snow over Christmas, but in London on the evening of the 27th, it was raining when Jack Carter turned into a small mews near Portman Square not far from SOE Headquarters; which was why he had chosen it when he’d received a phone call from Vargas. The café was called Mary’s Pantry, blacked out, but when he went in the place was bright with Christmas decorations and holly. It was early evening and there were only three or four customers.

Vargas sat in the corner drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. He wore a heavy blue overcoat and there was a hat on the table. He had olive skin, hollow cheeks and a pencil moustache, his hair brilliantined and parted in the centre.

Carter said, ‘This had better be good.’

‘Would I bother you if it were not, señor?’ Vargas asked. ‘I’ve heard from my cousin in Berlin.’

‘And?’

‘They want more information about Steiner. They’re interested in mounting a rescue operation.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘That was the message. They want all possible information as to his whereabouts. They seem to think you will move him from the Tower.’

‘Who’s they? The Abwehr?’

‘No. General Schellenberg of the SD is in charge. At least that is who my cousin is working for.’

Carter nodded, fiercely excited, and got up. ‘I want you to phone me on the usual number at eleven, old chum, and don’t fail.’ He leaned forward. ‘This is the big one, Vargas. You’ll make a lot of cash if you’re smart.’

He turned and went out and hurried along Baker Street as fast as his game leg would allow.

In Lisbon at that precise moment Walter Schellenberg was climbing the steep cobbled alley in Alfama towards the Lights of Lisbon. He could hear the music even before he got there. When he went inside, the place was deserted except for the barman and Devlin at the piano.

The Irishman stopped to light a cigarette and smiled. ‘Did you enjoy your Christmas, General?’

‘It could have been worse. And you?’

‘The bulls were running well. I got trampled. Too much drink taken.’

‘A dangerous game.’

‘Not really. They tip the ends of the horns in Portugal. Nobody dies.’

‘It hardly seems worth the candle,’ Schellenberg said.

‘And isn’t that the fact? Wine, grapes, bulls and lots and lots of sun, that’s what I had for Christmas, General.’ He started to play ‘Moonlight on the Highway’. ‘And me thinking of old Al Bowlly in the Blitz, London, fog in the streets. Now isn’t that the strange thing?’

Schellenberg felt the excitement rise inside him. ‘You’ll go?’

‘On one condition. I can change my mind at the last minute if I think the thing isn’t watertight.’

‘My hand on it.’

Devlin got up and they walked out to the terrace. Schellenberg said, ‘We’ll fly out to Berlin in the morning.’

‘You will, General, not me.’

‘But Mr Devlin – ’

‘You have to think of everything in this game, you know that. Look down there.’ Over the wall, Frear had come in and was talking to one of the waiters as he wiped down the outside tables. ‘He’s been keeping an eye on me, old Frear. He’s seen me talking to the great Walter Schellenberg. I should think that would figure in one of his reports to London.’

‘So what do you suggest?’

‘You fly back to Berlin and get on with the preparations. There’ll be plenty to do. Arrange the right papers for me at the Legation, travelling money and so on and I’ll come the low-risk way by rail. Lisbon to Madrid, then the Paris Express. Fix it up for me to fly from there if it suits or I could carry on by train.’

‘It would take you two days at least.’

‘As I say, you’ll have things to do. Don’t tell me the work won’t be piling up.’

Schellenberg nodded. ‘You’re right. So, let’s have a drink on it. To our English enterprise.’

‘Holy Mother of God, not that, General. Someone used that phrase to me last time. They didn’t realize that’s how the Spanish Armada was described and look what happened to that lot.’

‘Then to ourselves, Mr Devlin,’ Schellenberg said. ‘I will drink to you and you will drink to me,’ and they went back inside.

Munro sat at his desk in the Haston Place flat and listened intently as Carter gave him the gist of his conversation with Vargas.

He nodded. ‘Two pieces of the jigsaw, Jack. Schellenberg’s interested in rescuing Steiner and where is Schellenberg right now? In Lisbon hobnobbing with Liam Devlin. Now, what conclusion does that lead you to?’

‘That he wants to recruit Devlin to the cause, sir.’

‘Of course. The perfect man.’ Munro nodded. ‘This could lead to interesting possibilities.’

‘Such as?’

Munro shook his head. ‘Just thinking out loud. Time to think of moving Steiner anyway. What would you suggest?’

‘There’s the London Cage in Kensington,’ Carter said.

‘Come off it, Jack. That’s only used for processing transients, isn’t it? Prisoners of war such as Luftwaffe aircrews.’

‘There’s Cockfosters, sir, but that’s just a cage, too, and the school opposite Wandsworth Prison. A number of German agents have been held there.’ Munro wasn’t impressed and Carter tried again. ‘Of course there’s Mytchett Place in Hampshire. They’ve turned that into a miniature fortress for Hess.’

‘Who lives there in splendour so solitary that in June nineteen forty-one he jumped from a balcony and tried to kill himself. No, that’s no good.’ Munro went to the window and looked out. The rain had turned to sleet now. ‘Time I spoke with friend Steiner, I think. We’ll try and make it tomorrow.’

‘Fine, sir. I’ll arrange it.’

Munro turned. ‘Devlin – there is a photo on file?’

‘Passport photo, sir. When he was in Norfolk he had to fill in an alien’s registration form. That’s a must for Irish citizens and it requires a passport photo. Special Branch ran it down. It’s not very good.’

‘They never are, those things.’ Munro suddenly smiled. ‘I’ve got it, Jack. Where to hold Steiner. That place in Wapping. St Mary’s Priory.’

‘The Little Sisters of Pity, sir? But that’s a hospice for terminal cases.’

‘They also look after chaps who’ve had breakdowns, don’t they? Gallant RAF pilots who’ve cracked up?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you’re forgetting that Abwehr agent Baum in February. The one who got shot in the chest when Special Branch and MI5 tried to pick him up in Bays-water. They nursed him at the Priory and interrogated him there. I’ve seen the reports. MI5 don’t use it regularly, I know that for a fact. It would be perfect. Built in the seventeenth century. They used to be an enclosed order so the whole place is walled. Built like a fortress.’

‘I’ve never been, sir.’

‘I have. Strange sort of place. Protestant for years when Roman Catholics were proscribed, then some Victorian industrialist who was a religious crank turned it into a hostel for people off the street. It stood empty for years and then in nineteen ten some benefactor purchased it. The place was reconsecrated Roman Catholic and the Little Sisters of Pity were in business.’ He nodded, full of enthusiasm. ‘Yes, I think the Priory will do nicely.’

‘There is one thing, sir. I would remind you that this is a counter-espionage matter which means it’s strictly an MI5 and Special Branch affair.’

‘Not if they don’t know about it.’ Munro smiled. ‘When Vargas phones, see him at once. Tell him to leave it three or four days, then to notify his cousin that Steiner is being moved to St Mary’s Priory.’

‘Are you actually inviting them to try and mount this operation, sir?’

‘Why not, Jack? We’d bag not only Devlin, but any contacts he would have. He couldn’t work alone. No, there are all sorts of possibilities to this. Off you go.’

‘Right, sir.’

Carter limped to the door and Munro said, ‘Silly me, I’m forgetting the obvious. Walter Schellenberg is going to want a source for this information. It’s got to look good.’

‘May I make a suggestion, sir?’

‘By all means.’

‘José Vargas is a practising homosexual, sir, and there’s a company of Scots Guards on duty at the Tower at the moment. Let’s say Vargas has picked one of them up in one of those pubs the soldiers frequent round the Tower.’

‘Oh, very good, Jack. Excellent,’ Munro said. ‘Get on with it then.’

From a discreet vantage point on the concourse at the airport outside Lisbon, Frear watched Schellenberg and Berger walk across the apron and board the Junkers. He stayed there, watching it taxi away, and only went out to the cab rank when the plane had actually taken off.

Half an hour later, he went into the Lights of Lisbon and sat at the bar. He ordered a beer and said to the barman, ‘Where’s our Irish friend today?’

‘Oh, him? Gone.’ The barman shrugged. ‘Nothing but trouble. The boss sacked him. There was a guest here last night. Nice man. A German, I think. This Devlin had a row with him. Nearly came to blows. Had to be dragged off.’

‘Dear me,’ Frear said. ‘I wonder what he’ll do now?’

‘Plenty of bars in Alfama, senhor,’ the barman said.

‘Yes, you’re certainly right there.’ Frear swallowed his beer. ‘I’ll be off then.’

He went out and Devlin stepped through the bead curtain at the back of the bar. ‘Good man yourself, José. Now let’s have a farewell drink together.’

It was late afternoon and Munro was at his desk in his office at SOE Headquarters when Carter came in.

‘Another signal from Frear, sir. Schellenberg left for Berlin by plane this morning, but Devlin didn’t go with him.’

‘If Devlin is as smart as I think he is, Jack, he’s been on to Frear from the start. You can’t be a military attaché at any embassy in a place like Lisbon without people knowing.’

‘You mean he’s gone to Berlin by another route, sir?’

‘Exactly. Twisting and turning like the fox he is and all to no avail.’ Munro smiled. ‘We have Rivera and Vargas in our pockets and that means we’ll always be one step ahead.’

‘So what happens now, sir?’

‘We wait, Jack, we just wait and see what their next move is. Did you arrange the meeting with Steiner?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Munro went to the window. The sleet had turned to rain and he snorted. ‘Looks as if we’re going to get some fog now. Bloody weather.’ He sighed. ‘What a war, Jack, what a war.’

4

As the car went along Tower Hill, fog rolled in from the Thames. Munro said, ‘What’s the situation here now?’

‘The whole place is guarded, Brigadier. Public aren’t allowed in like they used to be before the war. I understand they run sightseeing trips for Allied servicemen in uniform some days.’

‘And the Yeomen?’

‘Oh, they still function and still live in the married quarters with their families. The whole place has been bombed more than once. Three times while Rudolf Hess was there, remember?’

They were stopped at a sentry post to have passes checked and moved on through the wool of the fog, traffic sounds muted, an anguished cry from the Thames as a ship sounded its foghorn on the way down to the sea.

They were checked again then carried on over the drawbridge and through the gate. ‘Not exactly a day to fill the heart with joy,’ Munro observed.

There wasn’t much to see with the fog, only grey stone walls as they carried on, eventually reaching the Inner Ward, everything cut off around them.

‘The hospital’s over there, sir,’ Carter said.

‘You’ve made the arrangements as I ordered?’

‘Yes, sir, but with some reluctance.’

‘You’re a nice man, Jack, but this isn’t a nice war. Come on, we’ll get out here and walk across.’

‘Right, sir.’

Carter struggled to follow him, his leg the usual problem. The fog was yellow and acrid and bit at the back of the throat like acid.

‘Shocking, isn’t it?’ Munro said. ‘Real pea-souper. What was it Dickens called it? A London particular?’

‘I believe so, sir.’

They started to walk. ‘What a bloody place, Jack. Supposed to be haunted by ghosts. That wretched little girl, Lady Jane Grey, Walter Raleigh ceaselessly prowling the walls. I wonder what Steiner makes of it?’

‘I shouldn’t think it exactly helps him to sleep, sir.’

One of the Tower’s famous black ravens emerged from the fog, enormous wings flapping as it cawed at them.

Munro started violently. ‘Get away, you filthy great creature.’ He shuddered. ‘There, what did I tell you, spirits of the dead.’

The small hospital room was painted dark green. There was a narrow bed, a cupboard and a wardrobe. There was also a bathroom adjacent to it. Kurt Steiner, in pyjamas and towelling robe, sat by the window reading. The window was barred although it was possible to reach through and open the casement. He preferred to sit there because in better weather he could see out into the Inner Ward and the White Tower. It gave an illusion of space and space meant freedom. There was a rattle of bolts at the stout door: it opened and a military policeman stepped in.

‘Visitors for you, Colonel.’

Munro moved in followed by Carter. ‘You may leave us, corporal,’ he told the MP.

‘Sir.’

The man went out, locking the door. Munro, more for the effect than anything else, was in uniform. He shrugged off his British Warm greatcoat and Steiner took in the badges of rank and red tabs of a staff officer.

‘Oberstleutnant Kurt Steiner?’

Steiner stood up. ‘Brigadier?’

‘Munro, and this is my aide, Captain Jack Carter.’

‘Gentlemen, I gave my name, my rank and my number some time ago,’ Steiner said. ‘I’ve nothing to add except to say I’m surprised no one’s tried to squeeze more out of me since and I apologize for the fact that there’s only one chair here so I can’t ask you to sit down.’

His English was perfect and Munro found himself warming to him. ‘We’ll sit on the bed if we may. Jack, give the Colonel a cigarette.’

‘No, thanks,’ Steiner said. ‘A bullet in the chest was a good excuse to give up.’

They sat down. Munro said, ‘Your English is really excellent.’

‘Brigadier,’ Steiner smiled. ‘I’m sure that you’re aware that my mother was American and that I lived in London for many years as a boy when my father was military attaché at the German Embassy. I was educated at St Paul’s.’

He was twenty-seven and in good shape except for a slight hollowing in the cheeks, obviously due to his hospitalization. He was quite calm, a slight smile on his lips, a kind of self-sufficiency there that Munro had noticed in many airborne soldiers,

‘You haven’t been pressured into any further interrogation, not only because of the condition you were in for so long,’ Munro said, ‘but because we know everything there is to know about Operation Eagle.’

‘Really?’ Steiner said drily.

‘Yes. I work for Special Operations Executive, Colonel. Knowing things is our business. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to discover that the man you tried to shoot that night at Meltham House wasn’t Mr Churchill.’

Steiner looked incredulous. ‘What are you trying to tell me now? What nonsense is this?’

‘Not nonsense,’ Jack Carter said. ‘He was one George Howard Foster, known in the music halls as the Great Foster. An impressionist of some distinction.’

Steiner laughed helplessly. ‘But that’s wonderful. So bloody ironic. Don’t you see? If it had all succeeded and we’d taken him back …? My God, a music hall artist. I’d love to have seen that bastard Himmler’s face.’ Concerned that he was going too far, he took a deep breath and pulled himself together. ‘So?’

‘Your friend, Liam Devlin, was wounded but survived,’ Carter said. ‘Walked out of a Dutch hospital and escaped to Lisbon. As far as we know, your second-in-command, Neumann, still survives and is hospitalized.’

‘As is Colonel Max Radl, your organizer,’ Munro put in. ‘Had a heart attack.’

‘So, not many of us left,’ Steiner said lightly.

‘Something I’ve never understood, Colonel,’ Carter said. ‘You’re no Nazi, we know that. You ruined your career trying to help a Jewish girl in Warsaw and yet that last night in Norfolk, you still tried to get Churchill.’

‘I’m a soldier, Captain, the game was in play and it is a game, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘And in the end, the game was playing you?’ Munro said shrewdly.

‘Something like that.’

‘Nothing to do with the fact that your father, General Karl Steiner, was being held at Gestapo Headquarters at Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin for complicity in a plot against the Führer?’ Carter asked.

Steiner’s face shadowed. ‘Captain Carter, Reichsführer Himmler is noted for many things, but charity and compassion are not among them.’

‘And it was Himmler behind the whole business,’ Munro told him. ‘He pressured Max Radl into working behind Admiral Canaris’s back. Even the Führer had no idea what was going on. Still hasn’t.’

‘Nothing would surprise me,’ Steiner said, stood up and paced to the wall. He turned. ‘Now, gentlemen. What is this all about?’

‘They want you back,’ Munro told him.

Steiner stared at him, incredulous. ‘You’re joking. Why would they bother?’

‘All I know is that Himmler wants you out of here.’

Steiner sat down again. ‘But this is nonsense. With all due respect to my fellow countrymen, German prisoners of war have not been noted for escaping from England, not since the First World War.’

‘There has been one,’ Carter told him. ‘Luftwaffe pilot, but even he had to do it from Canada into the States before they were in the war.’

‘You miss the point,’ Munro said. ‘We’re not talking of a prisoner simply making a run for it. We’re talking about a plot, if you like. A meticulously mounted operation master-minded by General Walter Schellenberg of the SD. Do you know him?’

‘Of him only,’ Steiner replied automatically.

‘Of course it would require the right man to pull it off which is where Liam Devlin comes in,’ Carter added.

‘Devlin?’ Steiner shook his head. ‘Nonsense, Devlin is one of the most remarkable men I have ever known, but even he couldn’t get me out of this place.’

‘Yes, well it wouldn’t be from here. We’re moving you to a safe house in Wapping. St Mary’s Priory. You’ll be given the details later.’

‘No, I can’t believe it. This is some trick,’ Steiner said.

‘Good God, man, what profit would there be in it for us?’ Munro demanded. ‘There’s a man at the Spanish Embassy here in London called José Vargas, a commercial attaché. He works for your side on occasion for money. Operates via his cousin at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin using a diplomatic pouch.’

‘He works for us, you see, also for money,’ Carter said. ‘And they have been in touch, indicated their interest in pulling you out and requesting more information as to your whereabouts.’

‘And we’ve told him what he needs to know,’ Munro put in. ‘Even your new home at the Priory.’

‘So, now I understand,’ Steiner said. ‘You allow the plan to proceed, Devlin comes to London. He will need help, of course, other agents or what have you and at the appropriate moment you arrest the lot.’

‘Yes, that is one way,’ Munro said. ‘There is another possibility, of course.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘That I simply allow it all to happen. You escape to Germany …’

‘Where I work for you?’ Steiner shook his head. ‘Sorry, Brigadier. Carter was right. I’m no Nazi, but I’m still a soldier – a German soldier. I’d find the word traitor difficult to handle.’

‘Would you say your father and others were traitors because they tried to remove the Führer?’ Munro asked.

‘In a sense that’s different. Germans trying to handle their own problem.’

‘A neat point.’ Munro turned and said, ‘Jack?’

Carter went and knocked on the door. It opened and the MP appeared. Munro got up. ‘If you’d be kind enough to follow me, Colonel, there’s something I’d like you to see.’

As far as Adolf Hitler was concerned there was to be no possibility of an honourable death for a traitor. No officer convicted of plotting against him met his end at the hands of the firing squad. The punishment was statutory, death by hanging, usually from a meat hook and often piano wire was employed. Victims frequently took a long time to die, often very unpleasantly. The Führer had ordered all such executions to be recorded on film. Many were so appalling that even Himmler had been known to walk out of the showings, sick to the stomach.

The one which was being shown now in the large stockroom at the end of the corridor was flickering and rather grainy. The young Intelligence sergeant, anonymous in the darkness behind the film projector, was using the white painted wall as a screen. Steiner sat on a chair alone, Munro and Carter behind him.

General Karl Steiner, carried in by two SS men, was already dead from a heart attack, the only good thing about the entire proceedings. They hung him to the hook anyway and moved away. For a little while the camera stayed on that pathetic figure, swaying slightly from side to side, then the screen went blank.

The projectionist switched on the light. Kurt Steiner stood, turned and moved to the door without a word. He opened it, went past the MP and walked down the corridor to his room. Munro and Carter followed. When they went into the room, Steiner was standing at the window gripping the bar and looking out. He turned, his face very pale.

‘You know I really think it’s about time I took up smoking again, gentlemen.’

Jack Carter fumbled a cigarette out of a packet of Players and gave him a light.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Munro said, ‘but it was important you knew that Himmler had broken his promise.’

‘Come off it, Brigadier,’ Steiner said. ‘You’re not sorry about anything. You wanted to make your point and you’ve made it. I never thought my father stood much of a chance of survival, whatever I did. As far as Himmler is concerned, keeping promises is a low priority.’

‘And what do you think now?’ Munro asked.

‘Ah, so we come to the purpose of the exercise? Will I now, in a white-hot rage, offer my services to the Allies? Allow myself to be spirited off to Germany where I assassinate Hitler at the first opportunity?’ He shook his head. ‘No, Brigadier. I’ll have some bad nights over this. I may even ask to see a priest, but the essential point remains the same. My father’s involvement in a plot on Hitler’s life was as a German. He wasn’t doing it to advance the Allied cause. He was doing it for Germany.’

It was Carter who said, ‘Yes, one sees that.’

Steiner turned to him. ‘Then you must also realize that for me to do what the Brigadier suggests would be a betrayal of everything my father stood for and gave his life for.’

‘All right.’ Munro stood up. ‘We’re wasting our time. You’ll be transferred to St Mary’s Priory in the New Year, Colonel. Your friend Devlin hasn’t a hope of getting you out, of course, but we’d love him to try.’ He turned to Carter. ‘Let’s get moving Jack.’

Steiner said, ‘One thing, Brigadier, if I may?’

‘Yes?’

‘My uniform. I would remind you that under the Geneva Convention I am entitled to wear it.’

Munro glanced at Carter who said, ‘It has been repaired, Colonel, and cleaned. I’ll arrange for you to have it later today together with all your medals, naturally.’

‘That’s all right then,’ Munro said and went out. Carter took out his packet of cigarettes and a box of matches and laid them on the locker. ‘You mentioned a priest. I’ll arrange for one if you like.’

‘I’ll let you know.’

‘And a supply of cigarettes?’

‘Better not. This one tasted terrible.’ Steiner managed a smile.

Carter went to the door, hesitated and turned. ‘If it helps at all, Colonel, it was apparently a heart attack your father died of. I don’t know the circumstances …’

‘Oh, I can imagine them well enough, but my thanks anyway,’ Steiner answered.

He stood there, hands thrust into the pockets of his robe, quite calm, and Carter, unable to think of anything else to say, stepped into the corridor and went after Munro.

As they drove through the fog along Tower Hill, Munro said, ‘You don’t approve, do you, Jack?’

‘Not really, sir. An unnecessary cruelty in my opinion.’

‘Yes, well, as I told you before, it’s not a nice war. At least we know where we stand with friend Steiner now.’

‘I suppose so, sir.’

‘As for Devlin – if he’s mad enough to try, let him come whenever he wants. With Vargas tipping us off on every move he makes we can’t go wrong.’

He settled back in the seat and closed his eyes.

It was actually New Year’s Day when Devlin finally arrived in Berlin. It had taken him two days to get a seat on the Paris Express from Madrid. In Paris itself, his priority, thanks to Schellenberg, had got him on the Berlin Express, but B17 bombers of the American 8th Air Force operating out of England had inflicted severe damage on the Frankfurt railway marshalling yards. This had necessitated a rerouting of most rail traffic from France or the Netherlands into Germany.

The weather was bad in Berlin, the kind of winter that couldn’t make up its mind, a thin snow changing to sleet and driving rain. Devlin, still wearing a suit more apt for Portugal, had managed to procure a raincoat in Paris, but he was freezing and quite miserable as he trudged through the crowds in the railway station at Berlin.

Ilse Huber recognized him at once from his file photo as she stood at the barrier beside the security police. She had already made arrangements with the sergeant in charge and when Devlin appeared, bag in hand, his papers ready, she intervened at once.

‘Herr Devlin? Over here please.’ She held out her hand. ‘I am Ilse Huber, General Schellenberg’s secretary. You look awful.’

‘I feel bloody awful.’

‘I have transport waiting,’ she said.

The car was a Mercedes saloon with an SS pennant conspicuously on display. Devlin said, ‘I suppose that thing makes people get out of the way fast?’

‘It certainly helps,’ she said. ‘It occurred to General Schellenberg that you might be caught out by the weather.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘I’ve made arrangements to take you to a second-hand shop. We’ll get everything you need there. And you’ll need someplace to stay. I have an apartment not too far from headquarters. There are two bedrooms. If it suits, you can have one of them while you’re here.’

‘More to the point, does it suit you?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Mr Devlin, my husband was killed in the Winter War in Russia. I have no children. My mother and father died in an RAF raid on Hamburg. Life could be difficult except for one thing. Working for General Schellenberg usually takes at least sixteen hours out of my day, so I’m hardly ever home.’

She smiled and Devlin warmed to her. ‘It’s a deal, then. Ilse, is it? Let’s get on with the clothes. I feel as if some of my more particular parts have frozen solid.’

When they emerged forty minutes later from the second-hand shop she’d taken him to, he wore a tweed suit, laced boots, a heavy overcoat almost ankle-length, gloves and a trilby hat.

‘So, you are equipped to handle Berlin in January,’ she said.

‘Where to now? Your apartment?’

‘No, we can go there later. General Schellenberg wants to see you as soon as possible. He’s at Prinz Albrechtstrasse now.’

Devlin could hear the sounds of shooting as they descended the steep stairway. ‘And what’s all this then?’

Ilse said, ‘The basement firing range. The General likes to keep in practice.’

‘Is he any good?’

She looked almost shocked. ‘The best. I’ve never seen anyone shoot better.’

‘Really?’ Devlin was unconvinced.

But he had cause to revise his opinion a moment later when they opened the door and went in. Schellenberg was firing at a series of cardboard Russian soldiers, watched by an SS sergeant-major who was obviously in charge. He worked his way across three targets, placing two rounds neatly in each heart. As he paused to reload, he noticed their presence.

‘Ah, Mr Devlin, so you finally got here?’

‘A hell of a journey, General.’

‘And Ilse’s taken care of your wardrobe, I see.’

‘And how did you guess?’ Devlin said. ‘It can only have been the smell of the mothballs.’

Schellenberg laughed and reloaded his Mauser. ‘Schwarz,’ he said to the sergeant-major. ‘Something for Mr Devlin. I believe he’s quite a marksman.’

Schwarz rammed a magazine into the butt of a Walther PPK and handed it to the Irishman.

‘All right?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘Your shout, General.’

Fresh targets sprang up and Schellenberg fired six times very fast, again two holes in the heart area on three separate targets.

‘Now isn’t that something?’ Devlin’s hand swung up, he fired three rounds so close together that they might almost have been one. A hole appeared between the eyes of all three targets.

He laid the Walther down and Ilse Huber said, ‘My God!’

Schellenberg handed his pistol to Schwarz. ‘A remarkable talent, Mr Devlin.’

‘Remarkable curse more like. Now what happens, General?’

‘The Reichsführer has expressed a desire to see you.’

Devlin groaned. ‘He didn’t like me the last time around. A glutton for punishment that man. All right, let’s get it over with.’

The Mercedes turned out of Wilhelmplatz and into Vosstrasse and drove towards the Reich Chancellery.

‘What’s all this?’ Devlin demanded.

‘Times have changed since Goering said that if a single bomb fell on Berlin you could call him Meier.’

‘You mean he got it wrong?’

‘I’m afraid so. The Führer has had a bunker constructed below the Chancellery. Subterranean headquarters. Thirty metres of concrete, so the RAF can drop as many bombs as they like.’

‘Is this where he intends to make his last stand then?’ Devlin enquired. ‘Wagner playing over the loudspeakers?’

‘Yes, well, we don’t like to think about that,’ Schellenberg said. ‘The important people have secondary accommodation down there which obviously includes the Reichsführer.’

‘So what goes on now? Are they expecting the RAF to plaster the city tonight or what?’

‘Nothing so exciting. The Führer likes to have staff meetings now and then in the map room. He gives them dinner afterwards.’

‘Down there?’ Devlin shuddered. ‘I’d rather have a corned beef sandwich.’

The Mercedes drew into the car ramp and an SS sentry approached. In spite of Schellenberg’s uniform the sentry checked their identities thoroughly before allowing them through. Devlin followed Schellenberg down a seemingly endless passage, concrete walls, dim lighting. There was a soft humming from electric fans in the ventilating system, the occasional blast of cold air. There were SS guards here and there, but no great evidence of people, and then a door opened, a young corporal emerged and behind him Devlin saw a room crammed with radio equipment and a number of operatives.

‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking there’s no one here,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Rooms everywhere. A couple of hundred people tucked in all over the place like that radio room.’

A door opened further along the passage and to Devlin’s astonishment, Hitler emerged followed by a broad, rather squat man in a nondescript uniform. As they approached, Schellenberg pulled Devlin to one side and stood at attention. The Führer was talking to the other man in a low voice and totally ignored them as he passed and descended the stairs at the other end of the passage.

‘The man with him was Bormann,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Reichsleiter Martin Bormann. Head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. A very powerful man.’

‘So that was the Führer?’ Devlin said. ‘And me almost getting to touch the hem of his robe.’

Schellenberg smiled. ‘Sometimes, my friend, I wonder how you’ve managed to last as long as you have.’

‘Ah, well, it must be my good looks, General.’

Schellenberg tapped on a door, opened it and led the way in. A young woman, an SS auxiliary in uniform, sat at a typewriter in the corner. The rest of the room was mainly taken up by filing cabinets and the desk behind which Himmler sat, working through a file. He glanced up and removed his pince-nez.

‘So, General, he’s arrived.’

‘God bless all here,’ Devlin said cheerfully.

Himmler winced and said to the girl, ‘Leave us. Come back in fifteen minutes.’ She went out and he carried on. ‘I expected you in Berlin sooner, Herr Devlin.’

‘Your railway system seemed to be having trouble with the RAF,’ Devlin told him and lit a cigarette, mainly because he knew Himmler detested the habit.

Himmler was annoyed, but didn’t tell him to stop. Instead, he said to Schellenberg, ‘You seem to have wasted an inordinate amount of time so far, General. Why didn’t Herr Devlin return from Lisbon with you?’

‘Ah, the General did a fine job,’ said Devlin. ‘It was me had plans for Christmas you see. No, the General was very reasonable. More than I can say for the other fella, Berger. We didn’t get on at all.’

‘So I understand,’ Himmler said. ‘But that scarcely matters as Sturmbannführer Berger has other duties to take care of.’ He leaned back. ‘So, you think this thing can be done? You believe you could get Steiner out?’

‘Depends on the plan,’ Devlin said, ‘but anything’s possible.’

Himmler nodded. ‘It would be a remarkable coup for all of us.’

‘That’s as may be,’ Devlin said. ‘It’s getting back in one piece that worries me. I only just made it last time.’

‘You were well paid then and I would remind you that you’re being well paid this time.’

‘And that’s a fact,’ Devlin said. ‘As my old mother used to say, money will be the death of me.’

Himmler looked extremely annoyed. ‘Can’t you take anything seriously, you Irish?’

‘When I last had the pleasure of meeting your honour, I gave you the answer to that one. It’s the rain.’

‘Oh, get him out of here,’ Himmler said. ‘And get on with it, General. Needless to say, I expect a regular progress report.’

‘Reichsführer.’ Schellenberg ushered Devlin out.

The Irishman was grinning hugely. ‘I enjoyed that.’ He dropped his cigarette on the floor and stamped on it as Berger came round the corner, a rolled-up map under his arm.

He was in uniform and wore the Iron Cross First and Second Classes. He stiffened when he saw them and Devlin said cheerfully, ‘Very pretty, son, but it looks to me as if someone’s been spoiling your good looks.’

Berger’s face was very pale and although the swelling had subsided it was obvious his nose was broken. He ignored Devlin and nodded formally to Schellenberg. ‘General.’ He passed on and knocked at Himmler’s door.

‘He must be well in there,’ Devlin observed.

‘Yes,’ Schellenberg nodded. ‘Interesting.’

‘Where to now? Your office?’

‘No, tomorrow will be soon enough. I’ll take you for a meal and drop you at Ilse’s place afterwards. You get a good night’s sleep and we’ll go over things in the morning.’

As they reached the mouth of the tunnel, fresh air drifted in and Devlin took a deep breath. ‘Thank God for that,’ and then he started to laugh.

‘What is it?’ Schellenberg demanded.

There was a poster on the wall that carried a picture of a rather idealized SS soldier and underneath it said, ‘At the end stands victory.’

Devlin laughed again. ‘God save us, General, but some people will believe anything.’

Berger clicked his heels in front of Himmler’s desk. ‘I have the plan of the Château de Belle Ile here, Reichsführer.’

‘Excellent,’ Himmler said. ‘Let me see.’

Berger unrolled the plan and the Reichsführer examined it. ‘Good. Very good.’ He looked up. ‘You will be in sole charge, Berger. How many men would you suggest for the honour guard?’

‘Twenty-five. Thirty at the most, Reichsführer.’

‘Have you visited the place yet?’ Himmler asked.

‘I flew down to Cherbourg the day before yesterday and drove out to the Château. It’s quite splendid. The owners are French aristocrats who fled to England. There is at the moment only a caretaker and his wife. I’ve informed him that we’ll be taking the place over in the near future, but not why, naturally.’

‘Excellent. No need to go near the place again for another couple of weeks. In other words, wait as long as possible before you and your men take over. You know what this so-called French Resistance is like. Terrorists, all of them. They bomb – murder.’ He rolled the plan up and returned it to Berger. ‘After all, the Führer will be our direct responsibility at this conference, Major. A sacred responsibility.’

‘Of course, Reichsführer.’

Berger clicked his heels and went out. Himmler picked up his pen and started to write again.

The Mercedes moved along the Kurfurstendamm as snow started to fall again. There was evidence of bomb damage everywhere and with the blackout and dusk falling, the prospect was less than pleasing.

‘Look at it,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Used to be a great city this. Art, music, theatre. And the clubs, Mr Devlin. The Paradise and the Blue Nile. Always filled with the most beautifully dressed transvestites you’ve ever seen.’

‘My tastes never ran that way,’ Devlin told him.

‘Nor mine,’ Schellenberg laughed. ‘I always think they’re missing out on a good thing. Still, let’s eat. I know a little restaurant in a back street not far from here where we’ll do reasonably well. Black market, but then they do know me, which helps.’

The place was homely enough with no more than a dozen tables. It was run by a man and his wife who obviously did know Schellenberg well. The general apologized for the dearth of corned beef sandwiches, but was able to produce a mutton broth, lamb, potatoes and cabbage and a bottle of Hock to go with it.

The booth they sat in was quite private and as they finished the meal Schellenberg said, ‘Do you really think it is possible, this thing?’

‘Anything’s possible. I remember a case during the Irish Revolution. Nineteen twenty, it was. The Black and Tans had captured a fella called Michael Fitzgerald, an important IRA leader. Held him in Limerick Prison. A man called Jack O’Malley who served in the British Army in Flanders as a captain got his old uniform out, dressed up half a dozen of his men as soldiers and went to Limerick Prison with a fake order that said they wanted Fitzgerald at Dublin Castle.’

‘And it worked?’

‘Like a charm.’ Devlin poured the last of the wine into both their glasses. ‘There is one problem here though, a very important problem.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Vargas.’

‘But that’s taken care of. We’ve told him we must have firm information as to where they intend to move Steiner.’

‘You’re convinced they will move him?’

‘Certain of it. They won’t continue to keep him in the Tower. It’s too absurd.’

‘So you think Vargas will come up with the right information?’ Devlin shook his head. ‘He must be good.’

‘He always has been in the past, so the Abwehr have found. This is a Spanish diplomat, Mr Devlin, a man in a privileged position. No ordinary agent. I have had his cousin, this Rivera fellow, thoroughly vetted.’

‘All right, I accept that. Let’s say Rivera’s as clean as a whistle, but who checks out Vargas? There is no one. Rivera is just a conduit through which the messages come and go, but what if Vargas is something else?’

‘You mean a neat British Intelligence plot to entice us in?’

‘Well, let’s look at the way they would see it. Whoever drops in needs friends in London, some sort of organization. If I was in charge on the Brit side, I’d give a little rope, let things get started, then arrest everybody in sight. From their point of view, quite a coup.’

‘Are you telling me you’re having second thoughts? That you don’t want to go?’

‘Not at all. What I’m saying is that if I do, I have to go on the supposition that I’m expected. That Vargas has sold us out. Now that’s a very different thing.’

‘Are you serious?’ Schellenberg demanded.

‘I’d look a right idiot if we organize things on the basis that Vargas is on our side and I get there and he isn’t. Tactics, General, that’s what’s needed here. Just like chess. You’ve got to think three moves ahead.’

‘Mr Devlin, you are a remarkable man,’ Schellenberg told him.

‘A genius on my good days,’ Devlin told him solemnly.

Schellenberg settled the account and they went outside. It was still snowing lightly as they walked to the Mercedes.

‘I’ll take you to Ilse’s now and we’ll meet up in the morning.’ At that moment the sirens started. Schellenberg called to his driver. ‘Hans, this way.’ He turned to Devlin. ‘On second thought, I think we’ll go back to the restaurant and sit in their cellar with the other sensible people. It’s quite comfortable. I’ve been there before.’

‘Why not?’ Devlin said and turned with him. ‘Who knows? They might find us a bottle of something in there.’

Behind them, gunfire was already rumbling like thunder on the edge of the city.

5

As they approached Schellenberg’s office at Prinz Albrechtstrasse, the morning air was tainted with smoke. ‘They certainly hit the target last night,’ he said.

‘You can say that again,’ Devlin replied.

The door opened and Ilse Huber nodded good morning. ‘There you are, General. I was a little worried.’

‘Mr Devlin and I spent the night in the cellar of that restaurant in Marienstrasse.’

‘Rivera’s on his way,’ she told him.

‘Oh, good, send him in when he arrives.’

She went out and ten minutes later ushered Rivera in. The Spaniard stood there clutching his hat, nervously glancing at Devlin.

‘You may speak freely,’ Schellenberg said,

‘I’ve had another message from my cousin, General. He says they are moving Steiner from the Tower of London to a place called St Mary’s Priory.’

‘Did he give an address for that?’

‘He just said it was in Wapping, by the river.’

Devlin said, ‘A remarkable fella, your cousin, to come up with such a prime piece of information so easily.’

Rivera smiled eagerly. ‘José is certain his information is correct, señor. He got it from a friend of his, a soldier in the Scots Guards. They have a company serving in the Tower at the moment. They use the public houses nearby and my cousin …’ Rivera shrugged. ‘A matter of some delicacy.’

‘Yes, we understand, Rivera.’ Schellenberg nodded. ‘All right, you can go for now. I’ll be in touch when I need you.’

Ilse showed him out and came back. ‘Is there anything you’d like me to do, General?’

‘Yes, find me one of those gazetteers from the files. You know the sort of thing. London street-by-street. See if this place is mentioned.’

She went out. ‘I used to know Wapping well at one stage of my career,’ Devlin said.

‘With the IRA?’

‘The bombing campaign. They were always having a go, the hard men, those who’d blow up the Pope if they thought it would help the cause. Nineteen thirty-six, there was an active service unit who set a bomb or two off in London. You know the sort of thing? Women, kids, passers-by? I was used as an enforcer in those days and the men at the top wanted it stopped. Lousy publicity, you see.’

‘And this is when you knew Wapping?’

‘A friend from my youth in County Down. Friend of my mother’s actually.’

‘Who is this friend?’

‘Michael Ryan. Ran a safe house. Not active at all. Very deep cover.’

‘And you took care of this active service unit?’

‘There were only the three of them.’ Devlin shrugged. ‘They wouldn’t be told. After that, I went to Spain. Joined the Lincoln-Washington Brigade. Did my bit against Franco till the Italians took me prisoner. Eventually the Abwehr pulled me out.’

‘And this friend of yours in Wapping, this Ryan – I wonder what happened to him?’

‘Still in deep, old Michael, I should imagine. He wouldn’t want to know any more. That kind of man. Had doubts about the use of violence. When the Abwehr sent me to Ireland in forty-one I met a friend of his in Dublin. From what he told me I know for a fact the IRA didn’t use Mick during their bombing campaign in England at the beginning of the war.’

‘Could this be of any use?’ Schellenberg suggested.

‘Jesus, General, you’ve got the cart running before the horse, haven’t you?’

Ilse came in with an orange-coloured book. ‘I’ve found it, General, St Mary’s Priory, Wapping. See, right on the edge of the Thames.’

Schellenberg and Devlin examined the map. ‘That isn’t going to tell us much,’ Devlin said.

Schellenberg nodded. ‘I’ve just had a thought. Operation Sea Lion, nineteen forty.’

‘You mean the invasion that never was?’

‘Yes, but it was thoroughly planned. One task the SD was given was a comprehensive survey of London. Buildings, I’m talking about. Their usefulness if London were occupied.’

‘You mean which place was suitable for Gestapo Headquarters? That sort of thing?’

Schellenberg smiled amiably. ‘Exactly. There was a listing of many hundreds of such places on file and plans, where obtainable.’ He turned to Ilse Huber. ‘See what you can do.’

‘At once, General.’

Devlin sat by the window, Schellenberg at his desk. They lit cigarettes. Schellenberg said. ‘You said last night you preferred to proceed with the notion of Vargas being a traitor.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So what would you do? How would you handle it?’

‘Easy – a stroke of genius hit me at the height of the bombing, General. We don’t tell Vargas I’m going.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘We extract what information we need. In fact, we probably have enough already. Then, once a week, Rivera asks for more information on your behalf. Steiner’s regime at the Priory, the guard system, that sort of thing, only I’ll already be in London. Now, Walter, my old son, you’ve got to admit that’s good.’

Schellenberg laughed helplessly, then got up. ‘Very good – bloody marvellous. Let’s go down to the canteen and have a coffee on it.’

Later, Schellenberg called for his Mercedes and they drove to the Tiergarten and walked around the lake, feet crunching in the light powdering of snow.

‘There’s another difficulty,’ Devlin said. ‘The Special Branch managed to hunt me down when I was in Norfolk. A little late in the day as it happened, but they did and one of the things that helped was the fact that as an Irish citizen I had to be entered on the aliens’ register by the local police and that required a passport photo.’

‘I see. So what are you saying?’

‘A complete change in appearance – a real change.’

‘You mean hair colouring and so on?’

Devlin nodded. ‘Add a few years as well.’

‘I think I can help there,’ Schellenberg said. ‘I have friends at the UFA film studios here in Berlin. Some of their make-up artists can achieve remarkable things.’

‘Another thing – no aliens’ register this time. I was born in County Down which is in Ulster and that makes me officially a British citizen. We’ll stick with that when it comes to false papers and so on.’

‘And your identity?’

‘Last time I was a war hero. A gallant Irishman who’d been wounded at Dunkirk and invalided out.’ Devlin tapped the bullet scar on the side of his head. ‘This helped the story, of course.’

‘Good. Something like that then. What about method of entry?’

‘Oh, parachute again.’

‘Into England?’

Devlin shook his head. ‘Too chancy and if I’m seen, it’s bound to be reported. No, make it Ireland like last time. If they see me there, no one gives a bugger. A stroll across the border into Ulster, the breakfast train to Belfast and I’m on British soil.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘The boat. Belfast to Heysham in Lancashire. Last time, I had to take the other route from Larne to Stranraer in Scotland. The boats get full, just like the train.’ Devlin grinned. ‘There’s a war on, General.’

‘So, you are in London. What happens then?’

Devlin lit a cigarette. ‘Well, if I keep away from Vargas, that means no help from any of your official sources.’

Schellenberg frowned. ‘But you will need the help of others. Also weapons, a radio transmitter because without the ability to communicate …’

‘All right,’ Devlin said. ‘So a few things are going to have to be taken on trust. We were talking about my old friend in Wapping earlier, Michael Ryan. Now the odds are good that he’s still around and if he is, he’ll help, at least with suitable contacts.’

‘Such as?’

‘Michael ran a cab and he worked for the bookies on the side. He had a lot of underworld friends in the old days. The kind of crooks who’d do anything for money, deal in guns, that sort of thing. That IRA active service unit I had to knock off in London back in thirty-six – they used underworld contacts a lot, even to buy their explosives.’

‘So, this would be excellent. The help of your IRA friend and the assistance, when needed, of some criminal element. But for all you know, your friend could no longer be in London?’

‘Or killed in the Blitz, General. Nothing is guaranteed.’

‘And you’re still willing to take a chance?’

‘I reach London, I assess the situation because I have to do that however clever the plan looks that we put together here. If Michael Ryan isn’t around, if it simply looks impossible, the whole thing, I’m on the next boat back to Belfast and over the border and safe in Dublin before you know it.’ Devlin grinned. ‘I’ll give you the bad news from your Embassy there. Now could we go back to your office? It’s so damn cold I think my bollocks are going to fall off.’

In the office, after lunch, they started again, Ilse sitting in the corner taking notes.

Schellenberg said, ‘Say, for argument’s sake, that you got Steiner out one dark evening in London.’

‘Broke him out of the Priory, you mean?’

‘Exactly. And that’s only the first step. How do you get him back? Do you take him to Ireland? Return the way you came?’

‘Not so healthy that,’ Devlin said. ‘De Valera, the Irish Prime Minister, has played it very cleverly. Kept Ireland out of the war, but that doesn’t mean he’s putting himself out for your people. All the Luftwaffe crews who’ve ended up in Ireland have been put in prison camps. On the other hand, if an RAF plane strays and crash-lands they usually give them bacon and eggs for breakfast and send them home.’

‘And he’s been imprisoning IRA members, I understand.’

Devlin said, ‘In forty-one, I got back on a neutral boat, a Brazilian cargo ship from Ireland that put in at Lisbon, but that’s a tricky one. Nothing guaranteed at all.’

Ilse said diffidently, ‘Surely, the moment the Colonel is out, they’ll be looking for him.’

‘Exactly,’ Devlin said. ‘Police, Army, Home Guard, the Security Services. Every port watched, especially the Irish routes.’ He shook his head. ‘No, once out we’ve got to leave England almost immediately. Be on our way before they know what’s hit them.’

Schellenberg nodded, thinking about it. ‘It occurs to me that one of the cleverest things about Operation Eagle was the way Colonel Steiner and his men were transported to England.’

‘The Dakota, you mean?’ Devlin said.

‘An RAF Dakota which had crash-landed in Holland and was put back into service. To all intents, a British plane flying home if anyone saw it and all it had to do to make the drop was fly in under eight hundred feet because many sections of the English coast have no low-level radar.’

‘Worked like a charm,’ Devlin said. ‘Except on the way back. Gericke, the pilot, was in the same hospital as me. He was shot down by a Luftwaffe night-fighter.’

‘Unfortunate, but an intriguing thought. A small plane, flying in under radar. A British plane. A suitable landing place. It could have you and Steiner out and safely in France in no time at all.’

‘And pigs might fly, General. Not only would you need a suitable plane. You’d need the landing place. May I also point out you’d need an exceptional pilot.’

‘Come now, Mr Devlin, anything is possible. We have what’s called the Enemy Aircraft Flight where the Luftwaffe tests captured British and American planes of every kind. They even have a B17. I’ve seen it.’ He turned to Ilse. ‘Get in touch with them at once. Also extend your research on Operation Sea Lion to cover any sites in the general area of London that we intended to use for covert operations, landings by night, that sort of thing.’

‘And a pilot,’ Devlin told her. ‘Like I said, something special.’

‘I’ll get right on to it.’

As she turned, there was a knock at the door and a young woman in SS auxiliary uniform came in carrying a large file. ‘St Mary’s Priory, Wapping. Was that what the General wanted?’

Ilse laughed triumphantly. ‘Good girl, Sigrid. Wait for me in the office. I’ve got something else for you.’ She turned and handed the file to Schellenberg. ‘I’ll get her started on the other thing.’

As she reached the door, Schellenberg said, ‘Another possibility, Ilse. Check the files on those British right-wing organizations that flourished before the war, the ones that sometimes had Members of Parliament on their books.’

She went out and Devlin asked, ‘And who in the hell would they be, General?’

‘Anti-Semitics, people with Fascist sympathies. Many members of the British aristocracy and upper classes rather admired the Führer, certainly before the war.’

‘The kind who were disappointed not to see the panzers driving up to Buckingham Palace?’

‘Something like that.’ Schellenberg opened the bulky file, extracted the first plan and opened it. ‘So Mr Devlin, there you have it in all its glory. St Mary’s Priory.’

Asa Vaughan was twenty-seven years of age. Born in Los Angeles, his father a film producer, he had been fascinated by flying from an early age, had taken his pilot’s licence even before going to West Point. Afterwards he had completed his training as a fighter pilot, performing so well that he was assigned to take an instructors’ course with the Navy at San Diego. And then came the night his whole world had collapsed, the night he’d got into a drunken brawl in a harbourside bar and punched a major in the mouth.

October 5, 1939. The date was engraved on his heart. No scandal, no court martial. No one wanted that. Just his resignation. One week at his parents’ opulent home in Beverly Hills was all he could bear. He packed a bag and made for Europe.

The war having started in September, the RAF were accepting a few Americans but they didn’t like his record. And then on November 30 the Russians invaded Finland. The Finns needed pilots badly and volunteers from many nations flooded in to join the Finnish Air Force, Asa among them.

It was a hopeless war from the start, in spite of the gallantry of the Finnish Army, and most of the fighter planes available were outdated. Not that the Russians were much better, but they did have a few of the new German FW190S which Hitler had promised to Stalin as a goodwill gesture over the Poland deal.

Asa had flown bi-planes like the Italian Fiat Falco and the British Gloucester Gladiator, hopelessly outclassed by the opposition, only his superior skill as a pilot giving him an edge. His personal score stood at seven which made him an ace and then came that morning of ferocious winds and driving snow when he’d come in at four hundred feet, flying blind, lost his engine at the last moment and crash-landed.

That was in March 1940, two days before the Finns capitulated. His pelvis fractured and back broken, he’d been hospitalized for eighteen months, was undergoing final therapy and still a lieutenant in the Finnish Air Force when, on June 25, 1941, Finland joined forces with Nazi Germany and declared war on Russia.

He’d returned to flying duties gradually, working as an instructor, not directly involved in any action. The months had gone by and suddenly, the roof had fallen in. First Pearl Harbor and then the declaration of war between Germany and Italy and the USA.

They held him in a detention camp for three months, the Germans, and then the officers had come to see him from the SS. Himmler was extending the SS foreign legions. Scandinavian, French, the neutral Swedes, Indian prisoners of war from the British Army in North Africa. There was even the Britisches Freikorps with their collar patches of three leopards instead of SS runes and the Union Jack on the left sleeve. Not that they’d had many takers, no more than fifty, mostly scum from prison camps attracted by the offer of good food, women and money.

The George Washington Legion was something else again. Supposedly for American sympathizers to the Nazi cause, as far as Asa knew, they never had more than half a dozen members and he hadn’t met the others. He had a choice. To join or be sent to a concentration camp. He argued as best he could. The final agreement was that he would serve only on the Russian Front. As it happened, he seldom flew in straight combat, for his skill as a pilot was so admired he was employed mainly on the courier service, ferrying high-ranking officers.

So, here he was, not too far from the Russian border with Poland, at the controls of a Stork, forest and snow five thousand feet below, Hauptsturmführer Asa Vaughan from the US of A, an SS Brigadeführer called Farber sitting behind him examining maps.

Farber looked up. ‘How long now?’

‘Twenty minutes,’ Asa told him. He spoke excellent German, although with an American accent.

‘Good. I’m frozen to the bone.’

How in the hell did I ever get into this? Asa asked himself. And how do I get out? A great shadow swooped in, the Stork bucked wildly and Farber cried out in alarm. A fighter plane took station to starboard for a moment, the Red Star plain on its fuselage, then it banked away.

‘Russian Yak fighter. We’re in trouble,’ Asa said.

The Yak came in fast from behind, firing both cannon and machine guns and the Stork staggered, pieces breaking from the wings. Asa banked and went down, the Yak followed, turning in a half circle, and took up station again. The pilot, conscious of his superiority in every department, waved, enjoying himself.

‘Bastard!’ Asa said.

The Yak banked again, came in fast, cannon shell punching into the Stork and Farber cried out as a bullet caught him in the shoulder. As the windscreen shattered he screamed, ‘Do something, for God’s sake.’

Asa, blood on his cheek from a splinter, cried, ‘You want me to do something, I’ll do something. Let’s see if this bastard can fly.’

He took the Stork straight down to two thousand, waited until the Yak came in, banked and went down again. The forest in the snow plain below seemed to rush towards them.

‘What are you doing?’ Farber cried.

Asa took her down to a thousand, then five hundred feet, and the Yak, hungry for the kill, stayed on his tail. At the right moment, the American dropped his flaps, the Yak banked to avoid the collision and ploughed straight down into the forest at three hundred and fifty miles an hour. There was a tongue of flame and Asa pulled back the column and levelled out at two thousand feet.

‘You okay, General?’

Farber clutched his arm, blood pumping through. ‘You’re a genius – a genius. I’ll see you get the Iron Cross for this.’

‘Thanks.’ Asa wiped blood from his cheek. ‘That’s all I need.’

At the Luftwaffe base outside Warsaw, Asa walked towards the officers’ mess, feeling unaccountably depressed. The medical officer had put two stitches in his cheek, but had been more concerned with Brigadeführer Farber’s condition.

Asa went into the mess and took off his flying jacket. Underneath he wore a beautifully tailored uniform in field grey, SS runes on his collar patch. On his left sleeve was a Stars and Stripes shield and the cuff-title on his left wrist said: ‘George Washington Legion’. He had the ribbon of the Iron Cross Second Class on his tunic and the Finnish Gold Cross of Valour.

His very uniqueness made most other pilots avoid him. He ordered a cognac, drank it quickly and ordered another.

A voice said, ‘And it’s not even lunch time.’

As Asa turned, the Gruppenkommandant, Colonel Erich Adler, sat on the stool next to him. ‘Champagne,’ he told the barman.

‘And what’s the occasion?’ Asa demanded.

‘First, my miserable Yankee friend, the good Brigadeführer Farber has recommended you for an immediate Iron Cross First Class which, from what he says, you deserve.’

‘But Erich, I’ve got a medal,’ Asa said plaintively.

Adler ignored him, waiting for the champagne, then passed him a glass. ‘Second, you’re out of it. Grounded immediately.’

‘I’m what?’

‘You fly out to Berlin on the next available transport, priority one. That’s usually Goering. You report to General Walter Schellenberg at SD Headquarters in Berlin.’

‘Just a minute,’ Asa told him. ‘I only fly on the Russian Front. That was the deal.’

‘I wouldn’t argue if I were you. This order comes by way of Himmler himself.’ Adler raised his glass. ‘Good luck, my friend.’

‘God help me, but I think I’m going to need it,’ Asa Vaughan told him.

Devlin came awake about three in the morning to the sound of gunfire in the distance. He got up and padded into the living room and peered out through a chink in the blackout curtains. He could see the flashes on the far horizon beyond the city.

Behind him, Ilse switched on the light in the kitchen. ‘I couldn’t sleep either. I’ll make some coffee.’

She was wearing a robe against the cold, her hair in two pigtails that made her look curiously vulnerable. He went and got his overcoat and put it on over his pyjamas and sat at the table smoking a cigarette.

‘Two days and no suitable landing site for a plane,’ he said. ‘I thinly the General’s getting impatient.’

‘He likes to do things yesterday,’ Ilse said. ‘At least we’ve found a suitable base on the French coast and the pilot looks promising.’

‘You can say that again,’ Devlin told her. ‘A Yank in the SS, not that the poor sod had much choice from what the record says. I can’t wait to meet him.’

‘My husband was SS, did you know that? A sergeant-major in a panzer regiment.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Devlin said.

‘You must think we’re all very wicked sometimes, Mr Devlin, but you must understand how it started. After the First War, Germany was on her knees, ruined.’

‘And then came the Führer?’

‘He seemed to offer so much. Pride again – prosperity. And then it started – so many bad things, the Jews most of all.’ She hesitated. ‘One of my great-grandmothers was Jewish. My husband had to get special permission to marry me. It’s there on my record and sometimes I wake in the night and think what would happen to me if someone decided to do something about it.’

Devlin took her hands. ‘Hush now, girl, we all get that three o’clock in the morning feeling when everything looks bad.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Here, I’ll make you smile. My disguise for this little jaunt I’m taking. Guess what?’

She was smiling slightly already. ‘No, tell me.’

‘A priest.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You, a priest?’ She started to laugh. ‘Oh, no, Mr Devlin.’

‘Wait now, while I explain. You’d be surprised at the religious background I have. Oh yes.’ He nodded solemnly. ‘Altar boy, then, after the British hanged my father in nineteen twenty-one, my mother and I went to live with my old uncle who was a priest in Belfast. He sent me to a Jesuit boarding school. They beat religion into you there all right.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Oh, I can play the priest as well as any priest, if you follow me.’

‘Well, let’s hope you don’t have to celebrate Mass or hear confession.’ She laughed. ‘Have another coffee.’

‘Dear God, woman, you’ve given me an idea there. Where’s your briefcase? The file we were looking at earlier? The general file?’

She went into her bedroom and came back with it. ‘Here it is.’

Devlin leafed through it quickly, then nodded. ‘I was right. It’s here in his record. The Steiners are an old Catholic family.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘This St Mary’s Priory. It’s the sort of place priests visit all the time to hear the confessions. The Little Sisters of Pity are saints compared to the rest of us, but they need confession before they partake of Mass and both functions need a priest. Then there would be those patients who were Catholic.’

‘Including Steiner, you mean?’

‘They couldn’t deny him a priest and him in a place like that.’ He grinned. ‘It’s an idea.’

‘Have you thought any more about your appearance?’ she asked.

‘Ah, we can leave that for another few days, then I’ll see one of these film people the General mentioned. Put myself in their hands.’

She nodded, ‘Let’s hope we come up with something in those Sea Lion files. The trouble is there’s so much to wade through.’ She got up. ‘Anyway, I think I’ll go back to bed.’

Outside, the air-raid siren sounded. Devlin smiled wryly. ‘No you won’t. You’ll get dressed, like a good girl, and we’ll go down and spend another jolly night in the cellars. I’ll see you in five minutes.’

Schellenberg said ‘A priest? Yes, I like that.’

‘So do I,’ Devlin said. ‘It’s like a uniform, you see. A soldier, a postman, a railway porter – it’s the appearance of things you remember, not the face. As I say, the uniform. Priests are like that. Nice and anonymous.’

They were standing at a collapsible map table Schellenberg had erected, the plans of St Mary’s Priory spread before them.

‘Having studied these on and off for some days, what is your opinion?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘The most interesting thing is this plan.’ Devlin tapped it with a finger. ‘The architect’s plans for the changes made in nineteen hundred and ten when the Priory was reconsecrated Roman Catholic and the Little Sisters took over.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘Underneath, London is a labyrinth, a subterranean world of sewers. I read once there’s over a hundred miles of rivers under the city, like the Fleet which rises in Hampstead and comes out into the Thames at Blackfriars, all underground.’

‘So?’

‘Seven or eight hundred years of sewers, underground rivers, tunnels, and nobody knows where half of them are until they’re excavating or making changes, as they were at the Priory. Look at the architect’s plan here. Regular flooding of the crypt beneath the chapel. They were able to deal with the problem because they discovered a stream running through an eighteenth-century tunnel next door. See, it’s indicated there on the plan running into the Thames.’

‘Very interesting,’ Schellenberg said.

‘They built a grill in the wall of the crypt to allow water to draw into that tunnel. There’s a note here on the plan.’

‘A way out, you mean?’

‘It’s a possibility. Would have to be checked.’ Devlin threw down his pencil. ‘It’s knowing what goes on in that place that’s the thing, General. For all we know it could be dead easy. A handful of guards, slack discipline.’

‘On the other hand, they could be waiting for you.’

‘Ah, but not if they think I’m still in Berlin,’ Devlin reminded him.

At that moment, Ilse Huber came in, very excited. ‘You were right to recommend me to check on British right-wing organizations, General. I found details of a man in there cross-referenced to Sea Lion.’

‘What’s his name?’ Schellenberg demanded.

‘Shaw,’ she said. ‘Sir Maxwell Shaw,’ and she laid two bulky files on the table.

6

Romney Marsh, some forty-five miles south-east of London on the coast of Kent, is a two-hundred-square-mile area reclaimed from the sea by a system of dykes and channels started as far back as Roman times. Much of it is below sea level and only innumerable drainage ditches prevent it from reverting to its natural state.

Charbury was not even a village. A hamlet of no more than fifteen houses, a church and a village store. There wasn’t even a pub any longer and half the cottages were empty, only the old folk left. The younger people had departed long ago for war work or service in the armed forces.

It was raining that morning as Sir Maxwell Shaw walked down the village street, a black Labrador at his heels. He was a heavily built man of medium height, face craggy, the evidence of heavy drinking there and the black moustache didn’t help. He looked morose and angry much of the time, ready for trouble and most people avoided him.

He wore a tweed hat, the brim turned down, a waterproof shooting jacket and wellingtons. He carried a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun under one arm. When he reached the store he bent down and fondled the Labrador’s ears, his face softening.

‘Good girl, Nell. Stay.’

A bell tinkled as he went in the shop. There was an old man in his seventies leaning against the counter talking to a woman behind who was even older.

‘Morning, Tinker,’ Shaw said.

‘Morning, Sir Maxwell.’

‘You promised me some cigarettes, Mrs Dawson.’

The old lady produced a package from beneath the counter. ‘Managed to get you two hundred Players from my man in Dymchurch, Sir Maxwell. Black market, I’m afraid, so they come expensive.’

‘Isn’t everything these days? Put it on my bill.’

He put the package in one of his game pockets and went out. As he closed the door he heard Tinker say, ‘Poor sod.’

He took a deep breath to contain his anger and touched the Labrador. ‘Let’s go, girl,’ he said and went back along the street.

It was Maxwell Shaw’s grandfather who had made the family’s fortune, a Sheffield ironmaster who had risen on the high tide of Victorian industrialization. It was he who had purchased the estate, renamed Shaw Place, where he had retired, a millionaire with a baronetcy, in 1885. His son had shown no interest in the family firm which had passed into other hands. A career soldier, he had died leading his men into battle at Spion Kop during the Boer War.

Maxwell Shaw, born in 1890, had followed in his father’s footsteps. Eton, Sandhurst, a commission in the Indian Army. He served in Mesopotamia during the First World War, came home in 1916 to transfer to an infantry regiment. His mother was still alive, Lavinia, his younger sister by ten years, was married to a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps and herself serving as a nurse. In 1917 Maxwell returned from France badly wounded and with an MC. During his convalescence he met the girl who was to become his wife at the local hunt ball and married her before returning to France.

It was in 1918, the last year of the war, when everything seemed to happen at once. His mother died, then his wife, out with the local hunt, when she took a bad fall. She’d lasted ten days, long enough for Shaw to rush home on compassionate leave to be with her when she died. It was Lavinia who had supported him every step of the way, kept him upright at the graveside, yet within a month she, too, was alone, her husband shot down over the Western Front.

After the war, it was a different world they inherited like everyone else and Shaw didn’t like it. At least he and Lavinia had each other and Shaw Place although as the years went by and the money grew less, things became increasingly difficult. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament for a while and then humiliatingly lost his seat to a Socialist. Like many of his kind, he was violently anti-Semitic and this, exacerbated by the crushing political blow, led to his involvement with Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Fascist Movement.

In all this, he was backed by Lavinia although her main interest lay in trying to keep their heads above water and hanging on to the estate. Disenchanted with the way society had changed and their own place in it, again like many of their kind, they looked to Hitler as a role model, admired what he was doing for Germany.

And then, at dinner in London in January 1939, they were introduced to a Major Werner Keitel, a military attaché at the German Embassy. For several months, Lavinia enjoyed a passionate affair with him and he was frequently a visitor to Shaw Place for he was a Luftwaffe pilot and shared Lavinia’s love of flying. She kept a Tiger Moth at the time, housed in an old barn, using the South Meadow as an airstrip. They frequently flew together in the two-seater biplane, covering large sections of the south coast and Keitel had been able to indulge in his interest for aerial photography.

Shaw never minded. Lavinia had had relationships before although he himself had little interest in women. The Keitel thing was different, however, because of what it led to.

‘Well, we know where we are with him,’ Devlin said of Shaw. ‘He’s the kind who used to have children transported to Australia for stealing a loaf of bread.’

Schellenberg gave him a cigarette. ‘Werner Keitel was an Abwehr agent employed at the time to select deep cover agents. Not the usual kind at all. A war was coming, that was obvious, and there was much forward planning for Sea Lion.’

‘And the old sod’s place was perfect,’ Devlin observed. ‘The back of beyond and yet only forty-five miles from London and this South Meadow to land a plane on.’

‘Yes. Keitel, according to his report, found it amazingly easy to recruit both of them. He supplied them with a radio. The sister already knew Morse code. They were expressly forbidden to engage in any other activities, of course. Keitel, by the way, was killed in the Battle of Britain.’

‘Did they have a code-name?’

Ilse, who had been sitting quietly, produced another sheet from the file. ‘Falcon. He was to be alerted by the message: “Does the Falcon still wait? It is now time to strike.”’

Devlin said, ‘So there they were. Waiting for the great day, the invasion that never came. And what’s the situation now, I wonder?’

‘As it happens, there is some further information available,’ Ilse told him. ‘We have an article here which appeared in an American magazine.’ She checked the date. ‘March nineteen forty-three. The British Fascist Movement, it’s called. The journalist got an interview with Shaw and his sister. There’s a photo.’

Lavinia was sitting on a horse, a scarf around her head and was far more attractive than Devlin had expected. Shaw stood beside her, a shotgun under his arm.

Schellenberg read the article quickly and passed it to Devlin. ‘Rather sad. You’ll see there that like most of his kind he was detained without trial for a few months under Regulation 18B in nineteen forty.’

‘Brixton Prison? That must have been a shock,’ Devlin said.

‘The rest is even more sad. The estate sold off, no servants. Just the two of them hanging on in that decaying old house,’ Schellenberg said. ‘It could be perfect, you know. Come and have a look at a map of the Channel.’ They went to the map table. ‘Here. Cap de la Hague and Chernay. Used to be a flying club. It’s used as a landing strip for emergencies only by the Luftwaffe. Refuelling, that sort of thing. Only half a dozen men there. It’s perfect for our purposes because it’s only some thirty miles from the Château dc Belle Ile where the Führer’s conference takes place.’

‘How far to our friends in Romney Marsh?’

‘One hundred and fifty miles, most of it over the sea.’

‘Fine,’ Devlin said. ‘Except for one thing. Would the Shaws be willing to be activated?’

‘Couldn’t Vargas find out?’

‘Vargas could drop the lot of us, as I told you. This would be exactly what British Intelligence wanted. The chance to pull in everyone they could.’ Devlin shook his head. ‘No, the Shaws will have to wait till I get there, just like everything else. If they’ll do it, then we’re in business.’

‘But how will you communicate?’ Ilse demanded.

‘They may still have that radio and I can handle one of those things. When the Abwehr recruited me to go to Ireland in forty-one I did the usual radio and Morse code course.’

‘And if they haven’t?’

Devlin laughed. ‘Then I’ll beg, borrow or steal one. Jesus, General, you worry too much.’

Shaw saw a rabbit, flung his shotgun up to his shoulder already too late and missed. He cursed, took a flask from his pocket and drank. Nell whined, gazing up at him anxiously. The reeds here were as high as a man, water gurgling in the creeks, running towards the sea. It was a scene of complete desolation, the sky black, swollen with rain. As it started to fall, Lavinia appeared on horseback, galloping along a dyke towards him.

She reined in. ‘Hello, my darling. I heard your shot.’

‘Can’t hit a brick wall these days, old girl.’ He put the flask to his lips then gestured dramatically. ‘Look at it – a dead world, Lavinia, everything bloody dead, including me. If only something would happen – anything,’ and he raised the flask to his lips again.

Asa Vaughan closed the file and looked up. Schellenberg leaned across the desk and offered him a cigarette. ‘What do you think?’

‘Why me?’

‘Because they tell me you’re a great pilot who can fly anything.’

‘Flattery usually gets you everywhere, General, but let’s examine this. When I was, shall we say, inducted into the SS, the deal was that I only operated against the Russians. It was made clear to me that I wouldn’t have to take part in any act detrimental to my country’s cause.’

Devlin, sitting by the window, laughed harshly. ‘What a load of old bollocks, son. If you believed that, then you’d believe any old thing. They had you by your short and curlies the minute they got you into that uniform.’

‘I’m afraid he’s right, Captain,’ Schellenberg said. ‘You wouldn’t get very far with the Reichsführer with that argument.’

‘I can imagine,’ Asa said, and an expression of gloom settled on his face.

‘What’s your problem?’ Devlin demanded. ‘Where would you rather be? Back on the Eastern Front or here? And you’ve no choice. Say no and that old sod Himmler will have you in a concentration camp.’

‘Sounds like no contest, except for one small point,’ Asa told him. ‘I end up getting caught in England in this uniform, I’ll get the fastest court martial in American history and a firing squad.’

‘No you won’t, my old son,’ Devlin said. ‘They’ll hang you. Now the flight. Do you reckon you could make it in?’

‘No reason why not. If I am going to do it, I’d need to know the English Channel approach backwards. From what I can see I’d stay over the water for almost the whole trip. Turn inland for the last few miles.’

‘Exactly,’ Schellenberg said.

‘This house, Shaw Place. It would mean a night landing. Even with a moon I’d need some sort of guidance.’ He nodded, thinking about it. ‘When I was a kid in California my flying instructor was a guy who had flown with the Lafayette Escadrille in France. I remember him telling me how in those days, things being more primitive, they often used a few cycle lamps arranged in an inverted L-shape with the crossbar at the upwind end.’

‘Simple enough,’ Devlin said.

‘And the plane. It would have to be small. Something like a Fieseler Stork.’

‘Yes well, I’m hoping that’s taken care of,’ Schellenberg said. ‘I’ve spoken to the officer in command of the Enemy Aircraft Flight. They are at Hildorf. It’s a couple of hours’ drive from Berlin, and they’re expecting us in the morning. He thinks he’s found us a suitable plane.’

‘Guess that’s it.’ Asa got up. ‘What happens now?’

‘We eat, son,’ Devlin told him. ‘The best the black market can offer. Then you come back to Frau Huber’s apartment with me where we’ll share the spare room. Don’t worry, it’s got twin beds.’

The chapel at St Mary’s Priory of the Little Sisters of Pity was cold and damp and smelled of candlegrease and incense. In the confession box, Father Frank Martin waited until the sister whose confession he had heard was gone. He switched off the lights and went out.

He was priest in charge at St Patrick’s two streets away and with St Patrick’s came the job of father confessor to the Priory. He was seventy-six, a small, frail man with very white hair. If it hadn’t been for the war, they’d have retired him, but it was like everything else these days, all hands to the pumps.

He went into the sacristy, removed his alb and carefully folded his violet stole. He reached for his raincoat, debating the virtues of an early night, but compassion and Christian charity won the day as usual. Eighteen patients at the moment, seven of them terminal. A last round of the rooms wouldn’t come amiss. He hadn’t visited since early afternoon and that wasn’t good enough.

He went out of the chapel and saw the Mother Superior, Sister Maria Palmer, mopping the floor, a menial task designed to remind herself of what she saw as her greatest weakness: the sin of pride.

Father Martin paused and shook his head. ‘You are too hard on yourself.’

‘Not hard enough,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to see you. There’s been a development since you were here earlier. They’ve given us a German prisoner of war again.’

‘Really?’ They walked out of the chapel into the entrance hall.

‘Yes, a Luftwaffe officer, recently wounded, but well on the way to recovery. A Colonel Kurt Steiner. They’ve put him on the top floor like the other ones we’ve had.’

‘What about guards?’

‘Half a dozen military police. There’s a young second lieutenant called Benson in charge.’

At that moment Jack Carter and Dougal Munro came down the main staircase. Sister Maria Palmer said, ‘Is everything satisfactory, Brigadier?’

‘Perfectly,’ Munro said. ‘We’ll try to inconvenience you as little as possible.’

‘There is no inconvenience,’ she said. ‘This, by the way, is Father Martin, our priest.’

‘Father,’ he said and turned to Carter. ‘I’ll be off now, Jack. Don’t forget to get a doctor in to check him over.’

Sister Maria Palmer said, ‘Perhaps it was not made clear to you that I am a doctor, Brigadier. Whatever Colonel Steiner’s requirements are I’m sure we can take care of them. In fact now that you’re finished, I’ll visit him to make sure he’s settled in properly.’

Jack Carter said, ‘Well actually, Sister, I’m not too sure about that.’

‘Captain Carter, let me remind you that this Priory, of which I am in charge, is not only a house of God, it is a place where we attend to the sick and the dying. I have seen Colonel Steiner’s medical record and note that it’s only been a matter of weeks since he was gravely wounded. He will need my attention and as I note from his record that he is also a Roman Catholic by religion, he may also need the ministrations of Father Martin here.’

‘Quite right, Sister,’ Munro said. ‘See to it, Jack, will you?’

He went out and Carter turned and led the way up the stairs. There was a door at the top, heavily studded and banded with steel. An MP sat at a small table beside it.

‘Open up,’ Carter told him. The MP knocked on the door which was opened after a moment by another MP. They passed inside. Carter said, ‘We’re using the other rooms as billets for the men.’

‘So I see,’ Sister Maria Palmer said.

The door to the first room stood open. There was a small desk beside a narrow bed and the young lieutenant, Benson, sat at it. He jumped to his feet. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’

‘Sister and Father Martin have access whenever they require it. Brigadier Munro’s orders. We’ll talk to the prisoner now.’

There was another MP sitting on a chair outside the room at the far end where the passage ran into a blank wall.

‘God help us, you’re guarding this man well enough,’ Father Martin said.

Benson unlocked the door and Steiner, standing by the window, turned to greet them, an impressive figure in the blue-grey Luftwaffe uniform, the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves at his throat, his other medals making a brave show.

Carter said, ‘This is the Mother Superior, Sister Maria Palmer. You didn’t get a chance to speak earlier. And Father Martin.’

Sister Maria Palmer said, ‘Tomorrow, I’ll have you down to the dispensary for a thorough check, Colonel.’

‘Is that all right, sir?’ Benson asked.

‘For goodness’ sake, bring him down yourself, Lieutenant, surround him with all your men, but if he’s not in the dispensary at ten, we’ll have words,’ she told him.

‘No problem,’ Carter said. ‘See to it, Benson. Anything else, Sister?’

‘No, that will do for tonight.’

Father Martin said, ‘I’d like a word with the Colonel in private, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Carter nodded and turned to Steiner. ‘I’ll check on you from time to time.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

They all went out except for Father Martin who closed the door and sat on the bed. ‘My son, you’ve had a bad time, I can see it in your face. When were you last at Mass?’

‘So long ago I can’t remember. The war, Father, tends to get in the way.’

‘No confession either? A long time since you were able to ease the burden of your sins.’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Steiner smiled, warming to the man. ‘I know you mean well, Father.’

‘Good heavens, man, I’m not concerned with you and me. I’m interested only in you and God.’ Father Martin got up. ‘I’ll pray for you, my son, and I’ll visit every day. The moment you feel the need for confession and the Mass, tell me and I’ll arrange for you to join us in the chapel.’

‘I’m afraid Lieutenant Benson would insist on coming too,’ Steiner said.

‘Now wouldn’t that do his immortal soul some good too?’ The old priest chuckled and went out.

Asa Vaughan sat at the dining table in the living room at Ilse Huber’s apartment, Devlin opposite him.

‘You really think this thing can work?’ the American asked.

‘Anything will as long as the engine keeps ticking over, isn’t that a fact?’

Asa got up and paced restlessly across the room. ‘What in the hell am I doing here? Can you understand? Everything kind of overtook me. It just happened. I don’t seem to have had a choice. Don’t now, when it comes right down to it.’

‘Of course you do,’ Devlin said. ‘You go through with it, fly the plane to England, land and give yourself up.’

‘And what good would that do? They’d never believe me, Devlin.’ There was a kind of horror on his face when he added, ‘Come to think of it, they never will.’

‘Then you’d better hope Adolf wins the war,’ Devlin said.

But the following morning, at the air base at Hildorf, the American seemed in much better spirits as Major Koenig, the officer commanding the Enemy Aircraft Flight, showed them round. He seemed to have examples of most Allied planes. There was a B17, a Lancaster bomber, a Hurricane, a Mustang, all bearing Luftwaffe insignia.

‘Now this is what I thought might suit your purposes,’ he said. ‘Here in the end hangar.’

The plane standing there was a high wing-braced monoplane with a single engine and a wingspan of more than fifty feet.

‘Very nice,’ Asa said. ‘What is it?’

‘A Westland Lysander. Has a maximum speed of two hundred and thirty at ten thousand feet. Short landing and take-off. Only needs two hundred and forty yards fully loaded.’

‘That means you could make the flight in under an hour,’ Schellenberg said to Asa.

Asa ignored him. ‘Passengers?’

‘How many are you thinking of?’ Koenig asked.

‘Two.’

‘Perfect comfort. Can manage three. Even four at a pinch.’ He turned to Schellenberg. ‘I thought of it at once when you made your enquiries. We picked this up in France last month. It was RAF. The pilot caught a bullet in the chest when attacked by a JU night-fighter. Managed to land and collapsed before he could destroy it. These planes are used by British Intelligence for covert operations. They operate with the French Resistance movement, ferrying agents across from England, taking others out. This is the perfect plane for such work.’

‘Good – then it’s mine,’ Schellenberg said.

‘But General – ’ Koenig began.

Schellenberg took the Führer Directive from his pocket. ‘Read that.’

Koenig did and returned it, positively clicking his heels. ‘At your orders, General.’

Schellenberg turned to Asa. ‘So, what are your requirements?’

‘Well, obviously I’ll want to try her out. Get used to the thing, though I don’t think that should be a problem.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, I’ll want the RAF roundels back in place for the flight into England. But I’d like that to be temporary. Some sort of canvas covers that can be stripped so that I’m Luftwaffe again for the trip back.’

‘Easily taken care of,’ Koenig said.

‘Excellent,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘Hauptsturmführer Vaughan will remain and test-fly the plane now and as much as he wants for the rest of the day. After that you will do whatever work is needed and have the aircraft delivered at the weekend, to the destination in France that my secretary will notify you of.’

‘Certainly, General,’ Koenig said.

Schellenberg turned to Asa. ‘Enjoy yourself while you can. I’ve arranged to borrow a Fieseler Stork from the Luftwaffe. We’ll fly down to Chernay and inspect the airstrip tomorrow. I’d also like to have a look at this Château de Belle Ile while we’re there.’

‘And you want me to do the flying?’ Asa said.

‘Don’t worry, son, we have every confidence in you,’ Devlin told him as he and Schellenberg went out.

In London, Dougal Munro was working at his desk when Jack Carter came in.

‘What is it, Jack?’

‘I’ve had a medical report from Sister Maria Palmer, sir, on Steiner.’

‘What’s her opinion?’

‘He’s still not a hundred per cent. Some residual infection. She asked me to help her get hold of some of this new wonder drug, penicillin. Apparently it cures just about everything, but it’s in short supply.’

‘Then get it for her, Jack, get it.’

‘Very well, sir. I’m sure I can.’

He hesitated at the door and Munro said impatiently, ‘For God’s sake, what is it, Jack? I’m up to my ears in work here, not least amongst my worries being a meeting at three of Headquarters staff at SHAEF presided over by General Eisenhower himself.’

‘Well, it’s the Steiner thing, sir. I mean, here he is, installed at the Priory. What happens now?’

‘Liam Devlin, if it is Devlin they choose, is hardly going to parachute into the courtyard at St Mary’s Priory tomorrow night, Jack, and if he did, so what? The only way we could guard Steiner any closer is by having an MP share his bed and that would never do.’

‘So we just wait, sir?’

‘Of course we do. If they intend to have a go, it’ll take weeks to organize, but that doesn’t matter. After all, we have Vargas in our pocket. Anything happens and we’ll be the first to know.’

‘Very well, sir.’

As Carter opened the door Munro added, ‘We’ve got all the time in the world, Jack. So has Steiner.’

When Steiner went into the chapel that evening he was escorted by Lieutenant Benson and a police corporal. The chapel was cold and damp, slightly eerie with the candles down at the altar and the ruby light of the sanctuary lamp. Instinctively he dipped his fingers in the holy water, a kind of regression to childhood, and went and sat on the end of a bench beside two nuns and waited his turn. The Mother Superior emerged from the confessional box, smiled at him and passed on. One of the nuns went in. After a while she came out and was replaced by the other.

When it came to Steiner’s turn, he went in and sat down, finding the darkness surprisingly comforting. He hesitated and then that ghost from childhood rose again and he said, almost automatically, ‘Bless me, Father.’

Father Martin knew it was him of course, had to. He said, ‘May the Lord Jesus bless you and help you tell your sins.’

‘Dammit, Father,’ Steiner exploded, ‘I don’t even know why I’m here. Maybe I just wanted to get out of that room.’

‘Oh, I’m sure God will forgive you that, my son.’ Steiner had an insane desire to laugh. The old man said, ‘Is there anything you want to say to me? Anything?’

And suddenly Steiner found himself saying, ‘My father. They butchered my father. Hung him up on a hook like a piece of meat.’

‘Who did this thing, my son?’

‘The Gestapo – the bloody Gestapo.’ Steiner could hardly breathe, his throat dry, eyes hot. ‘Hate, that’s all I feel, and revenge. I want revenge. Now what good is that to a man like you, Father? Am I not guilty of a very great sin?’

Father Martin said quietly, ‘May our Lord Jesus Christ absolve you, and I, by his authority, absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.’

‘But Father, you don’t understand,’ Kurt Steiner said. ‘I can’t pray any more.’

‘That’s all right, my son,’ Father Martin told him. ‘I’ll pray for you.’

7

The flight from Berlin to Cap de la Hague took just over three hours, Asa charting a course that took them over parts of occupied Holland, Belgium and then France. They came in to Chernay from the sea. It was a desolate-looking little place. Not even a control tower, just a grass runway, with a wind-sock at one end, three old pre-war hangars and several huts that looked like a Luftwaffe addition. There was also a fuel dump.

Asa raised them on the radio. ‘Stork as expected from Gatow.’

A voice said, ‘Chernay control. Permission to land granted. Wind south-east strength three-to-four and freshening.’

‘Takes himself seriously,’ Asa said over his shoulder. ‘Here we go.’

He made a perfect landing and taxied towards the hangars where half a dozen men waited in Luftwaffe overalls. As Schellenberg and Devlin got out, a sergeant emerged from the hut with the radio mast, and hurried towards them.

He took in Schellenberg’s uniform and got his heels together. ‘General.’

‘And your name is?’

‘Leber, General. Flight Sergeant.’

‘And you are in charge here?’

‘Yes, General.’

‘Read this.’ Schellenberg handed him the Führer Directive. ‘You and your men are now under my command. A matter of the utmost importance to the Reich.’

Leber got his heels together again, handed the letter back. ‘At your orders, General.’

‘Hauptsturmführer Vaughan will be making a hazardous and highly secret flight across the English Channel. The aircraft he will use is an unusual one. You’ll see that for yourself when it’s delivered.’

‘And our duties, General?’

‘I’ll inform you later. Is your radio receiving equipment up to scratch?’

‘Oh, yes, General, the best the Luftwaffe can offer. Sometimes aircraft returning across the Channel are in a bad way. We have to be able to talk them in when necessary.’

‘Good.’ Schellenberg nodded. ‘Do you happen to know a place called Château de Belle Ile? According to the map it’s about thirty miles from here in the general direction of Carentan.’

‘I’m afraid not, General.’

‘Never mind. We’ll manage. Now find us a Kubelwagen.’

‘Certainly, General. May I ask if you’ll be spending the night?’

Schellenberg glanced around at the desolate landscape. ‘Well I’d prefer not to, Sergeant, but one never knows. Have the Stork refuelled and made ready for the return trip.’

‘Jesus,’ Devlin said, as Leber led them towards a field car parked outside the radio hut. ‘Would you look at this place? What a lousy posting. I wonder they can put up with it.’

‘Better than Russia,’ Asa Vaughan said.

Asa drove, Devlin beside him, Schellenberg in the rear, a map spread across his knee. ‘Here it is. The road south from Cherbourg goes to Carentan. It’s off there somewhere on the coast.’

‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to land at the Luftwaffe base at Cherbourg?’ Asa asked.

‘As the Führer will when he comes?’ Schellenberg shook his head. ‘I prefer to keep our heads down for the moment. We don’t need to go through Cherbourg at all. There’s a network of country roads south that cut across to the coast. Thirty miles, thirty-five at the most.’

‘What’s the purpose of this little trip anyway?’ Devlin asked him.

‘This Belle Ile place intrigues me. I’d like to see what we’ve got there as long as we’re in the neighbourhood.’ He shrugged.

Devlin said, ‘I was wondering – does the Reichsführer know we’re here?’

‘He knows about our flight to Chernay or he will soon. He likes a regular report.’

‘Ah, yes, General, that’s one thing, but this Belle Ile place would be another.’

‘You could say that, Mr Devlin, you could.’

‘Sweet Mother of God, what a fox you are,’ Devlin said. ‘I pity the huntsman when you’re around.’

Many of the country lanes were so narrow that it would not have been possible for two vehicles to pass each other, but after half an hour, they cut into the main road that ran south from Cherbourg to Carentan. It was here that Schellenberg had trouble with his map and then they had a stroke of luck, a sign at the side of the road outside the village of St Aubin that said 12th Parachute Detachment. There was a spread of farm buildings visible beyond the trees.

‘Let’s try here,’ Schellenberg said and Asa turned off the road.

The men in the farmyard were all Fallschirmjäger, hard young men, old before their time with cropped hair. Most of them wore camouflaged smocks and jump boots. A number sat on benches against the wall, cleaning weapons. A couple worked on the engine of a troop carrier. They glanced up curiously as the Kubelwagen arrived, rising to their feet when they saw Schellenberg’s uniform.

‘That’s all right, carry on with what you’re doing,’ he said.

A young captain emerged from the farmhouse. He had the Iron Cross First and Second Class, the cuff-titles for Crete and the Afrika Korps. He also had a Winter War ribbon, a tough, hard-faced young man.

‘You are in charge here?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘Yes, General. Hauptmann Erich Kramer. In what way may I help you?’

‘We’re looking for a place called Château de Belle Ile,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘Do you know it?’

‘Very well. About ten miles east of here on the coast. Let me show you on my area map.’

They followed him into the farmhouse. The living room was fitted as a command post with radio and large-scale maps on the wall. The back road to Belle Ile was plain enough.

‘Excellent,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Tell me something. What’s your unit’s purpose here?’

‘Security duties, General. We patrol the area, try to keep the French Resistance in place.’

‘Do you get much trouble from them?’

‘Not really,’ Kramer laughed. ‘I only have thirty-five men left in this unit. We were lucky to get out of Stalingrad. This is a rest cure for us.’

They went outside and as they got back into the Kubelwagen Devlin said, ‘Crete and the Afrika Korps, I see, and Stalingrad. Did you know Steiner?’

Even the men cleaning their weapons looked up at the mention of the name. Kramer said, ‘Oberst Kurt Steiner? Who doesn’t in our line of work. A legend in the Parachute Regiment.’

‘You’ve met him then?’

‘Several times. You know him?’

‘You could say that.’

Kramer said, ‘We heard a rumour he was dead.’

‘Ah, well, you mustn’t believe everything you hear,’ Devlin told him.

‘Captain.’ Schellenberg returned his salute as Asa drove away.

‘Dear God,’ Devlin said, ‘I sometimes wonder why Steiner doesn’t make his own way back across the Channel, walking on water.’

Belle Ile was quite spectacular, a castle crowning a hill beside the sea, a vast estuary stretching beyond it, sand where the tide had just retreated. Asa took the Kubelwagen up the single winding road. There was a narrow bridge across a gap that was more ravine than moat. Two great doors stood open in an arched entrance and they came out into a cobbled courtyard. Asa braked at the foot of broad steps leading up to the front entrance, walls and towers rising above them.

They got out and Schellenberg led the way. The door was of oak, buckled with age and studded with rusting iron bolts and bands of steel. There was a bell hanging from the wall beside it. Schellenberg pulled the chain and the jangling echoed around the courtyard, bouncing from the walls.

‘Jesus,’ Devlin said, ‘all we need is Quasimodo.’

A moment later the door creaked open and he appeared, or a fair facsimile, a very old man with grey hair down to his shoulders, a black dresscoat of velvet that had seen better days, a pair of very baggy corduroy trousers beneath of the type worn by peasants on the farm.

His face was wrinkled and he badly needed a shave. ‘Yes, messieurs?’ he said in French. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘You are the caretaker?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘Yes, monsieur. Pierre Dissard.’

‘You live here with your wife?’

‘When she is here, monsieur. At present she is with her niece in Cherbourg.’

Devlin said to Asa, ‘Are you getting all this?’

‘Not a word. I don’t speak French.’

‘I suppose you spent all your time playing football. The General and I, on the other hand, being men of intellect and learning, can understand everything the old bugger is saying. I’ll translate freely when necessary.’

Schellenberg said, ‘I wish to inspect the premises.’

He walked past Dissard into a great entrance hall, flagged in granite, a carpet here and there. There was an enormous fireplace to one side and a staircase to the first floor wide enough to take a regiment.

‘You are of the SS, monsieur?’ Dissard asked.

‘I should think that was obvious,’ Schellenberg told him.

‘But the premises have already been inspected, monsieur, the other day. An officer in a similar uniform to your own.’

‘Do you recall his name?’

‘He said he was a major.’ The old man frowned, trying. ‘His face was bad on one side.’

Schellenberg said calmly, ‘Berger? Was that his name?’

Dissard nodded eagerly. ‘That’s it, monsieur, Major Berger. His French was very bad.’

Asa said, ‘What’s going on?’

‘He’s telling us someone’s been here before us. An SS major named Berger,’ Devlin said.

‘Do you know him?’

‘Oh, intimately, particularly his nose, but I’ll explain later.’

Schellenberg said, ‘Then you are aware that these premises are required in the near future. I would appreciate a conducted tour.’

‘The Château has been closed since nineteen forty, monsieur. My master, the Comte de Beaumont, went to England to fight the Boche.’

‘Really?’ Schellenberg said drily. ‘So, let’s get on with it. We’ll go upstairs and work down.’

The old man looked up the staircase in front of them. There were innumerable bedrooms, some with four-posters, the furniture draped in sheets, two doors leading to separate wings so long disused that the dust lay thick on the floor.

‘Mother of God, is this the way the rich live?’ Devlin asked as they went down. ‘Have you seen how far it is to the bathroom?’

Schellenberg noticed a door at one end of the landing above the entrance. ‘What’s through there?’

‘I’ll show you, monsieur. Another way into the dining hall.’

They found themselves in a long dark gallery above a massive room. The ceiling had arched oaken beams. Below was a massive fireplace in a medieval pattern. In front of it was an enormous oak table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Battle standards hung above the fireplace.

They went down the stairs and Schellenberg said, ‘What are the flags?’

‘Souvenirs of war, monsieur. The de Beaumonts have always served France well. See, in the centre there, the standard in scarlet and gold. An ancestor of the count carried that at Waterloo.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Devlin commented. ‘I always thought they lost that one.’

Schellenberg looked around the hall, then led the way out through high oak doors back into the entrance hall.

‘I have seen enough. What did Major Berger say to you?’

‘That he would be back, monsieur.’ The old man shrugged. ‘One week, maybe two.’

Schellenberg put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No one must know we have been here, my friend, especially Major Berger.’

‘Monsieur?’ Dissard looked puzzled.

Schellenberg said, ‘This is a matter of the greatest secrecy and of considerable importance.’

‘I understand, monsieur.’

‘If the fact that we had been here came out, the source of the information would be obvious.’ He patted Dissard’s desk with his gloved hand. ‘This would be bad for you.’

The old man was thoroughly frightened. ‘Monsieur – please. Not a word. I swear it.’

They went out to the Kubelwagen and drove away. Devlin said, ‘Walter, you can be a cold-blooded bastard when you want to be.’

‘Only when necessary.’ Schellenberg turned to Asa. ‘Can we get back to Berlin tonight?’

The light was already fading, dark clouds dropping towards the sea and rain drifted in across the wet sands.

‘Possible,’ Asa said. ‘If we’re lucky. We might have to overnight at Chernay. Get off first thing in the morning.’

Devlin said, ‘What a prospect.’ He pulled up the collar of his overcoat and lit a cigarette. ‘The glamour of war.’

On the following afternoon, Devlin was delivered to the UFA film studios for his appointment with the chief makeup artist. Karl Schneider was in his late forties, a tall broad-shouldered man who looked more like a dock worker than anything else.

He examined a passport-type photo which Devlin had had taken. ‘You say this is what they’ve got on the other side?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s not much, not for a policeman looking for a face in the crowd. When would you be going?’

Devlin made the decision then for himseif, for Schellenberg, for all of them. ‘Let’s say two or three days from now.’

‘And how long would you be away?’

‘Ten days at the most. Can you do anything?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Schneider nodded. ‘One can change the shape of the face by wearing cheek pads in the mouth and all that sort of thing, but I don’t think it’s necessary for you. You don’t carry a lot of weight, my friend, not much flesh on your bones.’

‘All down to bad living,’ Devlin said.

Schneider ignored the joke. ‘Your hair – dark and wavy and you wear it long. I think the key is what I do to the hair. What role do you intend to play?’

‘A priest. Ex-Army chaplain. Invalided out.’

‘Yes, the hair.’ Schneider draped a sheet about his shoulders and reached for a pair of scissors.

By the time he was finished, Devlin’s hair was cropped close to the skull.

‘Jesus, is that me?’

‘That’s only a start. Let’s have you over the basin.’ Schneider washed the hair then rubbed some chemical in. ‘I’ve worked with the best actors. Marlene Dietrich before she cleared out. Now she had marvellous hair. Oh, and there was Conrad Veidt. What a wonderful actor. Chased out by these Nazi bastards and he ends up, so I’m told, playing Nazi bastards in Hollywood.’

‘A strange old life.’ Devlin kept his eyes closed and let him get on with it.

He hardly recognized the face that stared out at him. The close-cropped hair was quite grey now, accentuating the cheekbones, putting ten or twelve years on his age.

‘That’s bloody marvellous.’

‘One more touch.’ Schneider rummaged in his make-up case, took out several pairs of spectacles and examined them. ‘Yes, these, I think. Clear glass, naturally.’ He placed a pair of steel-rimmed glasses on Devlin’s nose and adjusted them. ‘Yes, excellent. I’m pleased with myself.’

‘God help me, but I look like Himmler,’ Devlin said. ‘Will it last, the hair, I mean?’

‘A fortnight and you said you’d be away ten days at the most.’ Schneider produced a small plastic bottle. ‘A rinse with this would keep things going, but not for long.’

‘No,’ Devlin told him. ‘I said ten days and I meant it. It’s all one in the end anyway. Any longer and I’ll be dead.’

‘Astonishing!’ Schellenberg said.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ Devlin told him. ‘So let’s have the right photos taken. I want to get on with it.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘I want to go as soon as possible. Tomorrow or the day after.’

Schellenberg looked at him gravely. ‘You’re sure about this?’

‘There’s nothing else to hang about for now that your friend at UFA has given me a new face. We have the set-up at Chernay, Asa and the Lysander. That leaves us with three uncertainties. My IRA friend, Michael Ryan, the Shaws and the Priory.’

‘True,’ Schellenberg said. ‘No matter what the situation at the Priory, if your friend Ryan is not available you would be presented with real difficulty. The same with the Shaws.’

Devlin said, ‘Without the Shaws it would be an impossibility so the sooner I get there, the sooner we know.’

‘Right,’ Schellenberg said briskly, and rang for Ilse Huber who came in. ‘Papers for Mr Devlin from the forgery department.’

‘They’ll need photos of the new me,’ Devlin told her.

‘But Mr Devlin, the British identity card is what you need. A ration book for certain items of food, clothing coupons, driving licence. None of these require a photo.’

‘That’s a pity,’ Devlin told her. ‘If you’re being checked out by someone the fact that they can compare you with a photo is so satisfying that you’re on your way before you know it.’

‘Have you decided on your name and circumstances yet?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘As I’ve often said, the best kind of lie is the one that sticks closest to the truth,’ Devlin said. ‘No sense in trying to sound completely English. Even the great Devlin wouldn’t get away with that. So I’m an Ulsterman.’ He turned to Ilse. ‘Are you getting this?’

‘Every word.’

‘Conlon. Now there’s a name I’ve always liked. My first girlfriend was a Conlon. And my old uncle, the priest in Belfast I lived with as a boy. He was a Henry, though everyone called him Harry.’

‘Father Harry Conlon then?’ she said.

‘Yes, but more than that. Major Harry Conlon, Army chaplain, on extended leave after being wounded.’

‘Where?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘In my head.’ Devlin tapped the bullet scar. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. Geographically speaking.’

‘How about the Allied invasion of Sicily this year?’ Schellenberg suggested.

‘Excellent. I got clipped in an air strike on the first day. That way I don’t need too much information about the place if anyone asks me.’

‘I’ve seen a cross-reference with British Army chaplains in the military documentation file,’ Ilse said. ‘I remember because it struck me as being unusual. May I go and check on it, General? It would only take a few minutes.’

Schellenberg nodded. She went out and he said, ‘I’ll make the arrangements for your flight to Ireland. I’ve already done some checking with the Luftwaffe. They suggest you take off from Laville base outside Brest.’

‘Talk about déjà vu,’ Devlin said. ‘That’s where I left from before. It wouldn’t happen to be a Dornier bomber they suggest, the good old Flying Pencil?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Ah well, it worked last time, I suppose.’

Ilse came in at that moment. ‘I was right. Look what I found.’

The pass was in the name of a Major George Harvey, Army chaplain, and there was a photo. It had been issued by the War Office and authorized unrestricted access to both military bases and hospitals.

‘Astonishing how powerful the need for spiritual comfort is,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Where did this come from?’

‘Documents taken from a prisoner of war, General. I’m certain forging will have no difficulty copying it and it would give Mr Devlin the photo he wanted.’

‘Brilliant,’ Devlin said. ‘You’re a marvel of a woman.’

‘You’ll need to see the clothing department as well,’ she said. ‘Will you want a uniform?’

‘It’s a thought. I mean, it could come in useful. Otherwise, a dark suit, clerical collar, dark hat, raincoat, and they can give me a Military Cross. If I’m a priest, I might as well be a gallant one. Always impressive. And I’ll want a travel voucher from Belfast to London. The kind the military use, just in case I do want to play the major.’

‘I’ll get things started.’

She went out and Schellenberg said, ‘What else?’

‘Cash. Five thousand quid, I’d say. That’s to take care of my having to hand a few bribes out as well as supporting myself. If you find one of those canvas military holdalls officers carry these days, the money could go in a false bottom of some sort.’

‘I’m sure there’ll be no problem.’

‘Fivers, Walter, and the real thing. None of the false stuff I happen to know the SS has been printing.’

‘You have my word on it. You’ll need a code-name.’

‘We’ll stick with Shaw’s. Falcon will do fine. Give me the right details for contacting your radio people at this end and I’ll be in touch before you know it.’

‘Excellent. The Führer’s conference at Belle Ile is on the twenty-first. We could be cutting it fine.’

‘We’ll manage.’ Devlin stood up. ‘I think I’ll try the canteen.’ He turned at the door. ‘Oh, just one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘When I was dropped by parachute into Ireland in forty-one for the Abwehr, I had ten thousand pounds in a suitcase, funds for the IRA. When I opened it I found neat bundles of fivers, each one with a Bank of Berlin band around it. Do you think they could do better this time?’

Schellenberg said, ‘And they wonder why we’re losing the war.’

Asa was in the canteen drinking a beer and reading a copy of Signal, the magazine for German forces, when Devlin came in. The Irishman got a coffee and joined him.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Asa said. ‘I hardly recognized you.’

‘The new me, Father Harry Conlon, very much at your service. Also Major Harry Conlon, Army chaplain, and I’m on my way tomorrow night.’

‘Isn’t that pushing it?’

‘Jesus, son, I want to get on with it.’

‘Where are you flying from?’

‘Laville, near Brest.’

‘And the plane?’

‘Dornier 215.’

‘Okay, I’ll fly you myself.’

‘No, you won’t, you’re too valuable. Say you got me to Ireland and dropped me off, then got shot down by a British night-fighter off the French coast on your way back. A right old balls-up that would be.’

‘Okay,’ Asa said reluctantly, ‘but at least I can fly you down to Laville. Nobody can object to that.’

‘Always nicer to have a friend see you off,’ Devlin said.

It was just after nine the following night, rain pounding in from the Atlantic, when Asa stood in the control tower at Laville and watched the Dornier take off. He opened a window, listened to it fade into the night. He closed the window and said to the radio man, ‘Send this message.’

Devlin, sitting at the back of the Dornier in a flying suit, his supply bag beside him, was approached by the wireless operator. ‘A message for you, sir. A bad joke on someone’s part.’

‘Read it.’

‘It just says: “Break a leg”.’

Devlin laughed. ‘Well, son, you’d have to be an actor to understand that one.’

The Dornier made good time and it was shortly after two in the morning when Devlin jumped at five thousand feet. As on the last occasion, he had chosen County Monaghan which was an area he knew well and adjacent to the Ulster border.

The necessity of a supply bag to the parachutist is that dangling twenty feet below him on a cord it hits the ground first, a useful precaution when landing in the dark. A crescent moon showed occasionally which helped. Devlin made an excellent landing and within minutes had his suitcase and a trenching shovel out of the supply bag, a dark raincoat and trilby. He found a ditch, scraped a hole, put the supply bag, parachute and flying suit in it then tossed the shovel into a nearby pool.

He put on his raincoat and hat, opened the case and found the steel-rimmed spectacles which he carried in there for safety. Underneath the neatly folded uniform was a webbing belt and holster containing a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, the type frequently issued to British officers. There was a box of fifty cartridges to go with it. Everything seemed in order. He put on the spectacles and stood up.

‘Hail Mary full of Grace, here am I, a sinner,’ he said softly. ‘Do what you can for me,’ and he crossed himself, picked up his suitcase and moved on.

The Ulster border, to anyone who knew it, was never a problem. He followed a network of country lanes and the occasional field path and by four fifteen was safe in Ulster and standing on British soil.

And then he had an incredible piece of luck. A farm truck passed him, stopped and the driver, a man in his sixties, looked out. ‘Jesus, Father, and where would you be walking to at this time of the morning?’

‘Armagh,’ Devlin said. ‘To catch the milk train to Belfast.’

‘Now isn’t that the strange thing and me going all the way to Belfast market.’

‘God bless you, my son,’ Devlin said and climbed in beside him.

‘Nothing to it, Father,’ the farmer told him as he drove away. ‘After all, if a priest can’t get a helping hand in Ireland, where would he get one?’

It was later that morning, at ten o’clock, when Schellenberg knocked on the Reichsführer’s door and went in.

‘Yes?’ Himmler said. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve had confirmation from Laville, Reichsführer, that Devlin jumped into Southern Ireland at approximately two a.m.’

‘Really?’ Himmler said. ‘You’ve moved fast, Brigadeführer. My congratulations.’

‘Of course none of this guarantees success, Reichsführer. We have to take even Devlin’s safe landing on faith and the whole business when he gets to London is very open-ended.’

‘There’s been a change in our plans,’ Himmler said. ‘The Führer’s conference at Belle Ile will now take place on the fifteenth.’

‘But Reichsführer, that only gives us a week.’

‘Yes, well we’re in the Führer’s hands. It is not for us to query his decisions. Still, I know you’ll do your best. Carry on, General.’

Schellenberg went out, closing the door, feeling totally bewildered. ‘For God’s sake, what’s the bastard playing at?’ he said softly and went back to his office.

8

In Belfast, Devlin found it impossible to get a ticket for the crossing to Heysham in Lancashire. There was a waiting list and the situation was no better on the Glasgow route. Which left Larne, north of Belfast, to Stranraer, the way he had got across the water for Operation Eagle. It was a short run and a special boat train all the way to London, but this time he wasn’t going to take any chances. He caught the local train from Belfast to Larne, went into a public toilet on the docks and locked himself in. When he came out fifteen minutes later, he was in uniform.

It paid off immediately. The boat was full, but not to military personnel. He produced the travel voucher they had given him in Berlin. The booking clerk hardly looked at it, took in the major’s uniform, the ribbon for the Military Cross and the clergyman’s dog collar and booked him on board immediately.

It was the same at Stranraer where, in spite of the incredible number of people being carried by the train, he was allocated a seat in a first-class carriage. Stranraer to Glasgow, Glasgow down to Birmingham and then to London arriving at King’s Cross at three o’clock the following morning. When he walked from the train, one face amongst the crowd, the first thing he heard was an air-raid siren.

The beginning of 1944 became known to Londoners as the Little Blitz as the Luftwaffe, the performance of its planes greatly improved, turned attention to night raids on London again. The siren Devlin heard heralded the approach of JU88 pathfinders from Chartres in France. The heavy bombers came later but by then he was, like thousands of others, far below ground, sitting out a hard night in the comparative safety of a London tube station.

Mary Ryan was a girl that people remarked on, not because she was particularly beautiful, but because there was a strange, almost ethereal look to her. The truth was her health had never been good and the pressures of wartime didn’t help. Her face was always pale, with dark smudges beneath her eyes, and she had a heavy limp which had been a fact of life for her since birth. She was only nineteen and looked old beyond her years.

Her father, an IRA activist, had died of a heart attack in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin just before the war, her mother of cancer in 1940 leaving her with only one relative, her uncle Michael, her father’s younger brother who had lived in London for years, on his own since the death of his wife in 1938. She had moved from Dublin to London and now kept house for him and worked as an assistant in a large grocery store in Wapping High Street.

No more though for when she reported for work at eight o’clock that morning, the shop and a sizeable section of the street was reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. She stayed, watching the ambulances, the firemen dousing things down, the men of the heavy rescue unit sifting through the foundations for those who might still be alive.

After doing what she could to help, she turned and walked away, a strange figure in her black beret and the old raincoat, limping rapidly along the pavement. She stopped at a back-street shop, purchased milk and a loaf of bread, some cigarettes for her uncle, then went out again. It started to rain as she turned into Cable Wharf.

There had originally been twenty houses backing on to the river. Fifteen had been demolished by a bomb during the Blitz. Four more were boarded up. She and her uncle lived in the end one. The kitchen door was at the side and reached by an iron terrace, the waters of the Thames below. She paused at the rail, looking down towards Tower Bridge and the Tower of London in the near distance. She loved the river, never tired of it. The large ships from the London docks passing to and fro, the constant barge traffic. There was a wooden stairway at the end of the terrace dropping down to a small private jetty. Her uncle kept two boats moored there. A rowing skiff and a larger craft, a small motor boat with a cabin. As she looked over she saw a man smoking a cigarette and sheltering from the rain. He wore a black hat and raincoat and a suitcase was on the jetty beside him.

‘Who are you?’ she called sharply. ‘It’s private property down there.’

‘Good day to you, a colleen,’ he called cheerfully, lifted the case and came up the stairs.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

Devlin smiled. ‘It’s Michael Ryan I’m after. Would you be knowing him? I tried the door, but there was no answer.’

‘I’m his niece, Mary,’ she said. ‘Uncle Michael’s not due home just yet. He was on a night shift.’

‘A night shift?’ Devlin asked.

‘Yes, on the cabs. Ten till ten. Twelve hours.’

‘I see.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Another hour and a half then.’

She was slightly uncertain, unwilling to ask him in, he sensed that. Instead she said, ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’

‘Not surprising and me only just over from Ireland.’

‘You know Uncle Michael then?’

‘Oh, yes, old friends from way back. Conlon’s my name. Father Harry Conlon,’ he added, opening the top of his dark raincoat so that she could see the dog collar.

She relaxed at once. ‘Would you like to come in and wait, Father?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ll take a little walk and come back later. Could I leave my suitcase?’

‘Of course.’

She unlocked the kitchen door. He followed her in and put the case down. ‘Would you know St Mary’s Priory, by any chance?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You go along Wapping High Street to Wapping Wall. It’s near St James’s Stairs on the river. About a mile.’

He stepped back outside. ‘The grand view you have here. There’s a book by Dickens that starts with a girl and her father in a boat on the Thames searching for the bodies of the drowned and what was in their pockets.’

‘Our Mutual Friend,’ she told him. ‘The girl’s name was Lizzie.’

‘By God, girl, and aren’t you the well-read one?’

She warmed to him for that. ‘Books are everything.’

‘And isn’t that the fact?’ He touched his hat. ‘I’ll be back.’

He walked away along the terrace, his footsteps echoing on the boards and she closed the door.

From Wapping High Street the damage done to the London Docks in the Blitz was plain to see and yet the amazing thing was how busy they were, ships everywhere.

‘I wonder what old Adolf would make of this?’ Devlin said softly. ‘Give him a nasty surprise, I shouldn’t wonder.’

He found St Mary’s Priory with no trouble. It stood on the other side of the main road from the river, high walls in grey stone, darkened even more by the filth of the city over the years, the roof of the chapel clear to see on the other side, a bell tower rising above it. Interestingly enough the great oak door that was the entrance stood open.

The notice board beside it said: ‘St Mary’s Priory, Little Sisters of Pity: Mother Superior, Sister Maria Palmer.’ Devlin leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette and watched. After a while a porter in a blue uniform appeared. He stood on the top step looking up and down the road then went back in.

Below there was a narrow band of shingle and mud between the river and the retaining wall. Some little distance away were steps down from the wall. Devlin descended casually and strolled along the strip of shingle, remembering the architect’s drawings and the old drainage tunnel. The shingle ran out, water lapped in against the wall and then he saw it, an arched entrance almost completely flooded, a couple of feet of headroom only.

He went back up to the road and on the next corner from the Priory found a public house called The Bargee. He went into the saloon bar. There was a young woman in headscarf and slacks mopping the floor. She looked up, surprise on her face.

‘Yes, what do you want? We don’t open till eleven.’

Devlin had unbuttoned his raincoat and she saw the dog collar. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. Conlon – Father Conlon.’

There was a chain round her neck and he saw the crucifix. Her attitude changed at once. ‘What can I do for you, Father?’

‘I knew I was going to be in the neighbourhood and a colleague asked me to look up a friend of his. Father confessor at St Mary’s Priory. Stupid of me, but I’ve forgotten his name.’

‘That would be Father Frank.’ She smiled. ‘Well, that’s what we call him. Father Frank Martin. He’s priest in charge at St Patrick’s down the road and he handles the Priory as well. God alone knows how he manages at his age. Has no help at all, but then there’s a war on I suppose.’

‘St Patrick’s, you say? God bless you,’ Devlin told her and went out.

There was nothing very remarkable about the church. It was late Victorian in architecture like most Catholic churches in England, built after changes in English law had legitimized that branch of the Christian religion.

It had the usual smells, candles, incense, religious images, the Stations of the Cross, things which, in spite of his Jesuit education, had never meant very much to Devlin. He sat down in a pew and after a while Father Martin came out of the sacristy and genuflected at the altar. The old man stayed on his knees praying and Devlin got up and left quietly.

Michael Ryan was a little over six feet and carried himself well for his sixty years. Sitting at the kitchen table he wore a black leather jacket and white scarf, a tweed cap beside him. He was drinking tea from a large mug Mary had given him.

‘Conlon, you say?’ He shook his head. ‘I never had a friend called Conlon. Come to think of it, I never had a friend who was a priest.’

There was a knock at the kitchen door. Mary went and opened it. Devlin stood there in the rain. ‘God bless all here,’ he said and stepped inside.

Ryan stared at him, frowning and then an expression of bewilderment appeared on his face. ‘Dear God in Heaven. It can’t be – Liam Devlin. It is you?’

He stood up and Devlin put his hands on his shoulders. ‘The years have been kind to you, Michael.’

‘But you, Liam, what have they done to you?’

‘Oh, don’t believe everything you see. I needed a change in appearance. A few years added on.’ He took his hat off and ran his fingers through the grey stubble. ‘The hair owes more to the chemical industry at the moment than it does to nature.’

‘Come in, man, come in.’ Ryan shut the door. ‘Are you on the run or what?’

‘Something like that. It needs explaining.’

Ryan said, ‘This is my niece, Mary. Remember my elder brother, Seamus? He that died in Mountjoy Prison.’

‘A good man on the worst of days,’ Devlin said.

‘Mary – this is my old friend Liam Devlin.’

The effect on the girl was quite extraordinary. It was as if a light had been turned on inside. There was a look on her face that was almost holy. ‘You are Liam Devlin? Sweet Mother of Jesus, I’ve heard of you ever since I was a little girl.’

‘Nothing bad, I hope,’ Devlin said.

‘Sit down – please. Will you have some tea? Have you had your breakfast?’

‘Come to think of it, I haven’t.’

‘I’ve got some eggs and there’s a little of Uncle Michael’s black-market bacon left. You can share it.’

While she busied herself at the stove Devlin took off his coat and sat opposite Ryan. ‘Have you a telephone here?’

‘Yes. In the hall.’

‘Good. I need to make a call later.’

‘What is it, Liam? Has the IRA decided to start up again in London?’

‘I’m not from the IRA this time,’ Devlin told him. ‘Not directly. To be frank, I’m from Berlin.’

Ryan said, ‘I’d heard the organization had had dealings with the Germans, but to what purpose, Liam? Are you telling me you actually approve of that lot?’

‘Nazi bastards most of them,’ Devlin said. ‘Not all, mind you. Their aim is to win the war, mine is a united Ireland. I’ve had the odd dealing with them, always for money, money paid into a Swiss account on behalf of the organization.’

‘And you’re here for them now? Why?’

‘British Intelligence have a man under guard not far from here at St Mary’s Priory. A Colonel Steiner. As it happens, he’s a good man and no Nazi. You’ll have to take my word for that. It also happens that the Germans want him back. That’s why I’m here.’

‘To break him out?’ Ryan shook his head. ‘There was never anyone else like you. A raving bloody lunatic.’

‘I’ll try not to involve you too much, but I do need a little help. Nothing too strenuous, I promise. I could ask you to do it for old times’ sake, but I won’t.’ Devlin picked up the case, put it on the table and opened it. He pushed the clothes out of the way, ran a finger round the bottom and pulled out the lining revealing the money he had carried in there. He took out a bundle of white five-pound notes and laid them on the table. ‘A thousand pounds, Michael.’

Ryan ran his fingers through his hair. ‘My God, Liam, what can I say?’

The girl put plates of egg and bacon in front of each of them. ‘You should be ashamed to take a penny piece after the stories you’ve told me about Mr Devlin. You should be happy to do it for nothing.’

‘Oh, what it is to be young.’ Devlin put an arm about her waist. ‘If only life were like that, but hang on to your dreams, girl.’ He turned to Ryan. ‘Well, Michael?’

‘Christ, Liam, you only live once, but to show I’m a weak man, I’ll take the thousand quid!’

‘First things first. Do you happen to have a gun about the place?’

‘A Luger pistol from before the war under the floorboards in my bedroom. Must have been there five years and the ammunition to go with it.’

‘I’ll check it over. Is it convenient for me to stay here? It won’t be for long.’

‘Fine. We’ve plenty of room.’

‘Transport. I saw your black cab outside. Is that it?’

‘No, I have a Ford van in the shed. I only use it now and then. It’s the petrol situation, you see.’

‘That’s fine. I’ll use your phone now if I may.’

‘Help yourself.’

Devlin closed the door and stood alone at the telephone. He rang directory enquiries and asked for the telephone number for Shaw Place. There was a delay of two or three minutes only and then the girl gave him the number and he wrote it down. He sat on a chair beside the phone, thinking about it for a while, then picked it up, dialled the operator and gave her the number.

After a while the phone was picked up at the other end and a woman’s voice said, ‘Charbury three-one-four.’

‘Would Sir Maxwell Shaw be at home?’

‘No, he isn’t. Who is this?’

Devlin decided to take a chance. Remembering from the file that she had reverted to using her maiden name years ago, he said, ‘Would that be Miss Lavinia Shaw?’

‘Yes it is. Who are you?’

Devlin said, ‘Does the Falcon still wait? It is now time to strike.’

The effect was immediate and dramatic. ‘Oh, my God!’ Lavinia Shaw said and then there was silence.

Devlin waited for a moment, then said, ‘Are you there, Miss Shaw?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘I must see you and your brother as soon as possible. It’s urgent.’

She said, ‘My brother’s in London. He had to see his solicitor. He’s staying at the Army and Navy Club. He told me he’d have lunch there and catch the train back this afternoon.’

‘Excellent. Get in touch with him and tell him to expect me. Let’s say two o’clock. Conlon – Major Harry Conlon.’

There was a pause. She said, ‘Is it coming?’

‘Is what coming, Miss Shaw?’

‘You know – the invasion.’

He stifled a strong desire to laugh. ‘We’ll speak again I’m sure after I’ve seen your brother.’

He went back to the kitchen where Ryan still sat at the table. The girl, washing dishes at the sink, said, ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Every journey needs a first step.’ He picked up his case. ‘If you could show me my room. I need to change.’

She took him upstairs, led him into a back bedroom overlooking the river. Devlin unpacked his case, laid the uniform out on the bed. The Smith & Wesson he slipped under the mattress with the webbing belt and holster together with an ankle holster in leather which he also took from the case. He found the bathroom at the end of the corridor, had a quick shave and brushed his hair, then returned to the bedroom and changed.

He went downstairs fifteen minutes later resplendent in his uniform. ‘Jesus, Liam, I never thought I’d see the day,’ Ryan said.

‘You know the old saying, Michael,’ Devlin told him. ‘When you’re a fox with a pack on your tail you stand a better chance if you look like a hound.’ He turned to Mary and smiled. ‘And now, girl dear, another cup of tea would go down just fine.’

It was at that moment that the poor girl fell totally in love with him, what the French call coup de foudre, the thunderclap. She felt herself crimson and turned to the cooker. ‘Of course, Mr Devlin. I’ll make some fresh.’

To its members, the Army and Navy Club was simply known as the Rag. A great gloomy palazzo of a place in Venetian style and situated on Pall Mall. Its governing committee had been renowned since Victorian times for its leniency towards members disgraced or in trouble, and Sir Maxwell Shaw was a case in point. No one had seen the slightest necessity to blackball him over the business of his detection under Regulation 18B. He was, after all, an officer and a gentleman who had been both wounded and decorated for gallantry in the service of his country.

He sat in a comer of the morning room drinking the Scotch the waiter had brought in and thinking about Lavinia’s astonishing telephone call. Quite unbelievable that now, after so long, the summons should come. My God, but he was excited. Hadn’t felt such a charge in years.

He called for another Scotch and the same moment a porter approached him. ‘Your guest is here, Sir Maxwell.’

‘My guest?’

‘Major Conlon. Shall I show him in?’

‘Yes. Of course. At once, man.’

Shaw got to his feet, straightening his tie as the porter returned with Devlin who held out his hand and said cheerfully, ‘Harry Conlon. Nice to meet you, Sir Maxwell.’

Shaw was dumbfounded, not so much by the uniform, but by the dog collar. He shook hands as the waiter brought his glass of Scotch. ‘Would you like one of these, Major?’

‘No thanks.’ The waiter departed and Devlin sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘You look a little shaken, Sir Maxwell.’

‘Well goodness, man, of course I am. I mean, what is all this about? Who are you?’

‘Does the Falcon still wait?’ Devlin asked. ‘Because it is now time to strike.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘No buts, Sir Maxwell. You made a pledge a long time ago when Werner Keitel recruited you and your sister to, shall we say, the cause? Are you in or are you out? Where do you stand?’

‘You mean you’ve got work for me?’

‘There’s a job to be done.’

‘The invasion is finally coming?’

‘Not yet,’ Devlin said smoothly, ‘but soon. Are you with us?’

He’d been prepared to bring pressure to bear, but in the event, it was unnecessary. Shaw gulped down the whisky. ‘Of course I am. What do you require of me?’

‘Let’s take a little walk,’ Devlin said. ‘The park across the road will do fine.’

It had started to rain, bouncing from the windows. For a moment, there wasn’t a porter in the cloakroom. Shaw found his bowler hat, raincoat and umbrella. Amongst the jumble of coats there was a military trenchcoat. Devlin picked it up, followed him outside and put it on.

They went across to St James’s Park and walked along the side of the lake towards Buckingham Palace, Shaw with his umbrella up. After a while they moved into the shelter of some trees and Devlin lit a cigarette.

‘You want one of these things?’

‘Not at the moment. What is it you want me to do?’

‘Before the war your sister used to fly a Tiger Moth. Does she still have it?’

‘The RAF took it for training purposes in the winter of thirty-nine.’

‘She used a barn as a hangar. Is that still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the place she used to land and take off? The South Meadow, I think you called it? It’s not been ploughed up for the war effort or anything?’

‘No, all the land around Shaw Place, the land that used to be ours, is used for sheep grazing.’

‘And South Meadow is still yours?’

‘Of course. Is that important?’

‘You could say so. A plane from France will be dropping in and in the not too distant future.’

Shaw’s face became extremely animated. ‘Really? What for?’

‘To pick up me and another man. The less you know the better, but he’s important. Does any of this give you a problem?’

‘Good heavens, no. Glad to help, old man.’ Shaw frowned slightly. ‘You’re not German, I take it?’

‘Irish,’ Devlin told him. ‘But we’re on the same side. You were given a radio by Werner Keitel. Do you still have it?’

‘Ah, well, there you have me, old man. I’m afraid we don’t. You see, back in forty-one the government brought in this stupid regulation. I was in prison for a few months.’

‘I know about that.’

‘My sister, Lavinia, you know what women are like. She panicked. Thought the police might arrive and turn the house upside down. There’s a lot of marsh around our place, some of it bottomless. She threw the radio in, you see.’ He looked anxious. ‘Is this a problem, old man?’

‘Of a temporary nature only. You’re going back home today?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Good. I’ll be in touch. Tomorrow or the next day.’ Devlin ground out his cigarette. ‘Jesus, the rain. That’s London for you. Never changes,’ and he walked away.

When he turned along the terrace at the side of the house at Cable Wharf, the rain was drifting across the river. There was an awning stretching from the cable of the motor boat over the cockpit. Mary Ryan sat under it, safe from the rain, reading a book.

‘Are you enjoying yourself down there?’ Devlin called.

‘I am. Uncle Michael’s in the kitchen. Can I get you anything?’

‘No, I’m fine at the moment.’

When Devlin went in, Ryan was sitting at the table. He’d covered it with newspaper and was stripping a Luger pistol, oil on his fingers. ‘God help me, Liam, I’ve forgotten how to do this.’

‘Give me a minute to change and I’ll handle it,’ Devlin told him.

He was back in five minutes wearing dark slacks and a black polo-neck sweater. He reached for the Luger parts and got to work oiling them, then putting the whole weapon together expertly.

‘Did it go well?’ Ryan asked.

‘If meeting a raving lunatic could ever go well, then yes,’ Devlin told him. ‘Michael, I’m dealing with an English aristocrat so totally out of his skull that he’s still eagerly awaiting a German invasion and that’s when he’s sober.’

He told Ryan about Shaw Place, Shaw and his sister. When he was finished, Ryan said, ‘They sound mad, the both of them.’

‘Yes, but the trouble is I need a radio and they haven’t got one.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I was thinking about the old days, when I came over to handle that active service unit. They got weapons and even explosives from underworld sources. Am I right?’

Ryan nodded. ‘That’s true.’

‘And you, Michael, as I recall, were the man with the contacts.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Come off it, Michael. There’s a war on, black market in everything from petrol to cigarettes. Just the same in Berlin. Don’t tell me you aren’t in it up to your neck and you a London cabbie?’

‘All right,’ Ryan put up a hand defensively. ‘You want a radio, but the kind you want would have to be Army equipment.’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s no good going to some back-street trader.’

There was a silence between them. Devlin broke the Luger down and wiped each piece carefully with a rag. ‘Then who would I go to?’

Ryan said, ‘There’s a fella called Carver – Jack Carver. Has a brother called Eric.’

‘What are they, black marketeers?’

‘Much more than that. Jack Carver’s probably the most powerful gangster in London these days. Anything, but anything that goes down, Carver gets a piece. Not just black market. Girls, gambling, protection. You name it.’

‘I used to know a fella in Dublin in the same line of work,’ Devlin said. ‘He wasn’t so bad.’

‘Jack Carver’s the original bastard and young Eric’s a toad. Every girl on the pavement is terrified of him.’

‘Do you tell me?’ Devlin said, ‘I’m surprised nobody’s stepped in here before now.’

‘It wasn’t New York gangsters who invented cementing dead bodies into new roadways,’ Ryan said. ‘Jack Carver patented that idea. He’s the one who supplied that active service unit with their guns and explosives back in thirty-six. If he had a grandmother he’d sell her to the Germans if he thought there was money in it.’

‘I’m frightened to death,’ Devlin said. ‘Well, Carver is the kind of man who can lay his hands on anything, so if I want a radio ...’

‘Exactly.’

‘Fine. Where do I find him?’

‘There’s a dance hall a couple of miles from here in Limehouse. It’s called the Astoria Ballroom. Carver owns it. Has a big apartment upstairs. He likes that. Convenient for his brother to pick up the girls.’

‘And himself, I suppose?’

‘You’d suppose wrong, Liam. Girls don’t interest him in the slightest.’

Devlin nodded. ‘I take your drift.’

His hands moved suddenly with incredible dexterity, putting the Luger together. He was finished in seconds and rammed a magazine up the butt.

‘Jesus, you look like death himself when you do that,’ Ryan said.

‘It’s just a knack, Michael.’ Devlin wrapped up the oily newspapers and put them in the bin under the sink. ‘And now, I think we’ll take a little walk down by the river. I’d like your opinion on something.’

He went down the stairway to the boat and found Mary still reading. The rain dripped from the edge of the awning and there was a slight mist on the river. Devlin was wearing the military trenchcoat he’d stolen from the Army and Navy Club. He leaned against the rail, hands in his pockets.

‘What are you reading?’

She held the book up. ‘Our Mutual Friend.’

‘I’ve started something.’

She stood up. ‘We’re going to have fog in the next few days. A real pea-souper.’

‘How can you tell that?’

‘I’m not sure, but I’m always right. It’s the smell I recognize first.’

‘And do you like that?’

‘Oh yes. You’re alone, enclosed in your own private world.’

‘And isn’t that what we’re all looking for?’ He took her arm. ‘Your uncle Michael and I are taking a little walk in the rain by the river. Why don’t you come with us? That’s if you’ve got nothing better to do.’

They drove to St Mary’s Priory in Ryan’s cab. He parked at the side of the road and they sat looking at the entrance. There was a Morris saloon car parked outside painted olive green. It said ‘Military Police’ on the side. As they watched, Lieutenant Benson and a corporal came out of the entrance, got in the car and drove off.

‘You’re not going to get far through the front door,’ Ryan said.

‘More ways of skinning a cat than one,’ Devlin said. ‘Let’s take a little walk.’

The strip of shingle he’d walked along earlier seemed wider and when he stopped to indicate the archway there was more headroom. ‘It was almost under the surface this morning,’ he said.

‘The Thames is a tidal river, Liam, and the tide’s going out. There’ll be times when that thing’s under the water entirely. Is it important?’

‘Runs close to the foundations of the Priory. According to the plans there’s a grill into the crypt under the Priory chapel. It could be a way in.’

‘You’d need to take a look then.’

‘Naturally, but not now. Later, when it’s nice and dark.’

The rain increased to monsoon-like proportions and Ryan said, ‘For Christ’s sake, let’s get in out of this,’ and he started back to the steps.

Devlin took Mary’s arm. ‘Would you happen to have yourself a pretty frock tucked away somewhere? Because if you do, I’ll take you dancing this evening.’

She paused, staring at him, and when she started walking again the limp seemed more pronounced. ‘I don’t dance, Mr Devlin. I can’t.’

‘Oh, yes you can, my love. You can do anything in the whole wide world if you put your mind to it.’

9

The Astoria was a typical London dance hall of the period and very crowded. There was a band on each side of the room, one in blue tuxedos, the other in red. Devlin wore his dark clerical suit, but with a soft white shirt and black tie he’d borrowed from Ryan. He waited outside the cloakroom for Mary who’d gone in to leave her coat. When she came out he saw that she had on a neat cotton dress and brown stockings. She wore white plastic earrings, fashionable at the moment, and just a hint of lipstick.

‘My compliments on the dress,’ he said. ‘A vast improvement.’

‘I don’t get a chance to dress up very often,’ she told him.

‘Well, let’s make the most of it.’

He took her hand and pulled her on to the floor before she could protest. One of the bands was playing a slow foxtrot. He started to hum the tune. ‘You do that well,’ she said.

‘Ah, well, I have a small gift for music. I play the piano badly. You, on the other hand, dance rather well.’

‘It’s better out here in the middle of all these people. Nobody notices.’

She was obviously referring to her limp. Devlin said, ‘Girl dear, nobody notices anyway.’

She tightened her grip, putting her cheek against his shoulder and they moved into the crowd, the glitterball revolving on the ceiling, its rays bathing everything with blue light. The number came to an end and the other band broke into a fast, upbeat quickstep.

‘Oh, no,’ she protested. ‘I can’t manage this.’

‘All right,’ Devlin said. ‘Coffee it is then.’

They went up the stairs to the balcony. ‘I’m just going to the cloakroom,’ she said.

‘I’ll get the coffee and see you back here.’

She went round to the other side of the balcony, limping noticeably, passing two young men leaning on the rail. One of them wore a pin-striped double-breasted suit and hand-painted tie. The other was a few years older, in a leather jacket, with the flattened nose of a prize-fighter and scar tissue around the eyes.

‘You fancy that, Mr Carver?’ he asked as they watched Mary go into the cloakroom.

‘I certainly do, George,’ Eric Carver said. ‘I haven’t had a cripple before.’

Eric Carver was twenty-two years of age with thin, wolfish features and long blond hair swept back from the forehead. A tendency to asthma attacks had kept him out of the Army. At least that’s what it had said on the medical certificate his brother’s doctor had provided. His father had been a drunken bully who’d died under the wheels of a cart in the Mile End Road. Jack, already a criminal of some renown and fifteen years his senior, had looked after Eric and their mother until cancer had carried her off just before the war. Her death had brought them even closer. There was nothing Eric couldn’t do, no girl he couldn’t have because he was Jack Carver’s brother and he never let anyone forget it.

Mary emerged from the cloakroom and limped past them and Eric said, ‘I’ll see you later, George.’

George smiled, turned and walked away and Eric moved round the balcony to where Mary leaned over the rail watching the dancers. He slipped his arm around her waist and then ran one hand up to cup her left breast. ‘Now then, darling, and what’s your name?’

‘Please don’t,’ she said and started to struggle. ‘Oh, I like it,’ he said, his grip tightening.

Devlin arrived, a cup of coffee in each hand. He put them down on a nearby table. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

As Eric turned, slackening his grip, Devlin stood on the right foot, bearing down with all his weight. The young man snarled, trying to pull away, and Devlin picked up one of the cups of coffee and poured it down Eric’s shirt front.

‘Jesus, son, I’m sorry,’ he said.

Eric looked down at his shirt, total amazement on his face. ‘Why you little creep,’ he said and swung a punch.

Devlin blocked it easily and kicked him on the shin. ‘Now why don’t you go and play nasty little boys elsewhere?’

There was rage on Eric’s face. ‘You bastard. I’ll get you for this. You see if I don’t.’

He hobbled away and Devlin sat Mary down and gave her the other cup of coffee. She took a sip and looked up at him. ‘That was awful.’

‘A worm, girl dear, nothing to worry about. Will you be all right while I go and see this Carver fella? I shouldn’t be long.’

She smiled, ‘I’ll be fine, Mr Devlin,’ and he turned and walked away.

The door at the other end of the balcony said ‘Manager’s Office’, but when he opened it he found himself in a corridor. He went to the far end and opened another door on to a carpeted landing. Stairs went down to what was obviously a back entrance, but the sound of music drifted from above so up he went to the next landing where a door stood open. It was only a small room, with a desk and a chair on which the man George sat reading a newspaper while music sounded over the radio.

‘Nice, that.’ Devlin leaned on the doorway. ‘Carroll Gibbons from the Savoy. He plays the grand piano, that man.’

George looked him over coldly. ‘And what do you want?’

‘A moment of Jack Carver’s valuable time.’

‘What’s it about? Mr Carver don’t see just anybody.’

Devlin took out a five-pound note and laid it on the table.

‘That’s what it’s about my old son, that and another one hundred and ninety-nine like it.’

George put the newspaper down and picked up the banknote. ‘All right. Wait here.’

He brushed past Devlin and knocked on the other door, then went in. After a while he opened it again and looked out. ‘All right, he’ll see you.’

Jack Carver sat behind a walnut Regency desk that looked genuine. He was a hard, dangerous-looking man, his face fleshy, the signs of decay setting in early. He wore an excellent suit in navy worsted tailored in Savile Row, a discreet tie. To judge by outward appearances he could have been a prosperous businessman, but the jagged scar that ran from the corner of the left eye into the dark hairline and the look in the cold eyes belied that.

George stayed by the door and Devlin glanced around the room which was furnished in surprisingly good taste. ‘This is nice.’

‘All right, so what’s it about?’ Carver said, holding up the fiver.

‘Aren’t they beautiful, those things?’ Devlin said. ‘A work of genuine art, the Bank of England five-pound note.’

Carver said, ‘According to George, you said something about another hundred and ninety-nine. That came to a thousand quid when I went to school.’

‘Ah, you remembered, George?’ Devlin said.

At that moment, a door opened and Eric entered wearing a clean shirt and fastening his tie. He stopped dead, astonishment on his face that was quickly replaced by anger. ‘Here, that’s him, Jack, the little squirt who spilled coffee down me.’

‘Oh, an accident surely,’ Devlin told him.

Eric started towards him and Jack Carver snapped, ‘Leave it out, Eric, this is business.’ Eric stayed by the desk, rage in his eyes and Carver said, ‘Now what would I have to do for a thousand quid? Kill somebody?’

‘Come off it, Mr Carver, we both know you’d do that for fun,’ Devlin said. ‘No, what I need is an item of military equipment. I hear you’re a man who can get anything. At least that’s what the IRA seem to think. I wonder what Special Branch at Scotland Yard might make of that titbit?’

Carver smoothed the fiver between his fingers and looked up, his face blank. ‘You’re beginning to sound right out of order.’

‘Me and my big mouth. I’ll never learn,’ Devlin said. ‘And all I wanted was to buy a radio.’

‘A radio?’ For the first time Carver looked puzzled.

‘Of the transmitting and receiving kind. There’s a rather nice one the Army uses these days. It’s called a twenty-eight set, Mark Four. God knows why. Fits in a wooden box with a carrying handle. Just like a suitcase. Very handy.’ Devlin took a piece of paper from his pocket and put it on the desk. ‘I’ve written the details down.’

Carver looked at it. ‘Sounds a fancy piece of work to me. What would a man want a thing like that for?’

‘Now that, Mr Carver, is between me and my God. Can you handle it?’

‘Jack Carver can handle anything. A thousand, you said?’

‘But I must have it tomorrow.’

Carver nodded. ‘All right, but I’ll take half in advance.’

‘Fair enough.’

Devlin had expected as much, had the money waiting in his pocket. He took it out and dropped it on the table.

‘There you go.’

Carver scooped it up. ‘And it’ll cost you another thousand. Tomorrow night, ten o’clock. Just down the road from here. Black Lion Dock. There’s a warehouse with my name over the door. Be on time.’

‘Sure and you’re a hard man to do business with,’ Devlin said. ‘But then we have to pay for what we want in this life.’

‘You can say that again,’ Carver said. ‘Now get out of here.’

Devlin left the sound of George closing the door behind him. Eric said, ‘He’s mine, Jack, I want him.’

‘Leave it out, Eric. I’ve got this.’ Carver held up the five hundred pounds. ‘And I want the rest of it. Then he gets squeezed. I didn’t like that IRA crack he made at all. Very naughty. Now get out of it. I want to make a phone call.’

Mary was sitting quietly watching the dancers when Devlin joined her. ‘Did it go all right with Carver?’ she asked.

‘I’d rather shake hands with the Devil. That little rat I chastised turned out to be his brother, Eric. Would you like to go now?’

‘All right. I’ll get my coat and see you in the foyer.’

When they went out it was raining. She took his arm and they walked down the wet pavements towards the main road. There was an alley to the right and as they approached it, Eric Carver and George stepped out, blocking the way.

‘Saw you leaving. Thought we’d say goodnight,’ Eric said.

‘Mother of God!’ Devlin put the girl to one side.

‘Go on, George, do him up,’ Eric cried.

‘A pleasure.’ George came in, enjoying himself.

Devlin simply stepped to the left and stamped sideways at his knee-cap. George screamed in agony, doubled over and Devlin raised a knee into his face. ‘Didn’t they teach you that one, George?’

Eric backed away in terror. Devlin took Mary’s arm and walked past him. ‘Now where were we?’

Jack Carver said, ‘I told you to leave it out, Eric. You never learn.’

‘The bastard’s half crippled George. Dislodged his knee-cap. I had to take him to Dr Aziz round the corner.’

‘Never mind George, I phoned Morrie Green. He knows more about surplus military equipment than any man in London.’

‘Does he have this radio the little bastard wanted?’

‘No, but he can get one. No trouble. He’ll drop it in tomorrow. The interesting thing is what he said about it. It’s no ordinary radio. Sort of thing the Army would use operating behind enemy lines.’

Eric looked bewildered. ‘But what’s it mean, Jack?’

‘That there’s a lot more to that little sod than meets the eye. I’m going to have some fun with him tomorrow night.’ Carver laughed harshly. ‘Now pour me a Scotch.’

Devlin and Mary took the turning down to Harrow Street.

‘Shall I try and get a cab?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no, it’s not much more than a mile and a half and I like walking in the rain.’ She kept her hand lightly on his arm. ‘You’re very quick, Mr Devlin, you don’t hesitate. Back there, I mean.’

‘Yes, well I never could see the point.’

They walked in companionable silence for a while alongside the river towards Wapping. There was a heavy mist on the Thames and a large cargo boat slipped past them, green and red navigation lights plain in spite of the blackout.

‘I’d love to be like that boat,’ she said. ‘Going to sea, to far away, distant places, something different every day.’

‘Jesus, girl, you’re only nineteen. It’s all waiting for you out there and this bloody war can’t last for ever.’

They paused in the shelter of a wall while he lit a cigarette. She said, ‘I wish we had time to walk all the way down to the Embankment.’

‘Too far surely?’

‘I saw a film once. I think it was Fred Astaire. He walked along the Embankment with a girl and his chauffeur followed along behind in a Rolls-Royce.’

‘And you liked that?’

‘It was very romantic.’

‘Ah, there’s a woman for you.’

They turned along Cable Wharf and paused on the little terrace before going into the house.

‘I’ve had a lovely time.’

He laughed out loud. ‘You must be joking, girl.’

‘No, really. I like being with you.’

She still held his arm and leaned against him. He put his other arm around her and they stayed there for a moment, rain glistening as it fell through the shaded light above the door. He felt a sudden dreadful sadness for everything there had never been in his life, remembering a girl in Norfolk just like Mary Ryan, a girl he had hurt very badly indeed.

He sighed and Mary looked up. ‘What is it?’

‘Oh, nothing, I was just wondering where it had all gone. It’s a touch of that three o’clock in the morning feeling when you feel past everything there ever was.’

‘Not you, surely? You’ve got years ahead of you.’

‘Mary, my love. You are nineteen and I am an old thirty-five who’s seen it all and doesn’t believe in much any more. In a few days I’ll be on my way and a good thing.’ He gave her one small hug. ‘So let’s get inside before I lose what few wits I have entirely.’

Ryan, sitting on the other side of the table, said, ‘Jack Carver’s bad news, Liam, always was. How can you be certain he’ll play straight?’

‘He couldn’t if he wanted to,’ Devlin said, ‘but there’s more to this. Much more. The radio I need, the twenty-eight set. It’s an unusual piece of equipment and the more Carver realizes that, the more he’s going to want to know what’s going on.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’ll think of something, but that can wait. What can’t is an inspection of that drainage tunnel under the Priory.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Ryan said. ‘We’ll go in the motor boat. Only take fifteen minutes to get there.’

‘Would that be likely to cause attention?’

‘No problem.’ Ryan shook his head. ‘The Thames is the busiest highway in London these days. Lots of craft work the river at night. Barges. Freighters.’

Mary turned from the sink. ‘Can I come?’

Before Devlin could protest, Ryan said, ‘A good idea. You can mind the boat.’

‘But you stay on board,’ Devlin told her. ‘No funny business.’

‘Right, I’ll go and change.’ She rushed out.

‘Oh, to be young,’ Devlin said.

Ryan nodded. ‘She likes you, Liam.’

‘And I like her, Michael old friend, and that’s where it will end. Now, what do we need?’

‘The tide is low, but it’s still going to be wet. I’ll dig out some overalls and boots,’ Ryan told him and went out.

The small motor boat moved in towards the strand, its engine a muted throbbing. The prow carved its way into mud and sand and Ryan cut the engine. ‘Right, Mary. Keep an eye on things. We shouldn’t be long.’

He and Devlin in their dark overalls and boots went over the side and faded into the darkness. Ryan carried a bag of tools and Devlin a large torch of the type used by workmen. There was three feet of water in the tunnel.

Ryan said, ‘So we’ll have to wade.’

As they moved into the water the smell was pungent. Devlin said, ‘Christ, you can tell it’s a sewer.’

‘So try not to fall down and if you do, keep your mouth closed,’ Ryan said. ‘The terrible place for diseases, sewers.’

Devlin led the way, the tunnel stretching ahead of them in the rays of the lamp. The brickwork was obviously very old, corroded and rotting. There was a sudden splash and two rats leapt from a ledge and swam away.

‘Filthy creatures,’ Ryan said in disgust.

‘It can’t be far,’ Devlin said. ‘A hundred yards. Not much more surely.’

Suddenly, there it was, an iron grill perhaps four feet by three, just above the surface of the water. They looked through into the crypt and Devlin played the light across the interior. There were a couple of tombs almost completely covered with water and stone steps in the far corner going up to a door.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ Ryan said. ‘The grill’s done nothing to help their drainage system.’

‘It was put in nearly forty years ago,’ Devlin said. ‘Maybe it worked then.’

Ryan got a crowbar from his bag of tools. Devlin held the bag for him while the other man pushed into the mortar in the brickwork beside the grill. He jumped back in alarm as the wall buckled and five or six bricks tumbled into the water. ‘The whole place is ready to come down. We can have this grill out in a fast ten minutes, Liam.’

‘No, not now. I need to know what the situation is upstairs. We’ve found out all we need for the moment, which is that the grill can be pulled out any time we want. Now let’s get out of here.’

At the same moment in Romney Marsh, the wind from the sea rattled the French windows of the drawing room as Shaw closed the curtains. The furniture was no longer what it had been, the carpets faded, but there was a log fire burning in the hearth, Nell lying in front of it. The door opened and Lavinia came in. She was wearing slacks and carried a tray. ‘I’ve made coffee, darling.’

‘Coffee?’ he roared. ‘To hell with the coffee. I found a bottle of champagne in the cellar. Bollinger. That’s what we need tonight.’

He took it from a bucket on the table, opened it with a flourish and poured some into two glasses.

‘This man, Conlon,’ she said. ‘What did you say he was like?’

‘I’ve told you about five times, old girl.’

‘Oh, Max, isn’t it exciting? To you, my darling.’

‘And to you, old girl,’ he said, toasting her in return.

In Berlin, it was very quiet in Schellenberg’s office as he sat working through some papers in the light of a desk lamp. The door opened and Ilse looked in. ‘Coffee, General?’

‘Are you still here? I thought you’d gone home.’

‘I’m going to spend the night in the emergency accommodation. Asa’s stayed on too. He’s in the canteen.’

‘We might as well join him.’ Schellenberg stood up and buttoned his tunic.

‘Are you worried, General, about Devlin?’

‘My dear Ilse. Liam Devlin is a man of infinite resource and guile. Given those attributes you could say I’ve nothing to worry about.’ He opened the door and smiled. ‘Which is why I’m frightened to death instead.’

From his window Steiner could see across to the river. He peered through a chink in his blackout curtain and closed it again. ‘A large ship going downriver. Amazing how active things are out there even at night.’

Father Martin, sitting by the small table, nodded. ‘As the song says, Old Father Thames just goes rolling along.’

‘During the day I sometimes sit at the window and watch for a couple of hours at a time.’

‘I understand, my son. It must be difficult for you.’ The priest sighed and got to his feet. ‘I must go. I have a midnight Mass.’

‘Good heavens, Father, do you ever stop?’

‘There’s a war on, my son.’ Father Martin knocked on the door.

The MP on duty unlocked it and the old priest went along the corridor to the outer door. Lieutenant Benson was sitting at the desk in his room and glanced up. ‘Everything all right, Father?’

‘As right as it will ever be,’ Martin said and passed through.

As he went down the stairway to the foyer, Sister Maria Palmer came out of her office. ‘Still here, Father? Don’t you ever go home?’

‘So much to do, Sister.’

‘You look tired.’

‘It’s been a long war.’ He smiled. ‘Good night and God bless you.’

The night porter came out of his cubby-hole, helped him on with his raincoat and gave him his umbrella, then unbolted the door. The old man paused, looking out at the rain, then put up his umbrella and walked away wearily.

Munro was still in his office, standing at a map table, charts of the English Channel and the Normandy approaches spread before him, when Carter limped in.

‘The invasion, sir?’

‘Yes, Jack. Normandy. They’ve made their decision. Let’s hope the Führer still believes it will be the Pas de Calais.’

‘I understand his personal astrologer’s convinced him of it,’ Carter said.

Munro laughed. ‘The ancient Egyptians would only appoint generals who’d been born under the sign of Leo.’

‘I never knew that, sir.’

‘Yes, well you learn something new every day. No going home tonight, Jack. Eisenhower wants a blanket report on the strength of the French Resistance units in this general area and he wants it in the morning. We’ll have to snatch a few hours here.’

‘Very well, sir.’

‘Was there anything else?’

‘Vargas gave me a call.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Another message from his cousin in Berlin. Could he send as much information as possible about St Mary’s Priory.’

‘All right, Jack, cook something up in the next couple of days, staying as close to the truth as possible and pass it on to Vargas. We’ve got more important things to take care of at the moment.’

‘Fine, sir. I’ll organize some tea and sandwiches.’

‘Do that, Jack, it’s going to be a long night.’

Carter went out and Munro returned to his maps.

10

The following morning Father Martin knelt at the altar rail and prayed, eyes closed. He was tired, that was the trouble, had felt so tired for such a long time and he prayed for strength to the God he had loved unfalteringly all his life and for the ability to stand upright.

‘I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel, who even at night directs my heart. I keep the Lord ever in my sight.’

He had spoken the words aloud and faltered, unable to think of the rest. A strong voice said: ‘Since he is at my right hand I shall stand firm.’ Father Martin half-turned and found Devlin standing there in uniform, the trenchcoat over one arm. ‘Major?’ The old man tried to get off his knees and Devlin put a hand under his elbow.

‘Or Father. The uniform is only for the duration. Conlon – Harry Conlon.’

‘And I’m Frank Martin, priest-in-charge. Is there something I can do for you?’

‘Nothing special. I’m on extended leave. I was wounded in Sicily,’ Devlin told him. ‘Spending a few days with friends not too far from here. I saw St Pat’s and thought I’d look in.’

‘Well then, let me offer you a cup of tea,’ the old man said.

Devlin sat in the small crowded sacristy while Martin boiled water in an electric kettle and made the tea.

‘So you’ve been in it from the beginning?’

Devlin nodded. ‘Yes, November thirty-nine I got my call.’

‘I see they gave you an MC.’

‘The Sicilian landings, that was,’ Devlin told him.

‘Was it bad?’ Father Martin poured the tea and offered an open tin of condensed milk.

‘Bad enough.’ The old man sipped his tea and Devlin lit a cigarette. ‘Just as bad for you, though. The Blitz, I mean. You’re rather close to the London Docks.’

‘Yes, it was hard.’ Martin nodded. ‘And it doesn’t get any easier. I’m on my own here these days.’

He suddenly looked very frail and Devlin felt a pang of conscience and yet he had to take this as far as it would go, he knew that. ‘I called in at the local pub, The Bargee I think it was called, for some cigarettes. I was talking to a girl there who mentioned you warmly.’

‘Ah, that would be Maggie Brown.’

‘Told me you were father confessor at the hospice near here? St Mary’s Priory?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Must give you a lot of extra work, Father.’

‘It does indeed, but it must be done. We all have to do our bit.’ The old man looked at his watch. ‘In fact I’ll have to be off there in a few minutes. Rounds to do.’

‘Do you have many patients there?’

‘It varies. Fifteen, sometimes twenty. Many are terminal. Some are special problems. Servicemen who’ve had breakdowns. Pilots occasionally. You know how it is.’

‘I do indeed,’ Devlin said. ‘I was interested when I walked by earlier to see a couple of military policemen going in. It struck me as odd. I mean, military policemen in a hospice.’

‘Ah, well, there’s a reason for that. Occasionally they keep the odd German prisoner of war on the top floor. I don’t know the background, but they’re usually special cases.’

‘Oh, I see the reason for the MPs then. There’s someone there now?’

‘Yes, a Luftwaffe colonel. A nice man. I’ve even managed to persuade him to come to Mass for the first time in years.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Well, I must make a move.’ The old man reached for his raincoat and Devlin helped him on with it. As they went out into the church he said, ‘I’ve been thinking, Father. Here’s me with time on my hands and you carrying all this burden alone. Maybe I could give you a hand? Hear a few confessions for you at least.’

‘Why, that’s extraordinarily kind of you,’ Father Martin said.

Liam Devlin had seldom felt lower in his life, but he carried on. ‘And I’d love to see something of your work at the Priory.’

‘Then so you shall,’ the old man said and led the way down the steps.

The Priory chapel was as cold as could be. They moved down to the altar and Devlin said, ‘It seems very damp. Is there a problem?’

‘Yes, the crypt has been flooded for years. Sometimes quite badly. No money available to put it right.’

Devlin could see the stout oak door banded with iron in the shadows in the far corner, ‘Is that the way in then?’

‘Yes, but no one goes down there any more.’

‘I once saw a church in France with the same trouble. Could I take a look?’

‘If you like.’

The door was bolted. He eased it back and ventured halfway down the steps. When he flicked on his lighter he saw the dark water around the tombs and lapping at the grill. He retraced his steps and closed the door.

‘Dear, yes, there’s not much to be done for it,’ he called.

‘Yes. Well, make sure you bolt it again,’ the old man called back. ‘We don’t want anyone going down there. They could do themselves an injury.’

Devlin rammed the bolt home, the solid sound echoing through the chapel, then quietly eased it back. Shrouded in shadows, the door was in the corner; it would be remarkable if anyone noticed. He rejoined Father Martin and they moved up the aisle to the outer door. As they opened it, Sister Maria Palmer came out of her office.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Father Martin said. ‘I looked in when we arrived, but you weren’t there. I’ve been showing Father Conlon – ’ He laughed, correcting himself. ‘I’ll start again. I’ve been showing Major Conlon the chapel. He’s going to accompany me on my rounds.’

‘Father suits me just fine.’ Devlin shook her hand. ‘A pleasure, Sister.’

‘Major Conlon was wounded in Sicily.’

‘I see. Have they given you a London posting?’ she asked.

‘No – I’m still on sick leave. In the neighbourhood for a few days. Just passing through. I met Father Martin at his church.’

‘He’s been kind enough to offer to help me out at the church. Hear a few confessions and so on,’ Martin said.

‘Good, you need a rest. We’ll do the rounds together.’ As they started up the stairs she said, ‘By the way, Lieutenant Benson’s gone on a three-day pass. That young sergeant’s in charge. What’s his name? Morgan, isn’t it?’

‘The Welsh boy?’ Martin said. ‘I called in on Steiner last night. Did you?’

‘No, we had an emergency admission after you’d gone, Father. I didn’t have time. I’ll see him now though. I’m hoping the penicillin’s finally cleared the last traces of his chest infection.’

She went up the stairs in front of them briskly, skirts swirling, and Devlin and Martin followed.

They worked their way from room to room, staying to talk here and there to various patients and it was half an hour before they reached the top floor. The MP on duty at the table outside the door jumped up and saluted automatically when he saw Devlin. The door was opened by another MP and they passed through.

The young sergeant sitting in Benson’s room stood up and came out. ‘Sister – Father Martin.’

‘Good morning, Sergeant Morgan,’ Sister Maria Palmer said. ‘We’d like to see Colonel Steiner.’

Morgan took in Devlin’s uniform and the dog collar. ‘I see,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Major Conlon’s having a look round with us,’ she informed him.

Devlin took out his wallet and produced the fake War Office pass Schellenberg’s people had provided, the one that guaranteed unlimited access. He passed it across.

‘I think you’ll find that takes care of it, Sergeant.’

Morgan examined it. ‘I’ll just get the details for the admittance sheet, sir.’ He did so and handed it back. ‘If you’d follow me.’

He led the way along to the end of the corridor, nodded and the MP on duty unlocked the door. Sister Maria Palmer led the way in followed by Father Martin, Devlin bringing up the rear. The door closed behind them.

Steiner, sitting by the window, stood up and Sister Maria Palmer said, ‘And how are you today, Colonel?’

‘Fine, Sister.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t see you last night. I had an emergency, but Father Martin tells me he called in.’

‘As usual.’ Steiner nodded.

The old priest said, ‘This is Major Conlon, by the way. As you can see, an Army chaplain. He’s on sick leave. Like yourself, recently wounded.’

Devlin smiled amiably and put out his hand. ‘A great pleasure, Colonel.’

Kurt Steiner, making one of the most supreme efforts of his life, managed to keep his face straight. ‘Major Conlon.’ Devlin gripped the German’s hand hard and Steiner said, ‘Anywhere interesting? Where you picked up your wound, I mean?’

‘Sicily,’ Devlin said.

‘A hard campaign.’

‘Ah, well, I wouldn’t really know. I got mine the first day.’ He walked to the window and looked out down to the road beside the Thames. ‘A fine view you’ve got here. You can see right down to those steps and that little beach, the boats passing. Something to look at.’

‘It helps pass the time.’

‘So, we must go now,’ Sister Maria Palmer said and knocked at the door.

Father Martin put a hand on Steiner’s shoulder. ‘Don’t forget I’ll be in the chapel tonight at eight to hear confessions. All sinners welcome.’

Devlin said, ‘Now then, Father, didn’t you say I’d take some of the load off your shoulders? It’s me who’ll be sitting in the box tonight.’ He turned to Steiner. ‘But you’re still welcome, Colonel.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Father Martin said.

As the door opened, Sister Maria Palmer cut in. ‘An excellent idea.’

They moved along the corridor and Morgan opened the outer door for them. Father Martin said, ‘Just one thing. I usually start at seven. The MPs bring Steiner down at eight because everyone’s gone by then. They prefer it that way.’

‘So you see him last?’

‘That’s right.’

‘No problem,’ Devlin said.

They reached the foyer and the porter handed them their raincoats. Sister Maria Palmer said, ‘We’ll see you tonight then, Major.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Devlin said and went down the steps with the old priest.

‘God save us, talk about Daniel in the lion’s den,’ Ryan said. ‘You’ve the cheek of Old Nick himself.’

‘Yes, well it worked,’ Devlin said. ‘But I wouldn’t like to hang out there too much. Asking for trouble that.’

‘But you will go back this evening?’

‘I have to. My one chance of speaking properly to Steiner.’

Mary, sitting at one end of the table hugging herself, said, ‘But Mr Devlin, to sit there in the box and hear people’s confessions and some of them nuns – that’s a mortal sin.’

‘I’ve no choice, Mary. It must be done. It doesn’t sit well with me to make a fool of that fine old man, but there it is.’

‘Well, I still think it’s a terrible thing to be doing.’ She left the room, came back a moment later in her raincoat and went outside.

‘The temper on her sometimes,’ Ryan said.

‘Never mind that now, we’ve things to discuss. My meeting tonight with Carver. Black Lion Dock. Could we get there in your boat?’

‘I know it well. Take about thirty minutes. Ten o’clock you said.’

‘I’d like to be there earlier. To review the situation, if you follow me.’

‘Leave at nine then. You’ll be back from the Priory before, surely.’

‘I would think so.’ Devlin lit a cigarette. ‘I can’t go down to Shaw Place in your taxi, Michael. A London cab would definitely look out of place in Romney Marsh. This Ford van of yours. Is it in running order?’

‘Yes. As I said, I use it now and then.’

‘One very important point,’ Devlin said. ‘When I get Steiner out, we move and move fast. Two hours to Shaw Place, the plane waiting and out of it before the authorities know what’s hit them. I’ll need the van that night and it would be a one-way trip. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to try and get it back.’

Ryan smiled. ‘I took it as payment for a bad debt from a dealer in Brixton two years ago. The log book’s so crooked it’s a joke and so is the number plate. No way could it be traced back to me and it’s in good order. You know me and engines. They’re my hobby.’

‘Ah, well, a bob or two extra for you for that,’ Devlin said and got up. ‘I’ll go and make my peace with your niece now.’

She was sitting under the awning in the boat reading again as he went down the steps.

‘What is it this time?’ he said.

‘The Midnight Court,’ she told him reluctantly.

‘In English or Irish?’

‘I don’t have the Irish.’

‘The great pity. I used to be able to recite the whole of it in Irish. My uncle gave me a Bible for doing that. He was a priest.’

‘I wonder what he’d say about what you’re doing this evening,’ she said.

‘Oh, I know very well,’ Devlin told her. ‘He’d forgive me,’ and he went back up the steps.

Devlin sat in the box in uniform, just a violet stole about his neck and listened patiently to four nuns and two male patients as they confessed their sins. It was nothing very dreadful that he heard. Sins of omission in the main, or matters so petty they were hardly worth a thought, and yet they were to those anonymous people talking to him on the other side of the grill. He honestly did the best he could, tried to say the right thing, but it was an effort. His last client departed. He sat there in the silence and then the chapel door opened and he heard the ring of Army boots on the stone floor.

The confessional box door opened and closed. From the darkness Steiner said, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘Not as much as I have, Colonel.’ Devlin switched on his light and smiled through the grill at him.

‘Mr Devlin,’ Steiner said. ‘What have they done to you?’

‘A few changes, just to put the hounds off.’ Devlin ran his hands through his grey hair. ‘How have you been?’

‘Never mind that. The British were hoping you would turn up. I was interviewed by a Brigadier Munro of Special Operations Executive. He told me they’d made sure my presence in London was known in Berlin by passing the information through a man at the Spanish Embassy called Vargas. He works for them.’

‘I knew it,’ Devlin said. ‘The bastard.’

‘They told me two things. That General Walter Schellenberg was in charge of organizing my escape and that they expected him to use you. They’re waiting for you, hoping you’ll show up.’

‘Yes, but I allowed for British Intelligence handling it the way they have. Vargas is still getting messages asking for more information. They will be thinking I’m still in Berlin.’

‘Good God!’ Steiner said.

‘How many MPs escort you down here?’

‘Two. Usually, Benson the Lieutenant, but he’s on leave.’

‘Right. I’m going to have you out of here in the next two or three days. We’ll exit through the crypt. It’s pretty well organized. There’ll be a boat waiting on the river. After that a two-hour drive to a place where we’ll be picked up by plane from France.’

‘I see. Everything organized down to the last detail, just like Operation Eagle, and remember how that turned out.’

‘Ah, yes, but I’m in charge this time.’ Devlin smiled. ‘The evening we go you’ll come down to confession just like tonight. Usual time.’

‘How will I know?’

‘A fine view from your window and the steps down to the little beach by the Thames. Remember?’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘The day we decide to go, there’ll be a young girl standing by the wall at the top of those steps. She’ll be wearing a black beret and an old raincoat. She’ll be there at noon exactly so watch at noon each day and she has a strong limp, Colonel, very pronounced. You can’t miss her.’

‘So, I see her, then we go that evening?’ Steiner hesitated. ‘The MPs?’

‘A detail only.’ Devlin smiled. ‘Trust me. Now three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers and be off with you.’

He switched off the light. The door banged, there was a murmur of voices, the sound of boots again and the outer door opening and closing.

Devlin came out and moved towards the altar. ‘God forgive me,’ he murmured.

He checked that the bolt of the crypt door was still pulled back, then went into the sacristy, got his trenchcoat and left.

Ryan stood at the door as Devlin changed quickly from the uniform into dark slacks and sweater. He pulled up his right trouser leg and strapped the ankle holster to it, tucking his sock up around the end. He slipped the Smith & Wesson .38 into it and pulled down his trouser.

‘Just in case.’ He picked up the old leather jacket Ryan had loaned him and put it on. Then he opened his suitcase, took out a wad of fivers and put them in his inside pocket.

They went downstairs and found Mary sitting at the table reading again. ‘Is there any tea in the pot?’ Devlin asked.

‘A mouthful, I think. Are we going now?’ She poured the tea into a cup.

He opened the kitchen table drawer, took out the Luger, checked it and slipped it inside his jacket. ‘You’re not going anywhere, girl dear, not this time,’ he told her and swallowed his tea.

She started to protest, but her uncle shook his head. ‘He’s right, girl, it could get nasty. Best stay out of it.’

She watched, disconsolate, as they went down the steps to the boat and cast off. As Ryan started the engine, Devlin moved into the little wheelhouse beside him and lit a cigarette in cupped hands.

‘And the same applies to you, Michael,’ he said. ‘Stay out of it. My affair, not yours.’

Jack and Eric Carver arrived at Black Lion Dock at nine forty-five in a Humber limousine, George driving. The dock was almost completely dark except for the light over the main warehouse doors, shaded as requested by the blackout regulations. The sign on the warehouse said: ‘Carver Brothers – Export and Import’ and Jack Carver looked up at it with satisfaction as he got out of the car.

‘Very nice that. The sign writer did a good job.’

It was very quiet, the only sounds those of shipping on the river. Eric followed him and George limped round to the back of the car, opened the boot and took out the radio set in its wooden case painted olive green.

Carver turned to his brother. ‘All right, Eric, let’s get on with it.’

Eric unlocked the Judas gate in the main door, stepped inside and found the light switch. His brother and George followed him. The warehouse was stacked with packing cases of every kind. There was a table in the centre and a couple of chairs, obviously used by a shipping clerk.

‘Right, put it on the table.’ George did as he was told and Carver added, ‘You’ve got the shooter?’

George took a Walther PPK from one pocket, a silencer from the other and screwed it into place.

Carver lit a cigar. ‘Look at that, Eric, bloody marvellous. Just sounds like a cork popping.’

‘I can’t wait for that little bastard to get here,’ Eric said.

But Devlin had actually been there for some time, hidden in the shadows at the rear of the building having gained access through an upstairs window. He watched George position himself behind a stack of packing cases, the Carver brothers sitting down at the table, then turned and slipped out the way he had come.

A couple of minutes later he approached the main door, whistling cheerfully, opened the Judas and went in. ‘God save all here,’ he called, and approached the table. ‘You got it then, Mr Carver?’

‘I told you. I can get anything. You didn’t mention your name last night, by the way.’

‘Churchill,’ Devlin said. ‘Winston.’

‘Very funny.’

Devlin opened the case. The radio fitted inside, head-phones, Morse tapper, aerials, everything. It looked brand new. He closed the lid again.

‘Satisfied?’ Carver asked.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Then cash on the table.’

Devlin took the thousand pounds from his pocket and passed it over. ‘The hard man, eh, Mr Carver?’

‘Hard enough.’ Carver dropped the money back on the table. ‘Of course, we now come to the other matter.’

‘And what matter would that be?’

‘Your insulting treatment of my brother and your threats to me. IRA and Special Branch. I can’t have that. I’ve got a reputation to think of. You need chastising, my son.’ He blew cigar smoke in Devlin’s face. ‘George.’

George moved fast considering his damaged knee, had the Walther at the back of Devlin’s neck in a second. Eric reached inside the Irishman’s jacket and relieved him of the Luger. ‘Look at that, Jack. Cunning bastard.’

Devlin spread his arms. ‘All right, Mr Carver, so you’ve got me. What happens now?’

He walked across to a packing case, sat down and took out a cigarette. Carver said, ‘You’re a cool bastard, I’ll give you that.’

‘I’ll tell you what happens now,’ Eric said, taking a cut-throat razor from his pocket and opening it. ‘I’m going to slice your ears off, that’s what I’m going to do.’

‘While George holds the gun on me?’ Devlin asked.

‘That’s the general idea,’ Eric told him.

‘Only one problem with that,’ Devlin said. ‘That gun is a Walther PPK and you have to pull the slider back to put yourself in business and I don’t think George has done that.’

George pulled at the slider desperately, Devlin hitched up his trouser, yanked the Smith & Wesson from the ankle holster and fired, all in one smooth motion, drilling him through the upper arm so that he cried out and dropped the Walther.

Devlin picked it up. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Thanks very much.’ He pushed it into his waistband.

Carver sat there, a look of total disbelief on his face. Eric looked frightened to death as Devlin put first the money and then the Luger inside his leather jacket. He picked up the case containing the radio and walked away.

As he reached the door, he turned. ‘Jesus, Eric, I was forgetting. You said something about slicing my ears off?’

His arm swung up, he fired and Eric screamed as the lower half of his right ear disintegrated. He grabbed at it, blood spurting.

Devlin said, ‘A good job you don’t wear earrings.’

He stepped out and the Judas gate banged behind him.

Schellenberg was in his office when the door burst open and Ilse appeared. Asa Vaughan was at her shoulder, excitement on his face.

‘What on earth is it?’ Schellenberg demanded.

‘You must come to the radio room now. It’s Devlin, General, calling from London.’

The radio was open on the kitchen table, the aerials looped all the way round the walls. Ryan and Mary sat watching in fascination as Devlin tapped away in Morse code.

‘Jesus,’ he said, frowning. There was a little more action and then he stopped. ‘That’s it. Get the aerials down.’

Mary moved around the kitchen coiling up the wires. Ryan said, ‘Is every thing all right, Liam?’

‘All wrong, old son. We were supposed to try and be back in France for the twenty-first. Now they say the great occasion is on the fifteenth and as tonight is the twelfth, that doesn’t give us much time.’

‘Is it possible Liam?’

Devlin said, ‘First thing in the morning we’ll take a run down to Romney Marsh. See what the situation is at Shaw Place.’ He turned to Mary. ‘Would you like a day out in the country?’

‘It sounds just fine to me.’

‘Good, then I’ll give the Shaws a call and warn them to expect me.’

Back in his office Schellenberg sat at his desk, studying the message in front of him, Asa Vaughan and Ilse watching.

‘So, what do we know?’ Schellenberg said. ‘He’s there, at his IRA friend’s house, he’s made contact with Shaw and now with Steiner.’

‘Everything fits,’ Asa said.

‘Perhaps, but he can’t make the fifteenth. It would be impossible, even for Devlin.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder if anything is impossible to that guy,’ Asa said.

‘Stand by tomorrow,’ Schellenberg commented. ‘That was his final instruction. Well, we shall see.’ He stood up. ‘I doubt whether the canteen can run to champagne, but whatever they can manage is on me.’

11

South of the Thames, they took the road to Maidstone, Ryan driving, Devlin squeezed beside him. He wasn’t in uniform, but wore his trenchcoat over the clerical suit and dog collar, the black trilby slanted over one ear. Ryan had told him the truth. The Ford’s engine was in apple-pie order in spite of the vehicle’s rattletrap appearance.

‘You were right, Michael,’ Devlin said. ‘She’s a runner, this old van of yours.’

‘Sure and I could race her at Brooklands if they were still racing at Brooklands,’ Ryan grinned.

Mary was sitting in the back of the van reading a book as usual. ‘Are you all right back there?’ Devlin asked her.

‘I’m fine.’

‘We’ll stop for a cup of tea in a while.’

In Maidstone, Ryan drove round the centre of the town until he found a cycle shop. Devlin went in and bought half a dozen standard bicycle lamps with fresh batteries.

‘I’ve cleaned him out,’ he said when he returned. ‘Told him I wanted them for my church Scout troop. There’s no doubt about it, this collar comes in useful on occasion.’

‘And why would you want those?’ Mary asked.

‘An aeroplane coming in through the darkness at night is like a lost bird, girl dear. It needs a welcome. A little light on the situation, you might say.’

On the other side of Ashford they pulled in at the side of the road and Mary opened a Thermos flask and they had tea. There was a track leading to a little copse. It had stopped raining, but was still very damp. The sky was dark and threatening all the way to Romney Marsh and the sea in the distance. Mary and Devlin strolled along the track and stood under a tree, taking it all in.

He nodded at her book. ‘What this time?’

‘Poetry,’ she said. ‘Robert Browning. Do you like poetry?’

‘I had some published once. What’s called in the trade a slim volume.’ He laughed. ‘I could make the stuff up at the drop of a hat and then I realized one day just how bad it was.’

‘I don’t believe you. Make something up about me.’

He stuck a cigarette in his mouth. ‘All right.’ He thought for a moment then said: ‘Mystery girl, who are you? Hurrying nowhere in your tight skirt and frizzled hair, legs heavy with promise.’

There was a look of mischief on his face and she struck him lightly with her clenched fist. ‘That’s terrible.’

‘I warned you.’ He lit his cigarette. ‘Good poetry says it all for you in a few lines.’

‘All right, what would sum me up?’

‘Easy. “Now Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find”.’

‘That’s marvellous,’ she said. ‘Did you write that?’

‘Not exactly. A Yankee fella called Walt Whitman thought of it first.’ It started to rain and he put a hand on her elbow. ‘But I wish I’d written it for you. Let’s get moving,’ and they hurried back to the van.

At the apartment over the Astoria Jack Carver was sitting at the table by the window having a late breakfast when Eric came in. His ear was heavily bandaged, tape running diagonally up across his forehead holding the dressing in place. He looked terrible.

‘How do you feel?’ Carver asked.

‘Shocking, Jack, the pain’s bloody awful. Aziz gave me some pills, but they don’t seem to have much effect.’

‘He tells me George is in a bad way. That bullet splintered the bone. He could be left with a permanently stiff arm, as well as the leg.’

Eric poured coffee, his hand shaking. ‘That little sod, Jack. We’ve got to get our hands on him. We’ve got to.’

‘We will, son,’ Jack said. ‘And then it’ll be our turn. I’ve put his description out all over London. He’ll turn up. Now drink your coffee and have something to eat.’

Using the road map, Ryan found Charbury easily enough and an enquiry at the little village store led them to Shaw Place. The great rusting iron gates at the end of the drive stood open. The drive, stretching towards the old house, had grass growing through the gravel.

‘This place has seen better days,’ Ryan commented.

Devlin stepped out, opened the van doors and got the radio and the bag of cycle lamps out. ‘You can leave me here,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk up to the house.’

‘What time shall we call back?’ Ryan asked.

‘Give me four hours and if I’m not here, just wait. Go and have a look at Rye or one of those places.’

‘Fine,’ Ryan said. ‘Take care, Liam,’ and he drove away.

Devlin picked up the case and started up the long drive. The house showed every evidence of lack of money. The long shutters at the windows badly needed a coat of paint, as did the front door. There was a bell pull. He gave it a heave and waited, but there was no response. After a while he picked up the case and went round to the rear of the house where there was a cobbled courtyard. One of the stable doors stood open and there were sounds of activity. He put the case down and looked in.

Lavinia Shaw wore riding breeches and boots, her hair bound in a scarf as she curried a large black stallion. Devlin put a cigarette in his mouth and snapped open his lighter. The sound startled her and she looked round.

‘Miss Lavinia Shaw?’ he enquired.

‘Yes.’

‘Harry Conlon. I phoned your brother last night. He’s expecting me.’

‘Major Conlon.’ There was a sudden eagerness about her. She put down the brush and comb she was using and ran her hands over her breeches. ‘Of course. How wonderful to have you here.’

The well-bred upper-class voice, her whole attitude, was all quite incredible to Devlin, but he took the hand she offered and smiled. ‘A pleasure, Miss Shaw.’

‘Maxwell is out on the marsh somewhere with his gun. Goes every day. You know how it is? Food shortages. Anything’s good for the pot.’ She didn’t seem to be able to stop talking. ‘We’ll go in to the kitchen, shall we?’

It was very large, the floor flagged with red tiles, an enormous pine table in the centre with chairs around it. There were unwashed dishes in the sink and the whole place was cluttered and untidy, the lack of servants very evident.

‘Tea?’ she said. ‘Or would you like something stronger?’

‘No, the tea would be fine.’

He put the case carefully on the table with the bag of cycle lamps and she boiled water and made the tea quickly, so excited and nervous that she poured it before it had brewed properly.

‘Oh, dear, I’ve ruined it.’

‘Not at all. It’s wet, isn’t it, and hot?’ Devlin said.

He poured a little milk in and she sat on the other side of the table, arms folded under her full breasts, eyes glittering now, never leaving him. ‘I can’t tell you how absolutely thrilling all this is. I haven’t been so excited for years.’

She was like a character in a bad play, the duke’s daughter coming in through the French windows in her riding breeches and gushing at everyone in sight.

‘You’ve been in Germany recently?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ he told her. ‘I was in Berlin only the other day.’

‘How marvellous to be part of all that. People here are so complacent. They don’t understand what the Führer’s done for Germany.’

‘For all of Europe, you might say,’ Devlin told her.

‘Exactly. Strength, a sense of purpose, discipline. Whereas here …’ She laughed contemptuously. ‘That drunken fool Churchill has no idea what he’s doing. Just lurches from one mistake to another.’

‘Ah, yes, but he would, wouldn’t he?’ Devlin said drily. ‘Do you think we could have a look round? The old barn you used for your Tiger Moth and the South Meadow?’

‘Of course.’ She jumped up so eagerly that she knocked over the chair. As she picked it up she said, ‘I’ll just get a coat.’

The meadow was larger than he had expected and stretched to a line of trees in the distance. ‘How long?’ Devlin asked. ‘Two-fifty or three hundred yards?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Getting on for three-fifty. The grass is so short because we leased it to a local farmer to graze sheep, but they’ve gone to market now.’

‘You used to take off and land here a lot in the old days?’

‘All the time. That’s when I had my little Puss Moth. Great fun.’

‘And you used the barn over there as a hangar?’

‘That’s right. I’ll show you.’

The place was quite huge, but like everything else the massive doors had seen better days, dry rot very evident, planks missing. Devlin helped her open one of the doors slightly so they could go inside. There was a rusting tractor in one corner, some mouldering hay at the back. Otherwise it was empty, rain dripping through holes in the roof.

‘You’d want to put a plane in here?’ she asked.

‘Only for a short while, to be out of sight. A Lysander. Not too large. It would fit in here and no trouble.’

‘When exactly?’

‘Tomorrow night.’

‘My goodness, you are pushing things along.’

‘Yes, well, time’s important.’

They went out and he closed the door. Somewhere in the far distance a shotgun was fired. ‘My brother,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and find him, shall we?’

As they walked across the meadow she said, ‘We had a German friend who used to come here in the old days, Werner Keitel. We used to fly all over the place together. Do you happen to know him?’

‘He was killed in the Battle of Britain.’

She paused for a moment only, then carried on. ‘Yes, I thought it would be something like that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Devlin told her.

She shrugged. ‘A long time ago, Major,’ and she started to walk faster.

They followed a dyke through the small reeds and it was Nell who appeared first, splashing through water, gambolling around them before running away again. There was another shot and then Shaw emerged from the reeds in the distance and came towards them.

‘Look at this, old girl.’ He held up a couple of rabbits.

‘See who’s here,’ she called.

He paused and came forward again. ‘Conlon, my dear chap. Nice to see you. Won’t shake hands. Blood on them.’ He might have been welcoming Devlin to a weekend in the country. ‘Better get home and find you a drink.’

They started back along the dyke. Devlin looked out across the expanse of reeds intersected by creeks. ‘Desolate country, this.’

‘Dead, old man. Everything about this damn place is dead. Rain, mist and the ghosts of things past. Of course it was different in my grandfather’s day. Twenty-five servants in the house alone. God knows how many on the estate.’ He didn’t stop talking for a moment as he walked along. ‘People don’t want to work these days, that’s the trouble. Damn Bolshies all over the place. That’s what I admire about the Führer. Gives people some order in their lives.’

‘Makes them do as they’re told, you mean?’ Devlin said.

Shaw nodded enthusiastically. ‘Exactly, old man, exactly.’

Devlin set up the radio in a small study behind the old library. Shaw had gone to have a bath and it was Lavinia who helped festoon the aerials around the room and watched intently as the Irishman explained the set to her.

‘Is it much different from the one you had before?’ he asked.

‘A bit more sophisticated, that’s all.’

‘And your Morse code. Can you still remember it?’

‘Good heavens, Major Conlon, you never forget something like that. I was a Girl Guide when I first learned it.’

‘Right,’ Devlin said. ‘Let’s see what you can do then.’

In the radio room at Prinz Albrechtstrasse, Schellenberg studied Devlin’s first message then turned to Ilse and Asa Vaughan. ‘Incredible. He intends to pull Steiner out tomorrow evening. He wants you at Shaw Place in time to leave no later than midnight.’

‘Then we’ll have to get moving,’ Asa told him.

‘Yes, well, the Lysander was delivered to Chernay yesterday,’ Schellenberg said. ‘It’s only a matter of getting ourselves down there.’ He said to the radio operator, ‘Take this message to Falcon. “Will meet your requirements. Departure time will be confirmed to you tomorrow night.” ’

He started to walk out and the operator called, ‘I have a reply, General.’

Schellenberg turned. ‘What is it?’

‘A pleasure to do business with you.’

Schellenberg smiled and kept on going, Asa and Ilse Huber following him.

In the study, Lavinia turned from the radio set. ‘Did I do all right?’

Her brother was sitting by the empty fireplace, a tumbler of whisky in his hand. ‘Seemed fine to me.’

‘You were excellent,’ Devlin said. ‘Now this set is different from the one you threw away in one respect. It has a direct voice capacity for short ranges only. Say twenty-five miles. That was why I gave them the frequency reading. I’ve adjusted it and all you do is switch on and you’re in business. That means you can talk to the pilot when he’s close.’

‘Marvellous. Anything else?’

‘Sometime after seven they’ll contact you from the French base to confirm departure time so stand by. Afterwards, you place the cycle lamps in the meadow as I described to you.’

‘I will. You may depend on it.’ She turned to Shaw. ‘Isn’t it marvellous, darling?’

‘Terrific, old girl,’ he said, eyes already glazed and poured another drink.

But by then Devlin had had enough and he got up. ‘I’ll be on my way. See you tomorrow night.’

Shaw mumbled something and Lavinia took Devlin back to the kitchen where he got his coat and hat.

‘Will he be all right?’ Devlin asked as she took him to the front door.

‘Who, Max? Oh, yes. No need to worry there, Major.’

‘I’ll see you then.’

It started to rain as he went down the drive and there was no sign of the van. He stood there, hands in pockets and it was thirty minutes before it turned up.

‘Did it go well?’ Ryan asked.

Mary cut in, ‘We’ve had a lovely time. Rye was a fine place.’

‘Well, I’m happy for you,’ Devlin said sourly. ‘Those two didn’t even offer me a bite to eat.’

Asa was just finishing a late lunch in the canteen when Schellenberg hurried in. ‘A slight change in plan. I’ve had a message saying the Reichsführer wants to see me. The interesting thing is I’m to bring you.’

‘What in the hell for?’

‘It seems you’ve been awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Reichsführer likes to pin them on SS officers himself.’

Asa said, ‘I wonder what my old man would say. I went to West Point, for Christ’s sakes.’

‘The other complication is that he’s at Wewelsburg. You’ve heard of the place, of course?’

‘Every good SS man’s idea of heaven. What does this do to our schedule?’

‘No problem. Wewelsburg has a Luftwaffe feeder base only ten miles away. We’ll fly there in the Stork and carry on to Chernay afterwards.’ Schellenberg glanced at his watch. ‘The appointment’s for seven and he takes punctuality for granted.’

At six thirty it was totally dark on the Thames as Ryan nudged the motor boat in towards the shingle strand. He said to Mary, ‘Just sit tight. It shouldn’t take long.’

Devlin picked up the bag of tools and the torch. ‘Right, let’s get moving,’ and he went over the side.

The water in the tunnel was deeper than it had been before, at one point chest high, but they pressed on and reached the grill in a few minutes.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Ryan asked.

‘Michael, you said you thought it would come away easy. Now wouldn’t I look the original fool if I turned up to grab Steiner tomorrow night and found the damn grill wouldn’t budge?’

‘All right, let’s get on with it,’ Ryan said.

‘And no banging. I don’t want someone on their knees up there in the chapel wondering what’s happening down here.’

Which is what made the whole thing rather more difficult than it had first appeared. The slow, careful probing between the brickwork took time. On occasion, several bricks fell out of place at once, but others proved more difficult. It took half an hour to clear one side.

Fifteen minutes into working on the other, Ryan said, ‘You were right, dammit, the thing’s a sod.’

He pulled at the grill angrily and it fell forward. Devlin grabbed at his arm, pulling him out of the way and got a hand to the side of the grill at the same time, easing it down.

He took the lamp and peered inside, then handed it to Ryan. ‘You hold the light while I go and take a look.’

‘Watch your step, now.’

Devlin went through the hole and waded inside. In there, the water was now up to his armpits, covering the tops of the tombs. He made it to the steps and started up. A rat scurried past him and dived into the water. He paused on the top step, then very gently tried the handle.

There was the faintest of creaks and the door eased open. He could see the altar, the Virgin on the other side floating in candlelight. He peered round the door cautiously. The chapel was quite deserted and then the outer door opened and a nun came in. Very quietly, Devlin closed the door and retreated down the steps.

‘Perfect,’ he said, to Ryan as he clambered through the hole. ‘Now let’s get out of here.’

At the Luftwaffe base, Schellenberg gave orders for the Stork to be refuelled, commandeered the station commander’s Mercedes and driver and set out for Wewelsburg with Asa. It started to snow and as they approached, Wewelsburg was plain to see, light at the windows and over the main gate in total disregard of any blackout regulations.

Asa looked up at the castle and its towers in the falling snow. ‘My God!’ he said in awe. ‘It’s incredible.’

‘I know.’ Schellenberg reached forward and closed the glass partition so that the Luftwaffe driver couldn’t hear what they were saying. ‘Looks like a film set. Actually it’s a personal retreat for the Reichsführer, a centre for racial research and a home-from-home to the élite of the SS.’

‘But what do they do there?’

‘The Reichsführer is obsessed with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. So, he has his twelve most trusted lieutenants sit at a round table. His knights, you see.’

‘And you’re not one of them, I take it?’

‘Very definitely not. No, you have to be a lunatic to indulge in those games. They have a memorial hall with a swastika in the ceiling, and a pit in which the remains of these special ones will be burnt on death. There are twelve pedestals and urns waiting for the ashes.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Asa said.

‘No, quite true. I’ll show you if we get a chance.’ Schellenberg laughed and shook his head. ‘And people like these are handling the destinies of millions.’

They booked in at the entrance hall and left their greatcoats and caps with the sergeant of the guard who checked his register.

‘Yes, General Schellenberg, the Reichsführer is expecting you for seven o’clock in his private sitting room in the South Wing. I’ll take you up, sir.’

‘No need. I know the way.’

As Asa followed Schellenberg across the hall and they turned along a corridor he said, ‘You’re right. This place puts Louis B. Mayer to shame.’

Schellenberg checked his watch. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes. Come on, I’ll show you that memorial hall I told you about. It’s just along here. There’s a little gallery, as I remember. Yes, here we are.’

There were perhaps a dozen steps up to an oak door. It opened easily and he could immediately hear voices. He paused, frowning, then turned to Asa and put a finger to his lips. Then he opened the door cautiously and they went in.

The circular room was a place of shadows, only dimly lit. Asa was aware of the pedestals and urns Schellenberg had described, the pit beneath the ceiling swastika, but it was the people present who were most interesting. Rossman, Himmler’s aide, stood to one side waiting. The Reichsführer stood in the pit itself, face to face with Sturmbannführer Horst Berger. They all wore black dress uniform.

‘I have brought you here, Berger, to this holy place before you depart on what I can only describe as your sacred mission.’

‘An honour, Reichsführer.’

‘Now let’s go over the details. You will meet the Führer’s plane which will land at the Luftwaffe base at Cherbourg at six tomorrow night. I shall be with him. You will escort us to this Château de Belle Ile where we will spend the night. At seven o’clock the following morning the Führer will have breakfast with Rommel and Admiral Canaris. They will arrive by road.’

‘And when do I take action, Reichsführer?’

Himmler shrugged, ‘It doesn’t really matter. I suppose the end of the meal might be appropriate. How many men will you have in the guard?’

‘Thirty.’

‘Good. That should be enough.’

‘Hand-picked, Reichsführer.’

‘Good – the fewer the better. We are a special brotherhood, those of us involved in this, for there are some who would not agree with what we intend,’

‘As you say, Reichsführer.’

‘General Schellenberg, for instance, but he’s cleverer than the proverbial fox. That’s why I wanted him elsewhere these past three weeks. So, I gave him this ridiculous mission to occupy him. To bring Steiner out of England. An impossibility. I happen to know from our intelligence people that the agent working for us in London, Vargas, also works for the British. We didn’t tell Schellenberg that, did we, Rossman?’

‘No, Reichsführer.’

‘So we may deduce that the Irishman, Devlin, will not last too long over there.’

‘I couldn’t be more pleased, Reichsführer,’ Berger said.

‘We could have won this war at Dunkirk, Berger, if the Führer had allowed the panzers to roll on to the beaches. Instead, he ordered them to halt. Russia, one disaster after another. Stalingrad, the most catastrophic defeat the German Army has ever suffered.’ Himmler shuffled away and turned. ‘Blunder after blunder and he still won’t listen.’

‘I see, Reichsführer,’ Berger said. ‘All men of sense would.’

‘And so inexorably, Germany, our beloved country, sinks deeper into the pit of defeat and that is why the Führer must die, Berger, and to accomplish that is your sacred task. Rommel, Canaris, the Führer. A dastardly attack on their part leading to the Führer’s unfortunate death followed by their own deaths at the hands of loyal SS men.’

‘And afterwards?’ Berger said.

‘We of the SS will naturally assume all governmental powers. The war may then be continued as it should be. No weakness, no shirking by anyone.’ He put a hand on Berger’s shoulder. ‘We belong to the same sacred brotherhood, Major, I envy you this opportunity.’

Schellenberg nodded to Asa, edged him out and closed the door.

‘My God!’ Asa said. ‘Now what happens?’

‘We keep the appointment. If he finds out we overheard that lot we’ll never get out of here alive.’ As they hurried along the corridor Schellenberg said, ‘Whatever he wants, follow my lead and not a mention that Devlin’s got things to the stage they are.’

He led the way up a back stair, along a corridor and reached the door to Himmler’s sitting room in the South Wing very quickly.

Schellenberg sat in the chair behind Rossman’s desk. ‘Now we wait. They’ll probably come up by the back entrance to his room.’

A moment later, the door opened and Rossman looked out. ‘Ah, there you are.’

‘Right on time.’ Schellenberg led the way in.

Himmler, behind his desk, looked up. ‘So, General, and this is Hauptsturmführer Vaughan, the pilot you recruited for the Steiner affair?’

‘Yes, Reichsführer.’

‘Any news of your Mr Devlin?’

Schellenberg said, ‘I’m afraid not, Reichsführer.’

‘Ah, well, it was always a problematical mission to say the least. The Führer flies to Cherbourg, arrives at Belle Ile tomorrow night. Canaris and Rommel are to have breakfast the following morning at seven. I’ll be there, of course. The idiots are junketing around Normandy at the moment. They have the crazy idea the invasion will come there and hope to persuade the Führer to agree with them.’

‘I see, Reichsführer.’

‘However, to the reason for your visit and why I asked you to bring the officer with you.’ He turned. ‘Rossman.’

As he stood, up, Rossman opened a medal case. Himmler took the Iron Cross it contained, came round the table and pinned it to Asa Vaughan’s tunic.

‘To you, Hauptsturmführer Asa Vaughan of the George Washington Legion, in acknowledgement of supreme valour in aerial combat over Poland.’

‘Reichsführer,’ said Asa, keeping his face straight with a supreme effort.

‘And now you may go. I have work to do.’

Schellenberg and Asa hurried down the stairs, retrieved their greatcoats and caps and went out to the waiting Mercedes.

‘Back to the base,’ Schellenberg said to the driver and he and Asa got in.

As they drove away Asa closed the glass partition and said, ‘What do you make of it?’

‘I know one thing,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Killing Hitler is the worst thing that could happen. At least with the Führer making one foul-up after another, there’s a prospect of a reasonably early end to the war, but Himmler would be another story. Can you imagine that animal in total control, the SS in charge of government, the Army? The war could go on for years.’

‘So what are you going to do? Warn Rommel and Canaris?’

‘First of all I don’t know exactly where they are and it’s a question of belief, Asa. Why should anyone believe me? My word against that of the Reichsführer of the SS?’

‘Come off it, General. According to Liam Devlin, you’re a very smart guy. Surely you can come up with something?’

‘I’ll put my heart and soul into it,’ Schellenberg promised him. ‘But for the moment, let’s concentrate on getting back to the airfield and the Stork. We fly out at once. The sooner we’re at Chernay, the happier I’ll be.’

12

The duty MP usually brought Steiner a cup of tea at eleven each morning. He was five minutes late and found the German by the window reading.

‘There you go, Colonel.’

‘Thank you, Corporal.’

‘I suppose you’d prefer coffee, sir?’ the corporal said, lingering, for he rather liked Steiner.

‘But I was raised on tea, Corporal,’ Steiner told him. ‘I went to school right here in London. St Paul’s.’

‘Is that a fact, sir?’

He turned to the door and Steiner said, ‘Is Lieutenant Benson back yet?’

‘His leave is up at midnight, sir, but if I know him he’ll look in this evening. You know what these young officers are like. Dead keen. Looking for that second pip on his shoulders.’

He left, the bolt rammed home and Steiner went back to his seat by the window, waiting for noon as he had on the previous day, drinking his tea and trying to compose himself to patience.

It was raining again and there was fog in the city, so heavy already that he could barely see the other side of the river. A very large cargo boat eased down from London Docks followed by a line of barges. He watched for a while, wondering where it was going and then he saw the girl, just as Devlin had described: black beret and shabby raincoat.

Mary limped along the pavement, collar up, hands thrust deep into her pockets. She stopped at the entrance leading down to the strand and leaned on the wall, watching the boats on the river. She didn’t look up at the Priory at all. Devlin had been most explicit about that. She just stayed there, watching for ten minutes, then turned and walked away.

Steiner was aware of intense excitement and gripped the bars at his window to steady himself. The door opened behind him and the corporal reappeared.

‘If you’re finished, Colonel, I’ll take your tray.’

‘Yes, I am, thank you.’ The MP picked up the tray and turned to the door. ‘Oh, I don’t know who’s on duty this evening, but I’ll be going down to confession,’ Steiner said.

‘Right, sir. I’ll make a note of it. Eight o’clock as usual.’

He went out and locked the door. Steiner listened to the sound of his boots receding along the corridor then turned, gripping the bars again.

‘Now we pray, Mr Devlin,’ he said softly. ‘Now we pray.’

When Devlin went into St Patrick’s he was in his military trenchcoat and uniform. He wasn’t really sure why he had come. Conscience again, he supposed, or perhaps just tying up loose ends. He only knew he couldn’t leave without a word with the old priest. He’d used him, he knew that, and it didn’t sit well. What was worse was the fact that they would meet again and for the last time in the chapel at St Mary’s that evening. No avoiding that or the distress it would cause.

The church was quiet, only Frank Martin down at the altar arranging a few flowers. He turned at the sound of Devlin’s approach and there was genuine pleasure on his face. ‘Hello, Father.’

Devlin managed a smile. ‘I just dropped in to tell you I’m on my way. I got my orders this morning.’

‘That’s unexpected, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, well, they’re easing me back in.’ Devlin lied in his teeth. ‘I’m to report to a military hospital in Portsmouth.’

‘Ah, well, as they say, there’s a war on.’

Devlin nodded. ‘The war, the war, the bloody war, Father. It’s gone on too long and we all of us have to do things we normally would never do. Every soldier, whichever side he’s on. Things to shame us.’

The old man said gently, ‘You’re troubled, my son. Can I help in any way?’

‘No, Father, not this time. Some things we have to live with ourselves.’ Devlin put out his hand and the old priest took it. ‘It’s been a genuine pleasure, Father.’

‘And for me,’ Frank Martin said.

Devlin turned and walked away, the door banged. The old priest stood there for a moment, puzzlement on his face and then he turned and went back to his flowers.

There was the merest hint of fog at Chernay, too, at four o’clock when Schellenberg went in search of Asa. He found him in the hangar with the Lysander and Flight Sergeant Leber.

‘How is it?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘Perfection, General,’ Leber told him. ‘Couldn’t be better.’ He smiled. ‘Naturally, the Hauptsturmführer has just been checking everything out for the fifth time, but that’s understandable.’

The Lysander had RAF roundels in place on canvas strips as Asa had requested and the swastika on the tailplane had been blocked out with black canvas.

‘Of course there’s no absolute guarantee that they won’t come off in flight,’ Asa said. ‘We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.’

‘And the weather?’ Schellenberg asked.

Leber said, ‘It’s uncertain. Visibility could be restricted. There are a couple of conflicting fronts moving in. I’ve checked with our base at Cherbourg and the truth is it’s one of those times when they don’t really know.’

‘But the plane is ready?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Asa told him. ‘One good thing about this beauty is that she’s fitted with an emergency fuel tank. I suppose the RAF had that done because of the kind of operation it was employed on. I’m allowing an hour and a half for the flight and thanks to Luftwaffe intelligence at Cherbourg, I can tune my radio to the RAF frequency as I approach the English coast.’

‘Good. Let’s go for a walk. I feel like the air.’

It was raining only slightly as they walked along the airfield and Schellenberg smoked a cigarette, not speaking for a while. They reached the end and leaned on a fence, looking out to sea.

Schellenberg said, ‘You feel all right about this?’

‘The trip?’ Asa shrugged. ‘The flight itself doesn’t worry me. It’s the situation at the other end that’s problematical.’

‘Yes, we are all in Mr Devlin’s hands there.’

Asa said, ‘Assuming everything goes well and I put down here with our friends some time early tomorrow morning what happens then? What about the Belle Ile situation? Have you any ideas?’

‘Only one and it would be a desperate venture. On the other hand, simple, and I like simplicity. It pleases me.’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘Well, the Führer will be having breakfast with Rommel, the Admiral and the Reichsführer. Berger will strike at the end of the meal.’

‘Yes, I know that, I was there, remember?’

‘What if you and I and Mr Devlin arrived to join them for breakfast and exposed the plot?’

‘But we’d go down the hole too, that’s obvious,’ Asa said. ‘Even if you said your piece to the Führer, Berger and his chums would just get on with it.’

‘Oh, yes, and it would suit the Reichsführer to have me out of the war.’ Schellenberg smiled. ‘There is a wild card I haven’t mentioned. Remember when we were driving to Belle Ile? The 12th Parachute Detachment outside St Aubin? Hauptmann Erich Kramer and thirty-five paratroopers?’

‘Sure I do.’

‘What do you think would happen if Colonel Kurt Steiner, the living legend of the Parachute Regiment, appeared and told them he needed their services because there was an SS plot to kill the Führer ten miles up the road?’

‘Jesus!’ Asa said. ‘Those guys would follow Steiner anywhere.’

‘Exactly. And the Fallschirmjäger have always been notorious for their dislike of the SS.’

‘It could work,’ Asa said.

‘If everything else did.’

‘Let me get this straight. We’d go in first? Steiner would follow on?’

‘Yes, let’s say fifteen minutes later.’

Asa said, ‘That could be one hell of a breakfast.’

‘Yes, well, I prefer not to think of it right now,’ Schellenberg said. ‘I’ve got other things on my mind. Let’s go and have a cup of coffee.’

In Ryan’s kitchen, Devlin had various items laid out on the table. ‘Let’s see what I’ve got here,’ he said. ‘Those MPs carry handcuffs, but I’ll take a little extra twine for emergencies, just in case.’

‘I’ve made up three gags,’ Ryan said. ‘Bandages and sticking plaster. You’ve the priest too, remember.’

‘I’d prefer to forget him, but there you are,’ Devlin said.

‘And a weapon?’

‘I’ll take the Smith & Wesson on the ankle holster for emergencies and that Walther with the silencer I got from Carver.’

‘Would you anticipate any killing?’ Ryan asked and looked troubled.

‘The last thing I want. Have you got that sap of yours?’

‘God, I was forgetting.’

Ryan opened the kitchen table drawer and produced the leather sap. It was loaded with lead and there was a loop for the wrist. It was a thing carried by many London taxi drivers for self-protection. Devlin weighed it in his hand and put it down beside the Walther.

‘That’s everything then?’ Ryan said.

Devlin smiled lightly. ‘All we need is Steiner now.’

The door opened and Mary came in. Her uncle said, ‘God, I’m starving, girl. Bacon and eggs all round if you can manage it.’

‘No problem,’ she said, ‘but we’re out of bread and tea. I’ll just run along to the High Street before the shop closes. I shan’t be long,’ and she took her beret and raincoat down from behind the door and went out.

The old lady at the shop managed her a tin of black-market salmon and some cigarettes as well as the bread and tea, and Mary was carrying them in a carrier bag when she left. The fog was rolling in, the traffic slow and she stopped cautiously on the next corner before crossing the road.

Eric Carver, at the wheel of his brother’s Humber limousine, had stopped at the traffic lights. She was only a yard or two away as she passed, and he saw her clearly. She crossed the road and turned into a side street. As the lights changed, he went after her, pulled the Humber in at the kerb, got out and followed cautiously.

Mary turned into Cable Wharf, walking as quickly as she could and crossed to the house. As she went round the corner, Eric hurried across and peered round cautiously. She had just reached the kitchen door.

It opened and he heard Devlin say, ‘Ah, there you are, girl. Will you come in out of that?’

The door closed. Eric said softly, ‘Right, you bastard. I’ve got you,’ and he turned and hurried away.

Jack Carver was in his bedroom dressing when Eric burst in. Carver said, ‘How often have I told you, Eric? I don’t like anyone coming in here when I’m dressing and that includes you.’

‘But I’ve found him, Jack. I’ve found where that rotten little bastard’s shacked up. I saw the girl. I followed her home and he was there.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I bloody am.’

‘Where was this?’

‘A place called Cable Wharf. It’s in Wapping.’

‘Right.’ Carver nodded in satisfaction, put on his jacket and went through to the sitting room, Eric following.

‘So, what are we going to do?’ Eric demanded as his brother sat behind his desk.

‘Do? We’re going to sort him,’ Carver said.

‘When?’

Carver checked his watch. ‘I’ve got a big game on tonight, you know that. Probably finish around ten. We’ll pay him a call after that when he thinks he’s nicely tucked up for the night.’ Carver smiled, opened a drawer and took out a Browning. ‘Just you and me and our friend here.’

There was an unholy look on Eric’s face. ‘Christ, Jack, I can’t wait,’ he said.

Lieutenant Benson arrived at the Priory just before seven. He said hello to the porter who admitted him and went straight upstairs. Strictly speaking, as the MP had told Steiner that morning, his leave wasn’t up until midnight, but the only available train to London from his parents’ home in Norwich had been an early one. When he was admitted to the corridor in the upper floor he found a corporal sitting in his office who jumped to his feet at once.

‘You’re back, sir.’

‘I should have thought that was obvious, Smith. Where’s Sergeant Morgan?’

‘Went off about an hour ago, sir.’

‘Everything calm while I’ve been away?’

‘I think so, sir.’

‘Let’s have a look at the log.’ Smith handed it over and Benson leafed through it. ‘What’s this entry here on the admittance sheet? Major Conlon?’

‘Oh, yes, sir, the padre. He did a tour of the place with the Sister and Father Martin.’

‘Who gave him permission?’

‘He had a War Office pass, sir. You know, those unrestricted access things. I think you’ll find Sergeant Morgan put the details down.’

‘I can see that. The point is, what was Conlon doing here?’

‘Search me, sir. Nice-looking man. Grey hair, glasses. Looked like he’d had a hard time. Oh and he had an MC, sir.’

‘Yes, well, that could mean anything,’ Benson said sourly. ‘I’m going down to see Sister.’

She was in her office when he knocked and went in. She glanced up and smiled. ‘You’re back? Did you have a good leave?’

‘Yes, not bad. Is Father Martin around?’

‘Just went into the chapel to hear confessions. Anything I can do?’

‘There was a Major Conlon here when I was away.’

‘Ah, yes, the Army chaplain. A nice man. On sick leave. I understand he was wounded in Sicily last year.’

‘Yes, but what was he doing here?’

‘Nothing. We just showed him round and he took over for Father Martin one evening. He’s not been well, you know.’

‘Has he been back?’

‘No. I understand from Father Martin that he’s been posted. A military hospital in Portsmouth, I believe.’ She looked slightly bewildered. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Oh, no, it’s just that when unexpected guests turn up with War Office passes one likes to know who they are.’

‘You worry too much,’ she said.

‘Probably. Good night, Sister.’

But it wouldn’t go away, the nagging doubt, and when he got back upstairs to his office he phoned Dougal Munro.

Jack Carter had gone to York for the day. His train wasn’t due into London until ten so Munro was working alone in his office when he took the call. He listened patiently to what Benson had to say.

‘You were right to call me,’ he said. ‘I don’t much like the idea of officers with War Office passes sticking their noses into our business, but there it is. One of the problems with using a place like the Priory, Benson. These religious types don’t behave like other people.’

‘I’ve got Conlon’s details here on the admission sheet, sir. Do you want them?’

‘Tell you what, I’m packing up here quite soon and going home,’ Munro said. ‘I’ll call in and see you. About an hour and a half.’

‘I’ll expect you, sir.’

Benson put down the phone and Corporal Smith, standing at the door, said, ‘You’ll see Colonel Steiner’s booked for chapel, sir.’

‘What in the hell has he got to confess cooped up in here?’ Benson demanded.

‘Eight o’clock as usual, sir. Shall I do it with Corporal Ross?’

‘No,’ Benson said. ‘We’ll do it together. I’m expecting Brigadier Munro, but he won’t be here until half past eight. Now get me a cup of tea.’

At Chernay, the elements were very definitely against them, fog rolling in from the sea and rain with it. Schellenberg and Asa Vaughan stood in the radio room waiting while Flight Sergeant Leber checked the situation with Cherbourg.

After a while he turned to them. ‘The Führer’s plane got in all right, General. Landed at six just before this lot started.’

‘So, what’s the verdict?’ Asa demanded.

‘Parts of the Channel you’ll find winds gusting up to Force Eight.’

‘Hell, I can handle wind,’ Asa said. ‘What else do they say?’

‘Fog over southern England, from London down to the Channel coast. Another thing. They say it will get worse here during the night.’ He looked worried. ‘To be frank, sir, it stinks.’

‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, I’ll find a way.’

Asa and Schellenberg went out into the wind and rain and hurried across to the hut they were using. Schellenberg sat on one of the beds and poured Schnapps into an enamel cup. ‘Do you want some?’

‘Better not.’ Asa lit a cigarette instead.

There was silence, then Schellenberg said, ‘Look, if you think it’s not on, if you don’t want to go …’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Asa told him. ‘Of course I’m going. Devlin’s depending on me. I can’t leave him in the lurch. Wind doesn’t bother me. I flew for the Finns in their Winter War, remember, when we had blizzards every day. Let me tell you about fog. Taking off in it’s nothing, but landing is something else and it worries me that I might not be able to land when I get there.’

‘Then you’ll have to come back.’

‘Fine, except for the fact that, as Leber has just informed us, it’s not going to get any better here.’

‘So what do you want to do?’

‘Leave it as late as possible. Devlin wanted me there for a midnight departure. Let’s cut it really close. I won’t leave until ten o’clock. That will give the weather a chance to clear.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘I go anyway.’

‘Fine.’ Schellenberg got up. ‘I’ll send a signal to that effect to Shaw Place now.’

Lavinia Shaw, seated at the radio in the study in her headphones took the message. She tapped out a quick reply: ‘Message received and understood.’ She took off her headphones and turned. Her brother sat by the fire, Nell at his feet, cleaning his shotgun, a tumbler of Scotch beside him.

‘They won’t be leaving until ten o’clock, darling, it’s this damn weather.’

She went to the French windows, pulled back the curtains and opened the windows; looking out at the fog. Shaw moved to her side.

‘I should have thought this bloody stuff was all to the good for this kind of secret landing.’

Lavinia said, ‘Don’t be silly, Max, it’s the worst thing in the world for any pilot. Don’t you remember when I couldn’t land at Helmsley back in thirty-six? Stooged around until I ran out of fuel and crashed into that field wall? I was nearly killed.’

‘Sorry, old girl, I was forgetting.’ Rain started to spot the terrace in front of them, visible in the light from the window. ‘There you are,’ Shaw said. ‘That should help clear it. Now close the window and let’s have another drink.’

‘You’ve got everything?’ Michael Ryan asked as the motor boat coasted in to the little strand.

Devlin wore loose blue overalls and boots. He tapped at his pockets, check-listing each item. ‘Everything in perfect working order.’

Ryan said, ‘I wish you’d let me come with you.’

‘My affair, this one, Michael, and if there’s the slightest hint of trouble you and Mary get the hell out of it. This bloody fog is a blessing in a way.’ He turned and smiled at Mary through the darkness. ‘You were right about that.’

She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘God bless you, Mr Devlin. I’ve prayed for you.’

‘Then everything will be all right,’ and he went over the side.

The water was not quite as deep which was something and he moved on, the light from his lamp splaying against the tunnel until he reached the hole in the wall. He checked his watch. It was a couple of minutes past eight. He climbed in and waded through the water then started up the steps.

Dougal Munro had finished a little earlier than he had intended, so he called a staff car and told the driver to take him to St Mary’s Priory. It was a difficult journey, crawling along at fifteen miles an hour in the fog, and it was just after eight o’clock when they arrived.

‘I shan’t be long,’ the Brigadier said as he got out.

‘I’ll get off the road, sir, while I’m waiting,’ his driver replied. ‘Otherwise someone will be shunting me up the rear. I’ll just turn up the side, sir. There’s a yard there.’

‘I’ll find you.’ Munro went up the steps and rang the bell at the door.

The night porter opened it to him. ‘Good evening, Brigadier,’ he said.

‘Sister Maria about?’ Munro asked.

‘No, she was called to the Cromwell Road Hospital.’

‘All right. I’ll go on upstairs. I want to see Lieutenant Benson.’

‘I saw him go in to the chapel a few minutes ago, sir, with one of the corporals and that German officer.’

‘Really?’ Munro hesitated, then crossed to the chapel door.

Devlin eased open the door at the top of the steps and got the shock of his life. Corporal Smith was standing with his back to him no more than six feet away. He was examining a religious figure. Benson was up by the door. Devlin didn’t hesitate. He pulled out the sap and lashed Smith across the back of the neck and moved back into the shelter of the door as the corporal went down with a clatter.

Benson called, ‘Smith? What’s going on?’

He ran along the aisle and paused staring down at the body. It was then, sensing too late that something was very wrong indeed, that he reached for the Webley revolver in his holster.

Devlin stepped out, the silenced Walther in his left hand, the sap in his right. ‘I wouldn’t do that, son. This thing makes no more noise than you or me coughing. Now turn round.’

Benson did as he was told and Devlin gave him the same as Smith. The young lieutenant groaned, sank to his knees and fell across the corporal. Quickly Devlin searched them for handcuffs but only Smith appeared to be carrying them.

‘Are you there, Colonel?’ he called.

Steiner stepped out of the confessional box and Father Martin joined him. The old priest looked shocked and bewildered. ‘Major Conlon? What’s happening here?’

‘I’m truly sorry, Father.’ Devlin turned him round and handcuffed his wrists behind him.

He sat the old man down in a pew and took out one of his makeshift gags. Martin said, ‘You’re not a priest, I take it.’

‘My uncle was, Father.’

‘I forgive you, my son,’ Frank Martin said and submitted himself to the gag.

At that moment, the door opened and Dougal Munro walked in. Before he could say a word, Kurt Steiner had him round, an arm like steel across his throat.

‘And who might this be?’ Devlin demanded.

‘Brigadier Dougal Munro,’ Steiner told him. ‘Of SOE.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Devlin held the Walther in his right hand now. ‘This thing is silenced as I’m sure you will know, Brigadier, so be sensible.’

Steiner released him and Munro said bitterly, ‘My God, Devlin – Liam Devlin.’

‘As ever was, Brigadier.’

‘What happens now?’ Steiner asked.

Devlin was excited, a little cocky. ‘A short trip downriver, a gentle drive through the country and you’ll be away while this lot are still running round in circles looking for us.’

‘Which must mean you intend to fly,’ Munro said. ‘Very interesting.’

‘Me and my big mouth,’ groaned Devlin. He tapped Munro under the chin with the gun. ‘If I leave you, you’ll have the RAF on the job before we know where we are. I could kill you, but I’m in a very generous mood.’

‘Which leaves what alternative?’

‘We’ll have to take you with us.’ He nodded to Steiner. ‘Watch him,’ and eased open the door.

At that moment, the night porter emerged from his cubby-hole with a tray containing a pot of tea, two cups and a milk jug. He went up the stairs whistling.

Devlin said, ‘Wonderful. No need for you lads to get your feet wet. We’re going straight out of the front door and across the road. It’s thick fog, so no one will notice a thing.’ He opened the door and urged Munro across the hall, the Walther at his back. ‘Don’t forget, Brigadier. A wrong word and I blow your spine out.’

It was Steiner who opened the door and led the way down to the pavement. The fog was thick and brown as only a London pea-souper could be and tasted sour at the back of the throat. Devlin pushed Munro across the road, Steiner followed. They didn’t see a soul, and alone in their private world they went down the steps to the strand. At the bottom, Devlin paused and passed the gun to Steiner.

‘I’ve got friends I don’t want this old bugger to see or he’ll be hanging them at Wandsworth Gaol for treason.’

‘Only if they deserve it,’ Munro told him.

‘A matter of opinion.’

Devlin quickly tied the Brigadier’s hands with some of the twine he’d brought. Munro was wearing a silk scarf against the cold. The Irishman took that and bound it around his eyes.

‘Right, let’s go.’

He started along the strand, a hand at Munro’s elbow and the motor boat loomed out of the darkness.

‘Is that you, Liam?’ Ryan called softly.

‘As ever was. Now let’s get the hell out of here,’ Devlin replied.

In the bedroom, Devlin changed quickly into the clerical suit and a dark polo-neck sweater. He collected what few belongings he needed, put them in a holdall together with the Luger and the Walther. He checked the Smith & Wesson in the ankle holster, picked up the bag and went out. When he went into the kitchen, Steiner was sitting at the table drinking tea with Ryan, Mary watching him in awe.

‘Are you fit, Colonel?’ Devlin demanded.

‘Never better, Mr Devlin.’

Devlin tossed him the military trenchcoat he’d stolen from the Army and Navy Club the day he’d met Shaw. ‘That should do to cover the uniform. I’m sure Mary can find you a scarf.’

‘I can indeed.’ She ran out and returned with a white silk scarf which she gave to Steiner.

‘That’s kind of you,’ he said.

‘Right, let’s move it.’ Devlin opened the cupboard under the stairs to reveal Munro sitting in the corner with his hands tied and still wearing the scarf around his eyes. ‘Let’s be having you, Brigadier.’

He pulled Munro up and out and walked him to the front door. Ryan had already got the van from the garage and it stood at the kerb. They put Munro in the back and Devlin checked his watch.

‘Nine o’clock. A long hour, Michael, me old son. We’ll be off now.’

They shook hands. When he turned to Mary she was in tears. Devlin put his bag in the van, and opened his arms. She rushed into them and he embraced her.

‘The wonderful life you’ll have ahead of you and the wonderful girl you are.’

‘I’ll never forget you.’ She was really crying now. ‘I’ll pray for you every night.’

He was too full to speak himself, got in beside Steiner and drove away. The German said, ‘A nice girl.’

‘Yes,’ Devlin said. ‘I shouldn’t have involved them or that old priest, but there was nothing else I could do.’

‘The nature of the game we’re in, Mr Devlin,’ Munro said from the rear. ‘Tell me something, just to assuage my idle curiosity. Vargas.’

‘Oh, I smelt a rat there from the beginning,’ Devlin said. ‘It always seemed likely you were inviting us in, so to speak. I knew the only way to fool you was to fool Vargas as well. That’s why he’s still getting messages from Berlin.’

‘And your own contacts? Nobody recently active, am I right?’

‘That’s about it.’

‘You’re a clever bastard, I’ll say that for you. Mind you, as that fine old English saying has it: “There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.”’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Fog, Mr Devlin, fog,’ Dougal Munro said.

13

Jack Carver’s big game in the back room at the Astoria Ballroom had not gone his way at all, and if there was one thing guaranteed to put him in a bad mood it was losing money.

He broke off the game angrily at eight thirty, lit a cigar and went down to the ballroom. He leaned on the balcony rail watching the crowd, and Eric, dancing down there with a young girl, saw him at once.

‘Sorry, sweetness, another time,’ he said and went up the stairs to join his brother. ‘You’ve finished early, Jack.’

‘Yes, well, I got bored, didn’t I?’

Eric, who knew the signs, didn’t pursue the matter. Instead he said, ‘I was thinking, Jack. You’re sure you don’t want to take some of the boys along when we pay that call?’

Carver was furiously angry. ‘What are you trying to say? That I can’t take care of that little squirt on my own? That I need to go in team-handed?’

‘I didn’t mean anything, Jack, I was just thinking …’

‘You think too bloody much, my son,’ his brother told him. ‘Come on, I’ll show you. We’ll go and see that little Irish bastard now.’

The Humber, Eric at the wheel, turned into Cable Wharf no more than ten minutes after the van had left.

‘That’s the house at the far end,’ Eric said.

‘Right, we’ll leave the motor here and walk. Don’t want to alert them.’ Carver took the Browning from his pocket and pulled the slider. ‘Got yours?’

‘Sure I have, Jack.’ Eric produced a Webley .38 revolver.

‘Good boy. Let’s go and give him some stick.’

Mary was sitting at the table reading and Ryan was poking the fire when the kitchen door burst open and the Carvers entered. Mary screamed and Ryan turned, poker in hand.

‘No you don’t.’ Carver extended his arm, the Browning rigid in his hand. ‘You make one wrong move and I’ll blow your head off. See to the bird, Eric.’

‘A pleasure, Jack.’ Eric slipped his revolver into his pocket, went and stood behind Mary and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Now you be a good girl.’

He kissed her neck and she squirmed in disgust. ‘Stop it!’

Ryan took a step forward. ‘Leave her alone.’

Carver tapped him with the barrel of the Browning. ‘I give the orders here, so shut your face. Where is he?’

‘Where’s who?’ Ryan demanded.

‘The other mick. The one who came dancing at the Astoria with the kid here. The clever little bastard who shot half my brother’s ear off.’

It was Mary who answered defiantly, ‘You’re too late, they’ve gone.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Carver said to Eric, ‘Leave her. Check upstairs and make sure you have your shooter in your hand.’

Eric went out and Carver gestured at the other chair. ‘Sit,’ he ordered Ryan. The Irishman did as he was told and Carver lit a cigarette. ‘She didn’t say we’d missed him, she said we’d missed them.’

‘So what?’ Ryan said.

‘So who was that pal of yours and who’s he mixed up with? I want to know and you’re going to tell me.’

‘Don’t say a word, Uncle Michael,’ Mary cried.

‘Not me, girl.’

Carver hit him across the side of the face with the Browning and Ryan went over backwards in the chair. As Mary screamed again Carver said, ‘You should have stayed back home in the bogs where you belong, you and your mate.’

Eric came back at that moment. ‘Here, what have I missed?’

‘Just teaching him his manners. Anything?’

‘Not a sausage. There was a major’s uniform in one of the bedrooms.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Carver turned back to Ryan who was wiping blood from his face. ‘All right, I haven’t got all night.’

‘Go stuff yourself.’

‘A hard man, eh? Watch the girl, Eric.’

Eric moved behind her, pulled her from the chair, his arms about her waist. ‘You like that don’t you? They all do.’

She moaned, trying to get away and Carver picked up the poker from the hearth and put it into the fire. ‘All right, hard man, we’ll see how you like this. Either you tell me what I want to know or I put this, once it’s nice and hot, to your niece’s face. Not that she’s much in the looks department, but this would really finish her off.’

Mary tried to move, but Eric held her, laughing. Ryan said, ‘You bastard.’

‘It’s been said before,’ Carver told him, ‘but it ain’t true. Slur on my old lady, that.’

He took the poker out. It was white hot. He put it to the table top and the dry wood burst into flame. Then he moved towards Mary and the girl screamed in terror.

It was the scream which did it and Ryan cried out, ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’

‘Okay,’ Carver said. ‘His name.’

‘Devlin – Liam Devlin.’

‘IRA? Am I right?’

‘In a way.’

‘Who was with him?’ Ryan hesitated and Carver turned and touched the girl’s woollen cardigan so that it smouldered. ‘I ain’t kidding, friend.’

‘He was doing a job for the Germans. Breaking out a prisoner they had here in London.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘Driven off to a place near Romney. He’s going to be picked up by a plane.’

‘In this fog? He’ll be bleeding lucky. What’s this place they’re going to?’ Ryan hesitated and Carver touched the poker to the girl’s hair. The stench of burning was terrible and she screamed again.

Ryan broke completely. He was a good man, but it was impossible to accept what was happening. ‘Like I said, a place near Romney.’

‘Don’t, Uncle Michael,’ Mary cried.

‘A village called Charbury. Shaw Place is the house.’

‘Marvellous.’ Carver put the poker down on the hearth. ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ He turned to Eric. ‘Fancy a little drive down to the country?’

‘I don’t mind, Jack.’ Eric kissed her on the neck again. ‘As long as I can have ten minutes upstairs with this little madam before we go.’

She cried out in terror and revulsion, reached back and clawed his face. Eric released her with a howl of pain, then, as he turned, slapped her. She backed away as he advanced on her slowly, reached behind her and managed to get the kitchen door open. He grabbed at her, she kicked out at him then staggered back across the terrace against the wall. There was an ugly snapping sound as it gave way and she disappeared into darkness.

Ryan gave a cry and started forward and Carver had him by the collar, the barrel of the Browning at his ear. ‘Go and check on her,’ he called to Eric.

Ryan stopped struggling and waited in silence. After a while, Eric appeared, his face pale. ‘She’s croaked, Jack, fell on a jetty down there. Must have broken her neck or something.’

Ryan kicked back against Carver’s shin, shoving him away. He picked up the poker from the hearth, turned with it raised above his head and Carver shot him in the heart.

There was a silence. Eric wiped blood from his face. ‘What now, Jack?’

‘We get out of here, that’s what.’

He led the way and Eric followed, closing the kitchen door. They turned along the wharf and got in the Humber. Carver lit a cigarette. ‘Where’s that RAC map book?’ Eric found it in the glove compartment and Carver flipped through it. ‘Here we are, Romney Marsh and there’s Charbury. Don’t you remember? Before the war I used to take you and Mum down there to Rye for a day out by the sea.’

Eric nodded. ‘Mum liked Rye.’

‘Let’s get going then.’

‘To Charbury?’ Eric said.

‘Why not? We don’t have anything better to do and there’s one aspect to all this that doesn’t seem to have occurred to you, my old son. We catch up with Devlin and this German and take care of them, we’ll be bleeding heroes.’ He tossed his cigarette out and replaced it with a cigar. ‘Move it, Eric, move it,’ he said and leaned back in his seat.

At Chernay, visibility was no more than a hundred yards. Schellenberg and Asa stood in the radio room and waited while Leber checked the weather. The American wore a leather helmet, fur-lined flying jacket and boots. He smoked a cigarette nervously.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘They’ve listened to RAF weather reports for the south of England. It’s one of those situations, Captain; thick fog, but every so often the wind blows a hole in it.’

‘Okay,’ Asa said. ‘Let’s stop monkeying around.’

He went out, Schellenberg following, and walked to the plane. Schellenberg said, ‘Asa, what can I say?’

Asa laughed and pulled on his gloves. ‘General, I’ve been on borrowed time ever since I crash-landed in that blizzard in Finland. Take care of yourself.’

He clambered into the cockpit and pulled down the cupola. Schellenberg stepped back out of the way. The Lysander started to move. It turned at the end of the field and came back into the wind. Asa boosted power and gave it everything, rushing headlong into that wall of fog, darkness and rain. He pulled back the column and started to climb, turning out to sea.

Schellenberg watched him go in awe. ‘Dear God,’ he murmured. ‘Where do we find such men?’

He turned and walked back to the radio room.

In the study at Shaw Place, Lavinia turned from the radio and removed her headphones. She hurried out and found Shaw in the kitchen cooking bacon and eggs.

‘Felt a big peckish, old girl.’ There was the usual tumbler of whisky close to hand and for once she felt impatient.

‘Good God, Max, the plane’s on its way and all you can think of is your wretched stomach. I’m going down to South Meadow.’

She got her shooting jacket, one of her brother’s old tweed hats, found the bag of cycle lamps and set off, Nell following her. There was electricity in the barn so she switched on the lights when she got there. It was obvious that, considering the weather, breaking the blackout regulations wouldn’t matter and there wasn’t another house for two miles. She put the cycle lamps by the door and stood outside, checking the wind direction. The fog was as thick as ever, showed no sign of lifting at all. Suddenly it was like a curtain parting and she could see a chink of light from the house three hundred yards away.

‘How marvellous, Nell.’ She leaned down to fondle the dog’s ears and the fog dropped back into place as the wind died.

Getting out of London itself was the worst part, as Devlin discovered, crawling along in a line of traffic at fifteen to twenty miles an hour.

‘A sod this,’ he said to Steiner.

‘It will make us late for the rendezvous, I presume?’ Steiner said.

‘A midnight departure was the aim. We’re not done yet.’

Munro said from the back, ‘Put a bit of a spoke in your wheel, this lot, Mr Devlin.’

Devlin ignored him and kept on going. Once they were through Greenwich, there was much less traffic and he was able to make better time. He lit a cigarette with one hand. ‘We’re on our way now.’

Munro said, ‘I wouldn’t count your chickens.’

Devlin said, ‘You’re a great man for the sayings, Brigadier. What about one from the Bible? The laughter of fools is as the crackling of thorns under a pot?’ and he increased speed.

The Carver brothers in the Humber had exactly the same problem getting out of London and Eric managed to take the wrong turning in Greenwich town centre, going three miles in the other direction. It was Jack who sorted him, getting out the RAC handbook and checking their route.

‘It’s bleeding simple. Greenwich to Maidstone, Maidstone to Ashford. From there you take the road to Rye and we turn off halfway for Charbury.’

‘But there’s hardly any road signs these days, you know that, Jack,’ Eric said.

‘Yes, well, there’s a war on, isn’t there, so just get on with it.’

Jack Carver leaned back, closed his eyes and had a nap.

There was a school of thought in both the Luftwaffe and RAF that recommended approaching an enemy coastline below the radar screen all the way on important missions. Asa remembered trying that with his old squadron during the Russo-Finnish war, coming in low off the sea to catch the Reds by surprise, all nice copy-book stuff, only nobody had counted on the presence of the Russian Navy. Five planes, that one had cost.

So, he charted a course for Dungeness that took him along the Channel in a dead straight line. There were strong crosswinds and that slowed him down, but it was good monotonous flying and all he had to do was check for drift every so often. He stayed at eight thousand for most of the way, well above the fog, keeping a weather eye cocked for other planes.

When it came, it took even an old hand like him by surprise, the Spitfire that lifted out of the fog, banked and took up station to starboard. Up there, visibility was good with a half-moon and Asa could see the pilot of the Spitfire clearly in the cockpit in helmet and goggles. The American raised a hand and waved.

A cheerful voice crackled over his radio. ‘Hello, Lysander, what are you up to?’

‘Sorry,’ Asa replied. ‘Special Duties Squadron, operating out of Tempsford.’

‘A Yank, are you?’

‘In the RAF,’ Asa told him.

‘Saw the movie, old man. Terrible. Take care.’ The Spitfire banked away to the east very fast and disappeared into the distance.

Asa said softly, ‘That’s what comes of living right, old buddy.’

He went down into the fog until his altimeter showed a thousand feet, then turned in towards Dungeness and Romney Marsh.

Shaw had his meal and a considerable amount of whisky after it. He was slumped in his chair beside the sitting room fire, his shotgun on the floor, when Lavinia went in.

‘Oh, Max,’ she said. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

He stirred when she put a hand on his shoulder and looked up. ‘Hello, old girl. Everything all right?’

She went to the French windows and opened the curtains. The fog was as thick as ever. She closed the curtains and went back to him. ‘I’m going to go down to the barn, Max. It must be close now, the plane, I mean.’

‘All right, old girl.’

He folded his arms and turned his head, closing his eyes again and she gave up. She went into the study and hurriedly took down the radio’s aerial and then she packed everything into the carrying case. When she opened the front door Nell slipped out beside her and they went down to the South Meadow together.

She stood outside the barn listening. There was no sound, the fog embracing everything. She went in and switched on the light. There was a workbench by the door. She set the radio up there, running the aerial wires along the wall, looping them over rusting old nails. She put on the headphones and switched to the voice frequency as Devlin had shown her and heard Asa Vaughan’s voice instantly.

‘Falcon, are you receiving me? I say again, are you receiving me?’

It was eleven forty-five and the Lysander was only five miles away. Lavinia stood in the entrance to the barn looking up, holding the headphones in one hand against her left ear. Of the plane, there was no sound.

‘Am receiving you, Lysander. Am receiving you.’

‘What are conditions in your nest?’ Asa’s voice crackled.

‘Thick fog. Visibility down to fifty yards. Wind gusting occasionally. I estimate strength four to five. It only clears things intermittently.’

‘Have you placed your markers?’ he asked.

She’d totally forgotten. ‘Oh, God, no, give me a few minutes.’

She put down the headphones, got the bag of cycle lamps and ran out into the meadow. She arranged three of them in an inverted L shape, the crossbar at the upwind end, and switched them on so that their beams shone straight up into the sky. Then she ran to a point two hundred yards along the meadow, Nell chasing after her, and spaced out a further three lamps.

She was panting for breath when she returned to the barn and reached for the headphones and mike. ‘Falcon here. Markers in place.’

She stood in the doorway of the barn looking up. She could hear the Lysander clearly. It seemed to pass at a few hundred feet and move away.

‘Falcon here,’ she called. ‘I heard you. You were directly overhead.’

‘Can’t see a thing,’ Asa replied. ‘It’s bad.’

At that moment Sir Maxwell Shaw appeared from the darkness. He was not wearing a raincoat or hat and was very drunk, his speech slurred and halting. ‘Ah, there you are, old girl, everything all right?’

‘No it isn’t,’ she told him.

Asa said, ‘I’ll keep circling, just in case things change.’

‘Right, I’ll stand by.’

There was a crash of some sort just outside Ashford, a large produce truck and a private car, potatoes all over the road. Devlin, gripping the wheel impatiently, sat there in a queue of traffic for fifteen minutes before pulling out and turning the van.

‘Already midnight,’ he said to Steiner. ‘We can’t afford to hang about here. We’ll find another way.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Munro said. ‘Having trouble, are we, Mr Devlin?’

‘No, you old sod, but you will be if you don’t shut up,’ Devlin told him and took the next road on the left.

It was at about the same time that Asa Vaughan took the Lysander down for the fourth attempt. The undercarriage was of the non-retractable type and there were landing spotlights fitted in the wheel spats. He had them on, but all they showed him was the fog.

‘Falcon, it’s impossible. I’m not getting anywhere.’

Strangely enough it was Maxwell Shaw who came up with the solution. ‘Needs more light,’ he said. ‘Lot’s more light. I mean, he’d see the bloody house if it was on fire, wouldn’t he?’

‘My God!’ Lavinia said and reached for the mike. ‘Falcon here. Now listen carefully. I’m a pilot so I know what I’m talking about.’

‘Let’s hear it,’ Asa said.

‘My house is three hundred yards south of the meadow and downwind. I’m going to go up there now and put on every light in the place.’

‘Isn’t that what they call advertising?’ Asa said.

‘Not in this fog and there isn’t another house for two miles. I’m going now. Good luck.’ She put down her headphones and mike. ‘You stay here, Max, I shan’t be long.’

‘All right, old girl.’

She ran all the way to the house, got the front door open, gasping for breath and started. She climbed the stairs first, going into every room, even the bath-rooms, switched on the lights and yanked back the blackout curtains. Then she went down to the ground floor and did the same thing. She left quickly and when she stopped after some fifty yards to look back, the house was ablaze with lights.

Maxwell Shaw was drinking from a hip flask when she returned. ‘Bloody place looks like a Christmas tree,’ he told her.

She ignored him and reached for the mike. ‘Right, I’ve done it. Is that any better?’

‘We’ll take a look,’ Asa said.

He took the Lysander down to five hundred feet, suddenly filled with a strange fatalism. ‘What the hell, Asa,’ he said softly. ‘If you survive this damn war they’ll only give you fifty years in Leavenworth so what have you got to lose?’

He went in hard and now the fog was suffused with a kind of glow and a second later, Shaw Place, every window alight, came into view. He had always been a fine pilot, but for a moment, greatness took over as he pulled back the column and lifted over the house with feet to spare. And there on the other side were the lights of the meadow, the open barn door.

The Lysander landed perfectly, turned and taxied towards the barn. Lavinia got the doors fully open, her brother watching, and gestured Asa inside. He switched off the engine, took off his flying helmet and got out.

‘I say, that was a bit hairy,’ she said and stuck out her hand. ‘I’m Lavinia Shaw and this is my brother Maxwell.’

‘Asa Vaughan. I really owe you one.’

‘Not at all. I’m a pilot myself. Used to fly a Tiger Moth from here.’

‘Good heavens, the fellow sounds like a damn Yank,’ Maxwell Shaw said.

‘Well, you could say I grew up there.’ Asa turned to Lavinia. ‘Where are the others?’

‘No sign of Major Conlon, I’m afraid. Fog all the way from London to the coast. I expect they’ve got held up.’

Asa nodded. ‘Okay, let’s get a message out to Chernay right now telling them I’m down in one piece.’

At Chernay in the radio room Schellenberg was in despair for the RAF weather reports Cherbourg had been monitoring indicated just how impossible the situation was. And then Leber, sitting by the radio in headphones, was convulsed into action.

‘It’s Falcon, General.’ He listened, writing furiously on his pad at the same time, tore off the sheet and passed it to Schellenberg. ‘He’s made it, General, he managed to set that lovely bitch down.’

‘Yes,’ Schellenberg said. ‘He certainly did, but his passengers weren’t waiting for him.’

‘He said delayed by the fog, General.’

‘Yes, well, let’s hope so. Tell him we’ll be standing by.’

Leber tapped out the message quickly and pulled the headphones down to his neck. ‘Why don’t you go and put your feet up for an hour, General? I’m all right here.’

‘What I will do is go and have a shower and freshen myself up,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘Then we’ll have some coffee together, Flight Sergeant.’

He walked to the door and Leber said, ‘After all, there’s no rush. He’d never be able to get the Lysander in here until this weather improves.’

‘Yes, well, let’s not think about that for now,’ Schellenberg said and went out.

At Shaw Place Asa helped Lavinia put out all the lights, going from room to room. Shaw was slumped in his chair by the fire, eyes glazed, very far gone indeed.

‘Is he often like that?’ Asa asked.

She left the French windows open, but drew the curtains. ‘My brother isn’t a happy man. Sorry, I didn’t ask you your rank.’

‘Captain,’ he said.

‘Well, Captain, let’s say the drink helps. Come into the kitchen. I’ll make some tea or coffee if you’d like it.’

‘Coffee for preference.’

He sat on the edge of the table smoking a cigarette while she made the coffee, very handsome in the SS uniform and she was acutely aware of him. He took off his flying jacket and she saw the cuff-title on his sleeve.

‘Good heavens, the George Washington Legion? I didn’t know there was such a thing. My brother was right. You are an American.’

‘I hope you won’t hold it against me,’ he said.

‘We won’t, you beautiful Yankee bastard.’ As Asa turned, Liam Devlin came through the door and threw his arms about him. ‘How in the hell did you manage to land in that stuff, son? It took us all our time to make it from London by road.’

‘Genius, I suppose,’ Asa said modestly.

Munro appeared behind Devlin, still with his wrists bound and the scarf around his eyes. Steiner was at his shoulder. ‘Colonel Kurt Steiner, the object of the exercise, plus a little excess baggage we acquired along the way,’ Devlin said.

‘Colonel, a pleasure.’ Asa shook Steiner’s hand.

Lavinia said, ‘Why don’t we all go into the living room and have a cup of coffee? It’s just made.’

‘What a charming idea,’ Munro said.

‘What you like and what you get are two different things, Brigadier,’ Devlin told him. ‘Still, if it’s made, there’s no harm. Five minutes and we’re away.’

‘I wouldn’t count on that. I’ll have to check the situation at Chernay,’ Asa said to him as they moved through. ‘The weather was just as bad there when I left.’

Devlin said, ‘That’s all we need.’ In the living room he pushed Munro down into the other chair by the fire and looked at Maxwell Shaw in disgust. ‘Christ, if you struck a match he’d catch fire.’

‘He’s really hung one on,’ Asa said.

Shaw woke up and opened his eyes. ‘What’s that, eh?’ He focused on Devlin. ‘Conlon, that you?’

‘As ever was,’ Devlin answered.

Shaw sat up and looked across at Munro. ‘Who in the hell is that? What’s he got that stupid thing round his eyes for?’ He reached across and pulled off the scarf before anyone could stop him. Munro shook his head, blinking in the light. Shaw said, ‘I know you, don’t I?’

‘You should, Sir Maxwell,’ Dougal Monro told him. ‘We’ve been fellow members of the Army and Navy Club for years.’

‘Of course.’ Shaw nodded foolishly. ‘Thought I knew you.’

‘That’s torn it, Brigadier,’ Devlin told him. ‘I’d intended to dump you somewhere in the marsh before we left to find your own way home, but now you know who these people are.’

‘Which means you have two choices. Shoot me or take me with you.’

It was Steiner who said, ‘Is there room, Captain?’

‘Oh, sure, we could manage,’ Asa said.

Steiner turned to the Irishman. ‘It’s up to you, Mr Devlin.’

Munro said, ‘Never mind, my friend, I’m sure your Nazi masters will pay well for me.’

Asa said, ‘I haven’t had the chance to fill you in on what the score is over there yet. You’d better know now because you’ll be up to your necks in it if we get back in one piece.’

‘You’d better tell us then,’ Steiner said.

So Asa did.

The fog was as bad as ever as they all stood around the radio in the barn, Lavinia scribbling on the pad in front of her. She handed the message to Asa who read it then passed it to Devlin. ‘They suggest we delay take-off for another hour. There’s a slight chance conditions at Chernay might have improved by then.’

Devlin glanced at Steiner. ‘We don’t seem to have much choice.’

‘Well, I can’t say I’m sorry for you.’ Munro turned to Lavinia with a smile of devastating charm. ‘I was wondering, my dear. Do you think when we get back to the house I might have tea this time?’

Shaw was sprawled in his chair by the fire fast asleep. Munro sat opposite, wrists still bound. Asa was in the kitchen helping Lavinia.

Devlin said to Steiner, ‘I was thinking, Colonel, you might need a sidearm.’ He picked up his holdall, put it on the table and opened it. The silenced Walther was lying inside on top of a couple of shirts.

‘A thought,’ Steiner said.

There was a gust of wind, a creaking at the French windows and then the curtains were pulled back and Jack and Eric Carver stepped into the room, guns in their hands.

14

Devlin said, ‘Look what the wind’s blown in.’

Steiner said calmly, ‘Who are these men?’

‘Well, the big ugly one is Jack Carver. He runs most of London’s East End. Makes an honest bob out of protection, gambling, prostitution.’

‘Very funny,’ Carver said.

‘The other one, the one who looks as if he’s just crawled out of his hole, is his brother, Eric.’

‘I’ll teach you.’ Eric advanced on him, his face pinched and angry. ‘We’ll give you what we gave that pal of yours and his niece.’

Devlin went cold inside, his face on the instant turned deathly pale. ‘What are you telling me?’

‘No funny stuff this time,’ Carver said. ‘Check to see if he has that bleeding gun up his trouser leg.’

Eric dropped to one knee and relieved Devlin of the Smith and Wesson. ‘It won’t work twice, you cunning sod.’

‘My friends?’ Devlin said calmly. ‘What happened?’

Carver was enjoying himself. He took a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end and stuck it in his mouth. ‘I put the word out on you, my son. Didn’t get anywhere and then we had a stroke of luck. Eric saw the bird in Wapping High Street last evening. Followed her home.’

‘And?’

‘We paid them a visit not long after you left. A little persuasion was all it took and here we are.’

‘And he talked, my friend, as easily as that?’ Devlin said. ‘I find that hard to believe.’ He turned to Steiner. ‘Don’t you, Colonel?’

‘I do indeed,’ Steiner said.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t think too badly of him.’ Carver flicked his lighter and put the flame to his cigar. ‘I mean, it was his niece he was concerned about. He had to do the decent thing there.’

‘Not that it did either of them much good.’ Eric smiled sadistically. ‘Want to know what happened to her? She made a run for it, went over the rail down to that jetty by the house. Broke her neck.’

‘And Michael?’ Devlin asked Carver, barely managing to keep from choking.

‘I shot him, didn’t I? Isn’t that what you do with dogs?’

Devlin took a step towards him and the look on his face was terrible to see. ‘You’re dead, the both of you.’

Carver stopped smiling. ‘Not us, you little sod – you. What’s more, I’m going to give it you in the belly so it takes time.’

It was at that moment that Shaw came back to life. He opened his eyes, stretched and looked around him. ‘Now then, what’s all this?’

At the same moment, the double doors were flung open and Lavinia appeared, holding a tray, Asa beside her. ‘Tea, everyone,’ she said, then froze.

‘Just hold it right there, the both of you,’ Carver told them.

She looked absolutely terrified, but didn’t say a word.

It was Dougal Munro who tried to help her. ‘Steady, my dear. Just keep calm.’

Shaw, on his feet, swayed drunkenly, eyes bloodshot, speech slurred. ‘You bloody swine. Who do you think you are, coming into my house waving guns about?’

‘Another step, you old fool, and I’ll blow you away,’ Carver told him.

Lavinia shouted, ‘Do as he says, Max.’ She dropped the tray with a crash and took a step forward.

Carver turned and shot her, more as a reflex action than anything else. Maxwell Shaw, with a cry of rage, jumped at him and Carver fired again, shooting him twice at close quarters.

Asa was on his knees beside Lavinia. He looked up. ‘She’s dead.’

‘I warned you, didn’t I?’ Carver said, his face contorted.

‘You certainly did, Mr Carver,’ Kurt Steiner told him.

His hand went into Devlin’s open holdall on the table, found the butt of the silenced Walther, brought it out in one smooth motion and fired once. The bullet caught Carver in the centre of the forehead and he went back over the chair.

‘Jack!’ Eric screamed and as he took a step forward, Devlin grabbed for his wrist, twisting it until Eric dropped the revolver.

Eric backed away and Devlin said, ‘You killed that girl, is that what you’re telling me?’

He leaned down and picked up Maxwell Shaw’s shotgun from the floor beside the chair.

Eric was terrified. ‘It was an accident. She was running away. Went over the rail.’ The curtains billowed in the wind from the open French windows and he backed out on to the terrace.

‘But what made her run, that’s the thing?’ Devlin said, thumbing back the hammers.

‘No!’ Eric cried and Devlin gave him both barrels, lifting him over the balustrade.

At Chernay it was almost two o’clock, Schellenberg dozing in the chair in the corner of the radio room when Leber called to him.

‘Falcon coming in, General …’

Schellenberg hurried to his side. ‘What is it?’

‘Another check on the weather. I’ve told him how bad things are here.’

‘And?’

‘Just a moment, General, he’s coming in again.’ He listened intently and looked up. ‘He says he’s not prepared to wait any longer. He’s leaving now.’

Schellenberg nodded. ‘Just say good luck.’

He went to the door, opened it and went out. The fog rolled in from the sea remorselessly and he turned up the collar of his greatcoat and started to walk aimlessly along the side of the airstrip.

At roughly the same time, Horst Berger was sitting by the window in the room they had allocated to him at Belle Ile. He had found himself incapable of sleep, the prospect of the morning was too momentous, so he sat there in the darkness, the window open, listening to the rain falling through the fog. There was a knock at the door, it opened, light falling into the room. One of the SS duty sentries stood there.

‘Sturmbannführer?’ he called softly.

‘I’m here. What is it?’

‘The Reichsführer wants you. He’s waiting now at his apartment.’

‘Five minutes,’ Berger told him and the man went out.

In the sitting room of his apartment, Himmler was standing by the fire in full uniform when Berger knocked and entered. The Reichsführer turned. ‘Ah, there you are.’

‘Reichsführer?’

‘The Führer obviously can’t sleep. He’s sent for me. Asked particularly that I bring you.’

‘Does the Reichsführer think this is of any significance?’

‘Not at all,’ Himmler said. ‘The Führer’s health has been something of a problem for quite some time. His inability to sleep is only one of many symptoms. He has come to rely on the ministrations of his personal physician, Professor Morell, to an inordinate degree. Unfortunately from the Führer’s point of view at the moment, Morell is in Berlin and the Führer is here.’

‘Morell is of such vital importance then?’ Berger asked.

‘There are those who would consider him a quack,’ Himmler said. ‘On the other hand, the Führer can’t be considered an easy patient.’

‘I see, Reichsführer. But why am I commanded?’

‘Who knows? Some whim or other.’ Himmler consulted his watch. ‘We are due at his suite in fifteen minutes. With the Führer, Berger, time is everything. Not one minute more, not one minute less. There’s fresh coffee on the table there. Time for you to have a cup before we go.’

In the barn at Shaw Place, everyone waited while Devlin tapped out his message on the radio. He put down the headphones, switched off and turned to Steiner and Asa who stood there, Dougal Munro, his hands still bound, between them.

‘That’s it,’ Devlin said. ‘I’ve told Schellenberg we’re leaving.’

‘Then let’s get the plane out,’ Asa said.

Munro stood against the wall while the three of them manhandled the Lysander out into the fog. They rolled it some distance away from the barn. Asa got the cupola up and reached for his helmet.

‘What about our friend in the barn?’ Steiner asked.

‘He stays,’ Devlin said.

Steiner turned to him. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Colonel,’ Devlin said, ‘you’re a nice man and due to the vagaries of war, I happen to be on your side at the moment, but this is a personal thing. I haven’t the slightest intention of handing over the head of Section D at SOE to German Intelligence. Now you two get in and start up. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

When he went into the barn, Munro was half-sitting on the table by the radio, struggling with the twine around his wrists. He paused as Devlin entered. The Irishman took a small pocket-knife from his pocket and opened the blade.

‘Here, let me, Brigadier.’

He sliced through the twine, freeing him and Munro rubbed at his wrists. ‘What’s this?’

‘Sure and you didn’t really think I was going to hand you over to those Nazi bastards, now did you? There was a small problem for a while, Shaw exposing you to things as it were, but there’s no one left. My good friend Michael Ryan and Mary, his niece, at Cable Wharf, the Shaws here. All gone. No one you could hurt.’

‘God help me, Devlin, I’ll never understand you.’

‘And why should you, Brigadier, when I don’t understand myself most of the time?’ The engine of the Lysander started up and Devlin stuck a cigarette in his mouth. ‘We’ll be going now. You could alert the RAF, but they’d need the luck of the Devil to find us in this fog.’

‘True,’ Munro agreed.

Devlin flicked his lighter. ‘On the other hand, it’s just possible you might think Walter Schellenberg has the right idea.’

‘Strange,’ Munro said. ‘There have been moments in this war when I’d have jumped for joy at the idea of someone killing Hitler.’

‘A great man once said that as the times change, sensible men change with them.’ Devlin moved to the door. ‘Goodbye, Brigadier, I don’t expect we’ll be seeing each other again.’

‘I wish I could count on that,’ Munro said.

The Irishman hurried across to the Lysander, where Steiner was stripping the canvas with the RAF roundels from the wings, revealing the Luftwaffe insignia. Devlin ran to the tailplane, did the same there, then scrambled inside after Steiner. The Lysander taxied to the end of the meadow and turned into the wind. A moment later, it roared down the runway and took off. Munro stood there listening to the sound of it disappear into the night. There was a sudden whimper and Nell slipped out of the darkness and sat there, looking up at him. When he turned and started back to the house she followed him.

Jack Carter, in the outer office at SOE Headquarters, heard the red phone’s distinctive sound and rushed in at once to answer it.

‘Jack?’ Munro said.

‘Thank God, sir, I’ve been as worried as hell. I got in from York and walked straight into a minefield. All hell broken loose at St Mary’s Priory and the porter said you were there, sir. I mean, what the hell happened?’

‘It’s quite simple, Jack. A rather clever gentleman called Liam Devlin made fools of the lot of us and is at this very moment flying back to France with Colonel Kurt Steiner.’

‘Shall I alert the RAF?’ Carter asked.

‘I’ll take care of it. More important things to do. Number one, there’s a house on Cable Wharf in Wapping owned by a man called Ryan. You’ll find him and his niece there dead. I want a disposal team as soon as possible. Use that crematorium in North London.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘I also want a disposal team here, Jack. That’s Shaw Place outside the village of Charbury in Romney Marsh. Come yourself. I’ll wait for you.’

He put the phone down. No question of phoning the RAF of course. Schellenberg was right and that was that. He left the study and went to the front door. When he opened it the fog was as thick as ever. Nell whined and sat on her haunches, staring up at him.

Munro bent down and fondled her ears. ‘Poor old girl,’ he said. ‘And poor old Devlin. I wish him luck.’

When Himmler and Berger were admitted to the Führer’s apartment, Adolf Hitler was sitting beside an enormous stone fireplace in which a log fire burned brightly. He had a file open on his knees which he continued to read as they stood there waiting. After a while he looked up, a slightly vacant look in his eyes.

‘Reichsführer?’

‘You wished to see me and Sturmbannführer Berger.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Hitler closed the file and put it on a small table. ‘The young man who has so brilliantly organized my security here. I’m impressed, Reichsführer.’ He stood and put a hand on Berger’s shoulder. ‘You’ve done well.’

Berger held himself stiff as a ramrod. ‘My honour to serve, my Führer.’

Hitler touched Berger’s Iron Cross First Class with one finger. ‘A brave soldier too, I see?’ He turned to Himmler. ‘Obersturmbannführer would be more appropriate here, I think.’

‘I’ll take care of it, my Führer,’ Himmler told him.

‘Good.’ Hitler turned back to Berger and smiled indulgently. ‘Now off you go. The Reichsführer and I have things to discuss.’

Berger clicked his heels and raised his right arm. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said, turned on his heel and went out.

Hitler returned to his chair and indicated the one opposite. ‘Join me, Reichsführer.’

‘A privilege.’

Himmler sat down and Hitler said, ‘Insomnia can be a blessing in disguise. It gives one extra time to ponder the really important things. This file, for example.’ He picked it up. ‘A joint report from Rommel and Canaris in which they try to persuade me that the Allies will attempt an invasion by way of Normandy. Nonsense, of course. Even Eisenhower couldn’t be so foolish.’

‘I agree, my Führer.’

‘No, it’s obvious that the Pas de Calais will be the target, any idiot can see that.’

Himmler said carefully, ‘And yet you still intend to confirm Rommel as Commander of Army Group B with full responsibility for the Atlantic Wall defences?’

‘Why not?’ Hitler said. ‘A brilliant soldier, we all know that. He’ll have to accept my decision in this matter with good grace and follow orders as will Canaris.’

‘But will they, my Führer?’

‘Do you doubt their loyalty?’ Hitler asked. ‘Is that what you are implying?’

‘What can I say, my Führer? The Admiral has not always been as enthusiastic towards the cause of National Socialism as I would like. As for Rommel.’ Himmler shrugged. ‘The people’s hero. Such popularity easily leads to arrogance.’

‘Rommel will do as he is told,’ Hitler said serenely. ‘I am well aware, as are you, of the existence of those extremists in the Army who would destroy me if they could. I am also aware that it is a distinct possibility that Rommel is in sympathy with such aims. At the right moment there will be a noose waiting for all such traitors.’

‘And richly deserved, my Führer.’

Hitler got up and stood with his back to the fire. ‘One must learn how to handle these people, Reichsführer. That’s why I insisted they join me for breakfast at seven. As you know they’re staying in Rennes overnight. This means they must rise at a rather early hour to get here in time. I like to keep people like this slightly unbalanced. I find it pays.’

‘Brilliant, my Führer.’

‘And before you go, remember one thing.’ Hitler’s face was very calm and Himmler stood up. ‘Since I took power, how many attempts on my life? How many plots?’

Himmler for once was caught. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘At least sixteen,’ Hitler said. ‘And this argues divine intervention. The only logical explanation.’

Himmler swallowed hard. ‘Of course, my Führer.’

Hitler smiled benignly. ‘Now be off with you. Try and get a little sleep and I’ll see you at breakfast.’ He turned to look down at the fire and Himmler left quickly.

The English Channel was fogged in for most of the way to Cap de la Hague and Asa took advantage of it, using the cover, making good time, finally turning in towards the French coast just after three.

He called Chernay over the radio. ‘Chernay, Falcon here, what’s the situation?’

In the radio room Schellenberg sprang from his chair and crossed to Leber. The Flight Sergeant said, ‘We’ve had some clearance with wind but not enough. Ceiling zero one minute then it clears to maybe a hundred feet, then back again.’

‘Is there anywhere else to go?’ Asa demanded.

‘Not round here. Cherbourg’s totally closed in.’

Schellenberg took the mike. ‘Asa, it’s me. Are you all there?’

‘We sure as hell are. Your Colonel Steiner, Devlin and me, only we don’t seem to have any place to go.’

‘What’s your fuel position?’

‘I figure I’m good for about forty-five minutes. What I’ll do is stooge around for a while. Keep on the line and let me know the second there’s any kind of improvement.’

Leber said, ‘I’ll have the men light runway flares, General, it might help.’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘You stay on the radio,’ and he hurried out.

After twenty minutes, Asa said, ‘This is no good. Sit tight and I’ll give it a shot.’

He took the Lysander down, his wheel spots on, and the fog enveloped him, just as it had done at Shaw Place. At six hundred feet he pulled the column back into his stomach and went up, coming out of the mist and fog at around a thousand.

The stars still glistened palely and what was left of the moon was low, dawn streaking the horizon. Asa called, ‘It’s hopeless. Suicide to try and land. I’d rather put her down in the sea.’

‘The tide’s out, Captain,’ Leber answered.

‘Is that a fact? How much beach do you get down there?’

‘It runs for miles.’

‘Then that’s it. It’s some sort of a chance anyway.’

Schellenberg’s voice sounded. ‘Are you sure, Asa?’

‘The only thing I’m sure of, General, is that we don’t have any choice. We’ll see you or we won’t. Over and out.’

Schellenberg dropped the mike and turned to Leber. ‘Can we get down there?’

‘Oh, yes, General, there’s a road leading to an old slipway.’

‘Good. Then let’s get moving.’

‘If I have to land in the sea this thing’s not going to float for very long,’ Asa said over his shoulder to Steiner and Devlin. ‘There’s a dinghy pack there behind you. The yellow thing. Get it out fast, pull the red tag and it inflates itself.’

Steiner smiled. ‘You swim, of course, Mr Devlin.’

Devlin smiled back. ‘Some of the time.’

Asa started down, easing the column forward, sweat on his face, all the way to five hundred and his altimeter kept on going. The Lysander bucked in a heavy gust of wind and they passed three hundred.

Devlin cried, ‘I saw something.’

The fog seemed to open before them, as if a curtain was being pulled to each side, and there were great waves surging in from the Atlantic, half a mile of wet sand stretching towards the cliffs of Cap de la Hague. Asa heaved the column back, and the Lysander levelled out no more than fifty feet above the whitecaps that pounded into the surf on the shore.

Asa slammed the instrument panel with one hand. ‘You beautiful, beautiful bitch. I love you,’ he cried and turned into the wind to land.

The truck containing Schellenberg, Leber and several Luftwaffe mechanics had reached the slipway at the very moment the Lysander burst into view.

‘He made it, General,’ Leber cried. ‘What a pilot,’ and he ran forward waving, followed by his men.

Schellenberg felt totally drained. He lit a cigarette and waited as the Lysander taxied towards the end of the slipway. It came to a halt and Leber and his men cheered as Asa switched off the engine. Devlin and Steiner got out first and Asa followed, taking off his flying helmet and tossing it into the cockpit.

Leber said, ‘Quite a job, Captain.’

Asa said, ‘Treat her with care, Flight Sergeant. Only the best. She’s earned it. Will she be safe here?’

‘Oh, yes, the tide is on the turn, but it doesn’t come up this far.’

‘Fine. Do an engine check and you’ll have to refuel by hand.’

‘As you say, Captain.’

Schellenberg stood, waiting as Steiner and Devlin came towards him. He held out his hand to Steiner. ‘Colonel, a pleasure to see you here.’

‘General,’ Steiner said.

Schellenberg turned to Devlin. ‘As for you, my mad Irish friend, I still can’t believe you’re here.’

‘Well, you know what I always say, Walter, me old son, all you have to do is live right.’ Devlin grinned. ‘Would you think there might be a bit of breakfast somewhere? I’m starved.’

They sat round the table in the little canteen drinking coffee. Schellenberg said, ‘So, the Führer arrived safely last night.’

‘And Rommel and the Admiral?’ Devlin asked.

‘I’ve no idea where they’ve been staying but they will be joining him very soon now. Must be on their way.’

Steiner said, ‘This plan of yours makes a wild kind of sense, but there is a considerable uncertainty.’

‘You don’t think the men of this parachute detachment will follow you?’

‘Oh, no, I mean what happens to the three of you in the Chateau before we arrive.’

‘Yes, well, we’ve no choice,’ Schellenberg said. ‘There’s no other way.’

‘Yes, I see that.’

There was a moment’s silence and Schellenberg said, ‘Are you with me in this, Colonel, or not? There isn’t much time.’

Steiner got up and moved to the window. It had started to rain heavily and he stared out for a moment and turned. ‘I have little reason to like the Führer and not just because of what happened to my father. I could say he’s bad for everybody, a disaster for the human race, but for me, the most important thing is that he’s bad for Germany. Having said that, Himmler as head of state would be infinitely worse. At least with the Führer in charge one has the prospect of an end to this bloody war.’

‘So you will join with me in this?’

‘I don’t think any of us have a choice.’

Asa shrugged. ‘What the hell, you can count me in.’

Devlin stood up and stretched. ‘Right, well, let’s get on with it,’ and he opened the door and went out.

When Schellenberg went into the hut he and Asa had been using, Devlin had a foot on the bed, his trousers rolled up as he adjusted the Smith & Wesson in the ankle holster.

‘Your ace-in-the-hole, my friend?’

‘And this.’ Devlin took out the silenced Walther from his holdall and put it into his waistband at the rear. Then he took out the Luger. ‘This is the one for the pocket. I doubt those SS guards will let us through the door armed, so best to have something to give them.’

‘Do you think it will work?’ Schellenberg asked.

‘Uncertainty and from you at this stage, General?’

‘Not really. You see the Allies have made one thing very clear. No negotiated peace. Total surrender. The last thing Himmler could afford.’

‘Yes, there’s a rope waiting for him all right one of these days.’

‘And me also, perhaps. I am, after all, a general of the SS,’ Schellenberg said.

‘Don’t worry, Walter.’ Devlin smiled. ‘If you end up in a prison cell I’ll break you out and for free. Now let’s get moving.’

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Admiral Canaris had left Rennes at five o’clock in a Mercedes limousine driven, for reasons of security, by Rommel’s aide, a Major Carl Ritter. Two military police motorcyclists were their only escort and led the way as they twisted and turned through the narrow French lanes in the early morning gloom.

‘Of course, the only reason we’ve had to turn out at such a ridiculous time is because he wants us at a disadvantage,’ Canaris said.

‘The Führer likes all of us at a disadvantage, Admiral,’ Rommel said, ‘I’d have thought you’d have learned that long ago.’

‘I wonder what he’s up to?’ Canaris said. ‘We know he’s going to confirm your appointment as Commander of Army Group B but he could have made you fly to Berlin for that.’

‘Exactly,’ Rommel said. ‘And there are such things as telephones. No, I think it’s the Normandy business.’

‘But surely we can make him see sense there?’ Canaris said. ‘The report we’ve put together is really quite conclusive.’

‘Yes, but unfortunately the Führer favours the Pas de Calais and so does his astrologer.’

‘And Uncle Heini?’ Canaris suggested.

‘Himmler always agrees with the Führer, you know that as well as I do.’ Beyond, through a break in the rain they saw Belle Ile. ‘Impressive,’ Rommel added.

‘Yes, very Wagnerian,’ Canaris said drily. ‘The castle at the end of the world. The Führer must like that. He and Himmler must be enjoying themselves.’

‘Have you ever wondered how it came to happen, Admiral? How we came to allow such monsters to control the destinies of millions of people?’ Erwin Rommel asked.

‘Every day of my life,’ Canaris replied.

The Mercedes turned off the road and started up to the Chateau, the motorcyclists leading the way.

15

It was just after six and Hauptmann Erich Kramer commanding the 12th Parachute Detachment at St Aubin was having coffee in his office when he heard a vehicle drive into the farmyard. He went to the window and saw a Kubelwagen, its canvas hood up against the rain. Asa got out first followed by Schellenberg and Devlin.

Kramer recognized them instantly from the last visit and frowned. ‘Now what in the hell do they want?’ he said softly.

And then Kurt Steiner emerged. Having no cap he had borrowed a Luftwaffe sidecap from Flight Sergeant Leber, what was commonly referred to as a schiff. It was, as it happened, an affectation of many old-timers in the Parachute Regiment. He stood there in the rain in his blue-grey flying blouse with the yellow collar patches, jump trousers and boots. Kramer took in the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, the silver and gold eagle of the paratrooper’s badge, the Kreta and Afrika Korps cuff-titles. He recognized him, of course; a legend to everyone in the Parachute Regiment.

‘Oh, my God,’ he murmured, reached for his cap and opened the door, buttoning his blouse. ‘Colonel Steiner – sir.’ He got his heels together and saluted, ignoring the others. ‘I can’t tell you what an honour this is.’

‘A pleasure. Captain Kramer, isn’t it?’ Steiner took in Kramer’s cuff-titles, the ribbon for the Winter War. ‘So, we are old comrades, it would seem?’

‘Yes, Colonel.’

Several paratroopers had emerged from their canteen curious about the arrivals. At the sight of Steiner they all jumped to attention. ‘At ease, lads,’ he called and said to Kramer, ‘What strength have you here?’

‘Thirty-five only, Colonel.’

‘Good,’ Steiner told him. ‘I’m going to need everyone including you, of course, so let’s get in out of this rain and I’ll explain.’

The thirty-five men of the 12th Parachute Detachment stood in four ranks in the rain in the farmyard. They wore the steel helmets peculiar to the Parachute Regiment, baggy jump smocks and most of them had Schmeisser machine pistols slung across their chests. They stood there, rigid to attention as Steiner addressed them, Schellenberg, Devlin and Asa Vaughan behind him, Kramer at one side.

Steiner hadn’t bothered with niceties, only the facts. ‘So there it is. The Führer is to meet his death very shortly at the hands of traitorous elements of the SS. Our job is to stop them. Any questions?’

There wasn’t a word, only the heavy rain drumming down and Steiner turned to Kramer. ‘Get them ready, Captain.’

‘Zu befehl, Herr Oberst.’ Kramer saluted.

Steiner turned to the others. ‘Will fifteen minutes be enough for you?’

‘Then you arrive like a panzer column,’ Schellenberg told him. ‘Very fast indeed.’

He and Asa got in the Kubelwagen. Devlin, the black hat slanted over one ear, the trenchcoat he’d stolen from the Army and Navy Club already soaked, said to Steiner, ‘In a way, we’ve been here before.’

‘I know, and the same old question. Are we playing the game or is the game playing us?’

‘Let’s hope we have better luck than we did last time, Colonel.’ Devlin smiled, got in the back of the Kubelwagen and Asa drove away.

At the Château de Belle Ile, Rommel, Canaris and Major Ritter went up the steps to the main entrance. One of the two SS guards opened the door and they went inside. There seemed to be guards everywhere.

Rommel said to Canaris as he unbuttoned his coat, ‘It looks rather like some weekend SS convention, the kind they used to have in Bavaria in the old days.’

Berger came down the stairs and advanced to meet them. ‘Herr Admiral – Herr Field Marshal, a great pleasure. Sturmbannführer Berger, in charge of security.’

‘Major.’ Rommel nodded.

‘The Führer is waiting in the dining hall. He has requested that no one bears arms in his presence.’

Rommel and Ritter took their pistols from their holsters. ‘I trust we’re not late?’ the Field Marshal said.

‘Actually, you are early by two minutes.’ Berger gave him the good-humoured smile of one soldier to another. ‘May I show you the way?’

He opened the great oak door and they followed him in. The long dining table was laid for four people only. The Führer was standing by the stone fireplace looking down into the burning logs. He turned and faced them.

‘Ah, there you are.’

Rommel said, ‘I trust you are well, my Führer?’

Hitler nodded to Canaris. ‘Herr Admiral.’ His eyes flickered to Ritter who stood rigidly to attention clutching a briefcase. ‘And who have we here?’

‘My personal aide, Major Carl Ritter, my Führer. He has further details on the Normandy situation that we have already discussed,’ Rommel said.

‘More reports?’ Hitler suggested. ‘If you must, I suppose.’ He turned to Berger. ‘Have another place laid at the table and see what’s keeping the Reichsführer.’

As Berger moved to the door it opened and Himmler entered. He wore the black dress uniform and his face was pale, a faint edge of excitement to him that he found difficult to conceal. ‘I apologize, my Führer, a phone call from Berlin as I was about to leave my room.’ He nodded. ‘Herr Admiral – Field Marshal.’

‘And the Field Marshal’s aide, Major Ritter.’ Hitler rubbed his hands together. ‘I really feel extraordinarily hungry. You know, gentlemen, perhaps one should do this more often. The early breakfast, I mean. It leaves so much of the day for matters of importance. But come. Sit.’

He himself took the head of the table. Rommel and Canaris on his right, Himmler and Ritter on the left. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Let’s begin. Food before business.’

He picked up the small silver bell at his right hand and rang it.

It was no more than ten minutes later that the Kubelwagen arrived at the main gate. Schellenberg leaned out, the sergeant who came forward took in his uniform and saluted.

‘The Führer is expecting us,’ Schellenberg told him.

The sergeant looked uncertain. ‘I’ve orders to admit no one, General.’

‘Don’t be stupid, man,’ Schellenberg said. ‘That hardly applies to me.’ He nodded to Asa. ‘Drive on, Hauptsturmführer.’

They drove into the inner courtyard and stopped. Devlin said, ‘You know what the Spaniards call the instant when the bullfighter goes in for the kill and doesn’t know whether he’ll live or die? The moment of truth.’

‘Not now, Mr Devlin,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Let’s just keep going,’ and he marched up the wide steps and reached for the handle of the front door.

Hitler was enjoying himself, working his way through a plate of toast and fruit. ‘One thing about the French, they really do make rather excellent bread,’ he said and reached for another slice.

The door opened and an SS sergeant-major entered. It was Himmler who spoke to him. ‘I thought I made it clear we were not to be disturbed for any reason.’

‘Yes, Reichsführer, but General Schellenberg is here with a Hauptsturmführer and some civilian. Says it is imperative he sees the Führer.’

Himmler said, ‘Nonsense, you have your orders!’

Hitler cut in at once. ‘Schellenberg? Now I wonder what that can be about? Bring them in, Sergeant-Major.’

Schellenberg, Devlin and Asa waited in the hall by the door. The sergeant-major returned. ‘The Führer will see you, General, but all weapons must be left here. I have my orders. It applies to everyone.’

‘Of course.’ Schellenberg took his pistol from its holster, slapping it down on the table.

Asa did the same and Devlin took the Luger from his coat pocket. ‘All contributions graciously given.’

The sergeant-major said, ‘If you would follow me, gentlemen.’ He turned and led the way across the hall.

When they went in, Hitler was still eating. Rommel and Canaris looked up curiously. Himmler was deathly pale.

Hitler said, ‘Now then, Schellenberg, what brings you here?’

‘I regret the intrusion, my Führer, but a matter of the gravest urgency has come to my attention.’

‘And how urgent would that be?’ Hitler demanded.

‘A question of your very life, my Führer, or should I say an attempt on your life.’

‘Impossible,’ Himmler said.

Hitler waved him to silence and glanced at Devlin and Asa Vaughan. ‘And who have we here?’

‘If I may explain? The Reichsführer recently gave me the task of planning the safe return to the Reich of a certain Colonel Kurt Steiner who was held prisoner in the Tower of London for a while. Herr Devlin here and Hauptsturmführer Vaughan succeeded triumphantly in this matter, delivered Steiner to me at a small Luftwaffe base near here a short time ago.’

Hitler said to Himmler, ‘I knew nothing of this.’

Himmler looked quite wretched. ‘It was to be a surprise, my Führer.’

Hitler turned again to Schellenberg. ‘This Colonel Steiner, where is he?’

‘He’ll be here soon. The thing is, I received an anonymous telephone call only a couple of hours ago. I regret to have to say this in the presence of the Reichsführer, but whoever it was spoke of treachery, even within the ranks of the SS.’

Himmler was almost choking. ‘Impossible.’

‘An officer named Berger was referred to.’

Hitler said, ‘But Sturmbannführer Berger is in charge of my security here. I’ve just had him promoted.’

‘Nevertheless, my Führer, that is what I was told.’

‘Which just goes to show you can’t trust anyone,’ Horst Berger called and he moved out of the shadows at the end of the dining hall, an SS man on either side of him holding a machine pistol.

Steiner and Captain Kramer led the way up the hill to the Chateau in a Kubelwagen, the top down in spite of the rain. The paratroopers followed packed into two troop carriers. Steiner had a stick grenade tucked into the top of one of his jump boots and a Schmeisser ready in his lap.

‘When we go, we go hard, no stopping, remember that,’ he said.

‘We’re with you all the way, Colonel,’ Kramer told him.

He slowed at the outer gate and the SS sergeant came forward. ‘What’s all this?’

Steiner raised the Schmeisser, lifted him back with a quick burst, was on his feet and swinging to cut down the other guard as Kramer took the Kubelwagen forward with a surge of power.

As they reached the bottom of the steps leading to the front door, more SS appeared from the guardhouse on the right. Steiner pulled the stick grenade from his boot and tossed it into the centre of them, then he leapt from the Kubelwagen and started up the steps. Behind him the paratroopers jumped from the troop carriers and stormed after him, firing across the courtyard at the SS.

‘You dare to approach me like this, a gun in your hand?’ Hitler said to Berger, his eyes blazing.

‘I regret to have to say it, my Führer, but your moment has come, you, Field Marshal Rommel here, the Admiral.’ Berger shook his head. ‘We can no longer afford any of you.’

Hitler said, ‘You can’t kill me, you young fool, it’s an impossibility.’

‘Really?’ Berger said. ‘And why would that be?’

‘Because it is not my destiny to die here,’ Hitler told him calmly. ‘Because God is on my side.’

Somewhere in the distance was the sound of shooting. Berger half turned to glance at the door and Major Ritter leapt to his feet, threw his briefcase at him and ran for the door. ‘Guards!’ he shouted.

One of the SS men fired his Schmeisser, shooting him in the back several times.

Schellenberg said, ‘Mr Devlin.’

Devlin’s hand found the butt of the silenced Walther in his waistband against the small of his back. His first bullet caught the man who had just machine-gunned Ritter in the temple, the second took the other SS man in the heart. Berger swung to face him, his mouth open in a terrible cry of rage and Devlin’s third bullet hit him between the eyes.

Devlin walked across and looked down at him, the Walther slack in his hand. ‘You wouldn’t be told, son, would you? I said you needed a different class of work.’

Behind him the doors burst open and Kurt Steiner rushed in at the head of his men.

When Schellenberg knocked and entered Himmler’s room he found the Reichsführer standing at the window. It was instantly evident that he intended to brazen it out.

‘Ah, there you are, General. A most unfortunate business. It reflects so terribly on all of us of the SS. Thank goodness the Führer sees Berger’s abominable treachery as an individual lapse.’

‘Fortunate for all of us, Reichsführer.’

Himmler sat down. ‘The anonymous phone call you mentioned? You’ve absolutely no idea who it was?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘A pity. Still …’ Himmler looked at his watch. ‘The Führer intends to leave at noon and I shall fly back to Berlin with him. Canaris goes with us. Rommel has already left.’

‘I see,’ Schellenberg said.

‘Before he leaves, the Führer wants to see you and the other three. I believe he thinks decorations are in order.’

‘Decorations?’ Schellenberg said.

‘The Führer is never without them, General, carries a supply in his personal case wherever he goes. He believes in rewarding loyal service and so do I.’

‘Reichsführer.’

Schellenberg turned to the door and Himmler said, ‘Better for all of us if this shocking affair never happened. You follow me, General? Rommel and Canaris will keep their mouths shut, and easy enough to handle those paratroopers. A posting back to the Russian front will take care of them.’

‘I see, Reichsführer,’ Schellenberg said carefully.

‘Which, of course, leaves us with Steiner, Hauptsturmführer Vaughan and the man Devlin. I feel they could all prove a serious embarrassment as I’m sure you will agree.’

‘Is the Reichsführer suggesting …’ Schellenberg began.

‘Nothing,’ Himmler told him. ‘I’m suggesting nothing. I simply leave it to your own good sense.’

It was just before noon, as Schellenberg, Steiner, Asa and Devlin waited in the library, that the door opened and the Führer entered followed by Canaris and Himmler who carried a small leather briefcase.

‘Gentlemen,’ Hitler said.

The three officers jumped to attention and Devlin, sitting on the windowseat, got up awkwardly. Hitler nodded to Himmler who opened the case which was full of decorations.

‘To you, General Schellenberg, the German Cross in Gold and also to you, Hauptsturmührer Vaughan.’ He pinned on the decorations then turned to Steiner. ‘You, Colonel Steiner, already have the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves. I now award you the Swords.’

‘Thank you, my Führer,’ Kurt Steiner replied with considerable irony.

‘And to you, Mr Devlin,’ the Führer said, turning to the Irishman. ‘The Iron Cross First Class.’

Devlin couldn’t think of a thing to say, stifled an insane desire to laugh as the cross was pinned to his jacket.

‘You have my gratitude, gentlemen, and the gratitude of all the German people,’ Hitler told them, turned and went out, Himmler trailing behind.

Canaris lingered for a moment at the door. ‘A most instructive morning, but I’d take care if I were you from now on, Walter.’

The door closed. Devlin said, ‘What happens now?’

‘The Führer returns to Berlin at once,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Canaris and Himmler go with him.’

‘What about us?’ Asa Vaughan said.

‘There’s a slight problem there. The Reichsführer has made it plain he doesn’t want you three back in Berlin. In fact, he doesn’t want you around at all.’

‘I see,’ Steiner said. ‘And you’re supposed to take care of us?’

‘Something like that.’

‘The old sod,’ Devlin said.

‘Of course there is the Lysander waiting on the beach at Chernay,’ Schellenberg said. ‘Leber will have had it checked out by now and refuelled.’

‘But where in the hell do we go?’ Asa Vaughan demanded. ‘We’ve just got out of England by the skin of our teeth and Germany’s certainly too hot for us.’

Schellenberg glanced enquiringly at Devlin and the Irishman started to laugh. ‘Have you ever been to Ireland?’ he asked Vaughan.

It was cold on the beach, the tide much higher than it had been that morning, but there was still ample space to take off.

‘I’ve checked everything,’ Flight Sergeant Leber said to Asa. ‘You shouldn’t have any problems, Hauptsturmführer.’

Schellenberg said, ‘You go back to the airfield now, Flight Sergeant, I’ll join you later.’

Leber saluted and walked away. Schellenberg shook hands with Steiner and Asa. ‘Gentlemen, good luck.’ They got into the Lysander and he turned to Devlin. ‘You are a truly remarkable man.’

Devlin said, ‘Come with us, Walter, nothing for you back there.’

‘Too late, my friend. As I’ve said before, far too late to get off the merry-go-round now.’

‘And what will Himmler say when he hears that you let us go?’

‘Oh, I’ve thought of that. An excellent marksman like you should have no difficulty in shooting me in the shoulder. Let’s make it the left one. A flesh wound, naturally.’

‘Jesus, it’s the cunning old fox you are.’

Schellenberg walked away, then turned. Devlin’s hand came out of his pocket holding the Walther. It coughed once and Schellenberg staggered, clutching at his shoulder. There was blood between his fingers and he smiled.

‘Goodbye, Mr Devlin.’

The Irishman scrambled in and pulled down the cupola. Asa turned into the wind, the Lysander roared along the beach and lifted off. Schellenberg watched as it sped out to sea. After a while he turned and, still clutching his shoulder, walked back towards the slipway.

Lough Conn, in the county of Mayo and not too far from Killala Bay on the west coast of Ireland, is better than ten miles long. On that evening in the failing light as darkness swept down from the mountains, its surface was like black glass.

Michael Murphy farmed close to the southern end of the lough, but that day had been fishing and drinking poteen until, in the words of his old grannie, he didn’t know whether he was here or there. It started to rain with a sudden rush and he reached for his oars, singing softly to himself.

There was a roaring in his ears, a rush of air and what he could only describe afterwards as a great black bird passed over his head and vanished into the shadows at the other end of the lough.

Asa made a masterly landing on the calm surface several hundred yards from the shore, dropping his tail at the last moment. They skidded to a halt and rested there and then water started to come in. He got the cupola up and heaved the dinghy package out. It inflated at once.

‘How deep is it here?’ he asked Devlin.

‘Two hundred feet.’

‘That should take care of her then. Poor lovely bitch. Let’s get moving.’

He was into the dinghy in a moment followed by Steiner and Devlin. They paddled away and then paused to look back. The Lysander’s nose went under. For a moment there was only the tailplane showing with the Luftwaffe swastika and then that, too, disappeared below the surface.

‘That’s it I guess,’ Asa said.

They started to paddle towards the darkening shore. Steiner said, ‘What now, Mr Devlin?’

‘A long walk before us, but the whole night to do it in. My great-aunt Eileen O’Brien has an old farmhouse above Killala Bay. Nothing but friends there.’

‘And then what?’ Asa demanded.

‘God knows, my old son, we’ll have to see,’ Liam Devlin told him.

The dinghy drifted into a small beach. Devlin went first, knee deep, and pulled them in to shore.

‘Cead mile failte,’ he said, putting out a hand to Kurt Steiner.

‘And what’s that?’ the German demanded.

‘Irish.’ Liam Devlin smiled. ‘The language of kings. It means a hundred thousand welcomes.’

Belfast

1975

16

It was almost four in the morning. Devlin stood up and opened the sacristy door. The city was quiet now, but there was the acrid smell of smoke. It started to rain and he shivered and lit a cigarette.

‘Nothing quite like a bad night in Belfast.’

I said, ‘Tell me something. Did you ever have dealings with Dougal Munro again?’

‘Oh yes.’ He nodded. ‘Several times over the years. He liked his fishing, did old Dougal.’

As usual I found it difficult to take him seriously and tried again. ‘All right, what happened afterwards? How did Dougal Munro manage to keep it all under wraps?’

‘Well, you must remember that only Munro and Carter knew who Steiner really was. To poor old Lieutenant Benson, Sister Maria Palmer and Father Martin he was just a prisoner of war. A Luftwaffe officer.’

‘But Michael Ryan and his niece? The Shaws?’

‘The Luftwaffe started on London again at the beginning of that year. The Little Blitz, it was called and that was very convenient for British Intelligence.’

‘Why?’

‘Because people died in the bombing raids, people like Sir Maxwell Shaw and his sister, Lavinia, killed in London during a Luftwaffe raid in January nineteen forty-four. Look up The Times for that month. You’ll find an obituary.’

‘And Michael Ryan and Mary? Jack and Eric Carver?’

‘They didn’t rate The Times, but they ended up in the same place, a crematorium in North London. Five pounds of grey ash and no need for an autopsy. All listed as victims of the bombing.’

‘Nothing changes,’ I said. ‘And the others?’

‘Canaris didn’t last much longer. Fell out of favour later that year, then in July the attempt to kill Hitler failed. Canaris was arrested amongst others. They killed him in the last week of the war. Whether Rommel was involved or not has always been a matter of speculation, but the Führer thought he was. Couldn’t bear to have the people’s hero revealed as a traitor to the Nazi cause so Rommel was allowed to commit suicide with the promise that his family would be spared.’

‘What bastards they all were,’ I said.

‘We all know what happened to the Führer holed up in his bunker at the end. Himmler tried to make a run for it. Shaved off his moustache, even wore an eye patch. Didn’t do him any good. Took cyanide when they caught him.’

‘And Schellenberg?’

‘Now there was a man, old Walter. He fooled Himmler when he got back. Said we’d overpowered him. The wound helped, of course. He became head of the Combined Secret Services before the end of the war. Outlasted the lot of them. When it came to the war crimes trials, the only thing they could get him for was being a member of an illegal organization, the SS. All sorts of witnesses came forward to speak for him at the trial, Jews amongst them. He only served a couple of years in gaol and they let him out. He died in Italy in fifty-one – cancer.’

‘So that’s it,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘We saved Hitler’s life. Did we do right?’ He shrugged. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I can imagine why they put a hundred-year hold on that file.’

He opened the door again and looked out. I said, ‘What happened afterwards? To you and Steiner and Asa Vaughan? I know you were a professor at some American college in the years after the war, but what happened in between?’

‘Ah Jesus, son, and haven’t I talked enough? I’ve given you enough for another book. The rest will have to wait until next time. You should be getting back to your hotel. I’ll go a step of the way with you.’

‘Is that safe?’

‘Well, you’re clean enough if we meet an Army patrol and who’s going to worry about a poor old priest like me?’

He wore a hat and a raincoat over his cassock and sheltered us with his umbrella as we walked through the mean streets, passing here and there the devastation of a bombing.

‘Would you look at this place?’ he demanded. ‘Rat’s alley where the dead men left their bones.’

‘Why do you keep on?’ I asked him. ‘The bombings, the killings?’

‘When it started, back in August sixty-nine, it seemed like a good idea. Orange mobs trying to burn Catholics out, the B Special police giving them a hand.’

‘And now?’

‘To be honest with you, son, I’m getting tired and I never did like soft target hits, the indiscriminate bomb that kills passers-by, women, children. That farmhouse above Killala Bay. My old aunt Eileen left it to me, and there’s a job waiting as Professor of English at Trinity College in Dublin whenever I want.’ He stopped on the corner and sniffed the smoky air. ‘Time to get the hell out of this and let those who want it to get on with it.’

‘You mean you’ve finally got tired of the game playing you instead of you playing the game?’

He nodded. ‘That’s what Steiner always says.’

‘Interesting,’ I commented. ‘You said: Steiner says.’

He smiled. ‘Is that a fact?’ The rain increased suddenly. We were on the corner of the Falls Road. In the distance was a foot patrol of the Parachute Regiment and a Saracen armoured car. ‘I think I’ll leave you here, son.’

‘A wise decision.’ I took his hand.

‘You can look me up in Killala any time.’ He turned away and paused. ‘One thing.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘The Cohen girl, the hit-and-run accident. You were right. Convenient for someone, that. I’d watch my back if I were you.’

I lit a cigarette in cupped hands and watched him go, the cassock-like skirts around his ankles, the umbrella against the rain. I glanced down the Falls Road. The patrol was nearer now but when I turned to take a last look at Liam Devlin, he’d gone, disappeared into the shadows as if he had never been.

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

South by Java Head

To Ian

Contents

Chapter One | 1
Chapter Two | 27
Chapter Three | 51
Chapter Four | 83
Chapter Five | 113
Chapter Six | 146
Chapter Seven | 172
Chapter Eight | 197
Chapter Nine | 228
Chapter Ten | 261
Chapter Eleven | 281
Chapter Twelve | 311
Chapter Thirteen | 335
Chapter Fourteen | 365
Chapter Fifteen | 400

ONE

Choking, dense, impenetrable, the black smoke lay pall-like over the dying city. Every building, every office-block and house, the intact and the bomb-shattered alike, was invested by it, swathed in the dark anonymity of its gently swirling cocoon. Every street, every alley, every dock-side basin was full of it, drowned by it. It lay every-where, sulphurous and evil, scarcely moving in the soft airs of the tropical night.

Earlier in the evening, when the smoke had come only from the burning buildings in the city, there had been wide, irregular gaps overhead and the stars had shone in the empty sky. But a slight change of wind had obliterated these gaps, had brought with it the rolling, blinding oil-smoke from ruptured fuel tanks outside the city. Where the smoke came from, no one knew. Perhaps from the Kallang airport, perhaps from the power station, perhaps clear across the island from the naval base in the north, perhaps from the oil islands, from Pulo Sambo and Pulo Sebarok, four or five miles away. No one knew. All one could know was what one saw, and the blackness of that midnight was almost complete. There was hardly any light now even from the burning buildings, for these were burnt out and utterly destroyed, the last embers, the last tiny flames flickering to extinction, like the life of Singapore itself.

A dying city, and already the silence of death seemed to have enveloped it. Every now and then a shell would whistle eerily overhead, to splash harmlessly into the water or to erupt in a brief roar of sound and flash of light as it smashed into a building. But the sound and the light, extinguished and smothered in an instant by the all-enveloping smoke, had a peculiarly evanescent quality, seemed a natural, an integral part of the strangeness and the remote unreality of the night and left the silence even deeper and more intense than it had been before. Now and again, out beyond Fort Canning and Pearls Hill, beyond the north-west limits of the city, came the irregular crackle of rifle and machine-gun fire, but that, too, was distant and unreal, a far-off echo in a dream. Everything that night had the same dream-like quality, shadowy and unsubstantial: even those few who still moved slowly through the rubble-strewn and almost deserted streets of Singapore were like the aimless wanderers of a dream, hesitant, listless and unsure, stumbling blindly through the swirling banks of smoke, little figures lost and hopelessly groping through the fog of a nightmare.

Moving slowly, uncertainly through the darkened streets, the small group of soldiers, perhaps two dozen in all, made their way down towards the waterfront like very old, very tired men. They looked like old men, they walked with the faltering steps and the bowed head and shoulders of old men, but they weren’t old men, the eldest of them was not more than thirty: but they were tired, terribly tired, tired to that point of uncaring exhaustion when nothing matters any more and it is easier to keep stumbling along than it is to stop. Tired and sick, wounded and ravaged by disease, their every action was now unthinking, automatic, their conscious minds had all but ceased to function. But complete mental and physical exhaustion carries with it its own blessing, its own drug and anodyne, and the dull, lack-lustre eyes staring emptily down at the ground beneath their trudging feet showed this beyond all doubt: whatever sufferings of the body they still endured, they had at least stopped remembering.

For the moment, at least, they no longer remembered the waking nightmare of the past two months, the privations, the hunger, the thirst, the wounds, the sickness and the fear as the Japanese had driven them down the endless length of the Malayan peninsula, over the now destroyed Johore causeway into the illusory safety of the island of Singapore. They no longer remembered their vanished comrades, the screams as some unsuspecting sentry was butchered in the hostile dark of the jungle, the diabolical yells of the Japanese as they overran hastily prepared defensive positions in that black hour before dawn. They no longer remembered these desperate, suicidal counter-attacks that achieved nothing but a few square yards of land bitterly, uselessly re-won for only a moment of time, afforded them nothing but the sight of the horribly maimed and tortured bodies of their captured friends and the civilians who had been just that little bit too slow in co-operating with the enemy. They no longer remembered their anger and bewilderment and despair as the last of the Brewster fighters and, latterly, the Hurricanes, had been driven from the skies, leaving them completely at the mercy of the Japanese air force. Even their utter disbelief at the news, five days ago, of the landing of the Japanese troops on the island itself, their bitterness as the carefully nurtured legend, the myth of the impregnability of Singapore, collapsed before their eyes—these, too, had vanished from their memories. They no longer remembered. They were too dazed and sick and wounded and weak to remember. But one day, soon, if they lived, they would remember, and then none of them would ever be the same again. But meantime they just trudged wearily on, eyes down, heads down, not looking where they were going, not caring where they would arrive.

But one man looked and one man cared. He walked along slowly at the head of the double column of men, flicking a torch on and off as he picked a clear way through the debris that littered the street and checked their direction of progress from time to time. He was a small, slightly-built man, the only one in the company who wore a kilt, and a balmoral on his head. Where the kilt had come from only Corporal Fraser knew: he certainly hadn’t been wearing it during the retreat south through Malaya.

Corporal Fraser was as tired as any of the others. His eyes, too, were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and his face grey and wasted with what might have been malaria or dysentery or both. He walked with his left shoulder far higher than the other, hunched up near his ear, as if he suffered from some physical deformity, but it was no deformity, just a rough gauze pad and bandage that a medical orderly had hurriedly stuffed under his shirt earlier in the day in a token attempt to staunch the bleeding from an ugly shrapnel wound. In his right hand he carried a Bren gun, and its weight of twenty-three pounds was almost more than his weakened body could carry: it had the effect of pulling down his right arm and dragging his left shoulder upwards, even nearer his ear.

The one-sided hunch, the balmoral askew on his head, the kilt flapping loosely about his wasted legs, made the little man appear grotesque and ridiculous. But there was nothing grotesque and ridiculous about Corporal Fraser. A Cairngorms shepherd to whom privations and gruelling exertions were of the very stuff of existence, he had yet to tap the last reserves of his will-power and endurance. Corporal Fraser was still very much a going concern as a soldier—the very best type of soldier. Duty and responsibility weighed heavily with him, his own pain and weakness didn’t exist, his thoughts were only for the men who stumbled along behind, following him blindly. Two hours ago, the officer commanding their confused and disorganised company on the northern city limits had ordered Fraser to lead all the walking wounded, and those whom they could carry, out of the firing-line and back to some place of relative safety and quiet. Only a token gesture, the officer had known, and Fraser had known it also, for the last defences were caving in and Singapore was finished. Before the next day was through, every single man on Singapore island would be dead, wounded or prisoner. But orders were orders and Corporal Fraser trudged resolutely on, heading down for the Kallang creek.

Every now and then, when he came to a clear stretch of street, he stepped to one side and let his men file slowly past him. It was doubtful whether any of them as much as saw him, either the very ill men on the stretchers, or the less ill but still sick and wounded men who carried them. And every time Corporal Fraser would have to wait for the last of the party, a tall thin youngster whose head swayed loosely from side to side as he muttered to himself continuously in a rambling and incoherent voice. The young soldier suffered from neither malaria nor dysentery, nor had he been wounded in any way, but he was the sickest of them all. Every time Fraser would seize his arm and hustle him on to catch up with the main party, the boy quickened his pace without protesting, just looked at Corporal Fraser out of incurious eyes that were empty of all recognition: and every time Fraser would look at him hesitantly, shake his head then hurry forwards again until he reached the head of the column.

In a winding, smoke-filled alley, a little boy cried in the darkness. He was only a very little boy, perhaps two and a half years old. He had blue eyes, blond hair and a fair skin all streaked with dirt and tears. He was clad only in a thin shirt and khaki-coloured haltered shorts: his feet were bare, and he was shivering all the time.

He cried and cried, a lost, anguished wailing in the night, but there was no one there to hear or heed. And no one could have heard him who was more than a few yards away, for he cried very softly, short muffled sobs punctuated by long, quivering indrawn breaths. From time to time he rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of small and grubby fists, as little children will when they are tired or weeping: and with the backs of his hands he tried to rub the pain away, from the black smoke constantly laced a smarting path across the tear filled eyes.

The little boy cried because he was very, very tired, and it was hours past his normal bedtime. He cried because he was hungry and thirsty and shaking with the cold—even a tropical night can be cold. He cried because he was confused and afraid, because he did not know where his home was or where his mother was—he had been with his old amah, his Malayan nurse, at a nearby bazaar a fortnight previously and had been too young and unknowing to appreciate the significance of the bombed and burnt-out rubble that awaited their return—and he and his mother had been due to sail out on the Wakefield, the last big ship from Singapore, on the same night of that 29th January … But he cried, most of all, because he was alone.

His old nurse, Anna, was half-sitting, half-lying on a pile of rubble beside him, like one lost in sleep. She had been wandering with him for hours through the darkened streets, carrying him in her arms for the last hour or two, when she had suddenly placed him on the ground, clasped both hands above her heart and sunk to the ground, saying that she must rest. For half an hour now she had been there, motionless, her head resting far over on one shoulder, her eyes wide and unblinking. Once or twice, earlier, the little boy had stooped to touch her, but only once or twice: now he kept away, afraid, afraid to look and afraid to touch, vaguely knowing, without knowing why, that the old nurse’s rest would be for a long, long time.

He was afraid to go and afraid to stay, and then he stole another glance, through latticed fingers, at the old woman and he was suddenly more afraid to stay than go. He moved off down the alley, not looking where he was going, stumbling and falling over loose bricks and stones, picking himself up and running on again, all the time sobbing and shivering in the cool night. Near the end of the alley a tall, emaciated figure wearing a tattered straw hat eased himself off the shafts of his rickshaw and reached out to stop the child. The man meant no harm. A sick man himself—most of the consumption-ridden rickshaw coolies of Singapore usually died after five years—he could still feel pity for others, especially little children. But all the little boy saw was a tall menacing figure reaching down out of the gloom: his fear changed to terror, he eluded the outstretched hands and ran out through the mouth of the alley into the deserted street and the darkness beyond. The man made no further movement, just wrapped his night blanket more tightly around himself and leaned back again against the shafts of his rickshaw.

* * *

Like the little boy, two of the nurses were sobbing quietly as they stumbled along. They were passing by the only building still burning in the business quarter of the town, and they kept their heads averted from the flames, but even so it was possible to see the smooth broad-boned faces and upcurving eyes of their lowered faces. Both were Chinese, people who do not lightly give way to emotion: but both were very young, and both had been sitting very close to the explosion when the shell had blown their Red Cross truck into the ditch near the southern exit of the Bukit Timor road. They were badly shocked, and still very sick and dazed.

Two of the others were Malays. One was young, as young as the two Chinese nurses, and the other was well past middle age. The young one’s great, sooty eyes were wide with fear, and she kept glancing nervously over her shoulder as they hurried along. The face of the elderly one was a mask of almost complete indifference. From time to time she tried to protest at the speed with which they were being hurried along, but she was incapable of making herself understood: she, too, had been sitting very close to the blast of the explosion, and the shock had blocked her speech centres, probably only temporarily, although it was too soon to say yet. Once or twice she reached up a hand to try to stop the nurse in the lead, the one who was setting the pace, but the other just removed her hand, gently but firmly enough, and hurried on again.

The fifth nurse, the one in the lead, was tall, slender and in her middle twenties. She had lost her cap when the explosion had blown her over the tail-board of the truck, and the thick, blue-black hair kept falling down over her eyes. From time to time she swept it back with an impatient gesture, and it was then that one could see that she was neither Malayan nor Chinese—not with those startlingly blue eyes. Eurasian, perhaps, but still definitely not European. In the flickering yellow light it was impossible to see her complexion, the colour of her skin, which was streaked with mud and dust anyway. Even under the caked dust, it was possible to see some kind of long scratch on her left cheek.

She was the leader of the party and she was lost. She knew Singapore, and knew it well, but in the enveloping smoke and darkness she was a stranger lost in a strange city. Somewhere down there on the waterfront, she had been told, there was a party of soldiers, many of whom urgently required attention—and if they didn’t get it that night, they would most certainly never get it inside a Japanese prison camp. But with every minute that passed, it looked more and more as if the Japanese would get to them first. The more they twisted and turned through the deserted streets, the more hopelessly lost she became. Somewhere opposite Cape Ru on the Kallang creek she might expect to find them, she had been told: but, as it was, she couldn’t even find the waterfront, far less have any idea where Cape Ru lay in the darkness.

Half an hour passed, an hour, and even her own steps began to flag as despair touched her for the first time. They could never find the soldiers, never, not in this endless confusion and darkness. It was desperately unfair of their doctor, Major Blackley, to have expected it of them. And even with the thought the girl knew that it was not Blackley who was unfair but herself: when dawn came on the outskirts of Singapore, the life of neither man nor woman would be worth a moment’s purchase—it all depended on what kind of mood the Japanese had been in: she had met them before and had bitter cause to remember the meeting, and scars that would bear witness of that meeting, for the rest of her life. The further away from the Jap’s immediate blood-lust the better: besides, as the Major had pointed out, none of them was in a fit state to remain any longer where they were. Unknowingly, almost, the girl shook her head, quickened her pace again and turned off down another dark and empty street.

Fear and dismay, sickness and despair—such were the things that coloured and dominated the entire existences of the wandering band of soldiers, the little boy and the nurses, and tens of thousands of others on that midnight of 14th February, 1942, as the exultant, all-conquering Japanese crouched outside the last defences of the city, waiting for the dawn, waiting for the assault, the bloodbath and the victory that must inevitably come. But for one man at least fear and hurt and despair did not exist.

The tall, elderly man in the candle-lit waiting-room of the offices some way south of Fort Canning was conscious of none of these things. He was conscious only of the rapid passage of time, of the most overwhelming urgency he had ever known, of the almost inhuman burden of responsibility that lay in his hands alone. He was conscious of these things, consumed by them to the exclusion of all else, yet no trace of them showed in the expressionless calm of the lined, brick-red face beneath the shock of thick white hair. Perhaps the tip of the Burma cheroot that jutted up jauntily past the bristling white moustache and aquiline nose glowed just a little too brightly, perhaps he sat just that little too relaxed in his cane-bottomed armchair, but that was all. To all outward appearances Foster Farnholme, Brigadier-General (Ret.), was at peace with the world.

The door behind him opened and a young, tired-looking sergeant came into the room. Farnholme removed the cheroot from his mouth, turned his head slowly and raised one tufted eyebrow in mute interrogation.

“I’ve delivered your message, sir.” The sergeant sounded as tired as he looked. “Captain Bryceland says he’ll be along right away.”

“Bryceland?” The white eyebrows met in a bar-straight line across the deep-set eyes. “Who the devil’s Captain Bryceland? Look, sonny, I asked, specifically, to see your colonel, and I must see him, immediately. At once. You understand?”

“Perhaps I can be of some help.” Another man stood in the doorway now, behind the sergeant. Even in the flickering candle-light it was possible to see the badly bloodshot eyes, the fever-flush that stained the yellow cheeks, but his soft Welsh voice was civil enough.

“Bryceland?”

The young officer nodded, said nothing.

“You certainly can help,” Farnholme nodded. “Your colonel, please, and right away. I haven’t a moment to lose.”

“I can’t do it.” Bryceland shook his head. “He’s having his first sleep for three days and three nights—and God only knows we’re going to need him with us tomorrow morning.”

“I know. Nevertheless, I must see him.” Farnholme paused, waited until the frenetic hammering of a nearby heavy machine-gun had died away, then went on very quietly, very earnestly. “Captain Bryceland, you can’t even begin to guess how vitally important it is that I see your colonel. Singapore is nothing—not compared to my business.” He slid a hand beneath his shirt, brought out a black Colt automatic—the heavy .45. “If I have to find him myself, I’ll use this and I’ll find him, but I don’t think I’ll need it. Tell your colonel that Brigadier Farnholme is here. He’ll come.”

Bryceland looked at him for a long moment, hesitated, nodded, then turned away without a word. He was back inside three minutes and stood aside at the doorway to let the man following him precede him into the room.

The colonel, Farnholme guessed, must have been a man of about forty-five—fifty at the most. He looked about seventy, and walked with the swaying, half-inebriated gait of a man who has lived too long with exhaustion. He had difficulty in keeping his eyes open, but he managed to smile as he walked slowly across the room and extended a courteous hand.

“Good evening, sir. Where in the world have you come from?”

“Evening, Colonel.” On his feet now, Farnholme ignored the question. “You know of me, then?”

“I know of you. I heard about you for the first time, sir—just three nights ago.”

“Good, good.” Farnholme nodded in satisfaction. “That will save a lot of explaining—and I’ve no time for explanations. I’ll come to the point right away.” He half-turned as the explosion of a shell landing very close shook the room, the shock wave of displaced air almost blowing the candles out, then looked back at the colonel. “I want a ‘plane out of Singapore, Colonel. I don’t care what kind of ‘plane, I don’t care who you’ve got to shove off to get me on board, I don’t care where it’s going—Burma, India, Ceylon, Australia—it’s all the same to me. I want a ‘plane out of Singapore—immediately.”

“You want a ‘plane out of Singapore.” The colonel echoed the words tonelessly, his voice as wooden as the expression on his face, then he suddenly smiled, tiredly, as if the effort had cost him a great deal. “Don’t we all, Brigadier.”

“You don’t understand.” Slowly, with a gesture of infinitely controlled patience, Farnholme ground out his cheroot on an ashtray. “I know there are hundreds of wounded and sick, women and children——”

“The last ‘plane has already gone,” the colonel interrupted flatly. He rubbed a bare forearm across exhausted eyes. “A day, two days ago—I’m not sure.”

“11th February,” Bryceland supplied. “The Hurricanes, sir. They left for Palembang.”

“That’s right,” the colonel remembered. “The Hurricanes. They left in a great hurry.”

“The last plane.” Farnholme’s voice was empty of all emotion. “The last ‘plane. But—but there were others, I know. Brewster fighters, Wildebeestes——”

“All gone, all destroyed.” The colonel was watching Farnholme now with some vague curiosity in his eyes. “Even if they weren’t, it would make no difference. Seletar, Sembawang, Tengah—the Japs have all these aerodromes. I don’t know about Kallang airport—but I do know it’s useless.”

“I see. I see indeed.” Farnholme stared down at the gladstone bag beside his feet, then looked up again. “The flying-boats, Colonel? The Catalinas?”

The colonel shook his head in slow finality. Farnholme gazed at him for long seconds with unwinking eyes, nodded his head in understanding and acceptance, then glanced at his watch. “May I see you alone, Colonel?”

“Certainly.” The colonel didn’t even hesitate. He waited until the door had closed softly behind Bryceland and the sergeant, then smiled faintly at Farnholme. “I’m afraid the last ‘plane has still gone, sir.”

“I never doubted it.” Farnholme, busy unbuttoning his shirt, paused and glanced up. “You know who I am, Colonel—not just my name, I mean?”

“I’ve known for three days. Utmost secrecy, and all that—it was thought you might be in the area.” For the first time the colonel regarded his visitor with open curiosity. “Seventeen years counter-espionage-chief in South-East Asia, speak more Asiatic languages than any other——”

“Spare my blushes.” His shirt unbuttoned, Farnholme was unfastening a wide, flat rubber-covered belt that encircled his waist. “I don’t suppose you speak any Eastern languages yourself, Colonel?”

“For my sins, yes. That’s why I’m here. Japanese.” The colonel grinned mirthlessly. “It’ll come in very handy in the concentration camps, I should think.”

“Japanese, eh? That’s a help.” Farnholme unzipped two pouches on the belt, placed their contents on the table before him. “See what you make of these, will you, Colonel?”

The colonel glanced sharply at him, glanced down at the photostats and rolls of film that lay on the table, nodded, went out of the room and returned with a pair of spectacles, a magnifying glass and a torch. For three minutes he sat at the table without looking up or speaking. From outside came the occasional crump of an exploding shell, the staccato chattering of a distant machine-gun and the evil whine of some misshapen ricochet whistling blindly through the smoke-filled night. But no noise whatsoever came from inside the room itself. The colonel sat at his table like a man carved from stone, only his eyes alive: Farnholme, a fresh cheroot in his mouth, was stretched out in his wicker chair, lost in a seeming vast indifference.

By and by the colonel stirred and looked across at Farnholme. When he spoke both his voice and the hands that held the photostats were unsteady.

“I don’t need Japanese to understand these. My God, sir, where did you get them?”

“Borneo. Two of our best men, and two Dutchmen, died to get these. But that’s not important now, and quite irrelevant.” Farnholme puffed at his cheroot. “All that matters is that I have them and the Japs don’t know it.”

The colonel didn’t seem to have heard him. He was staring down at the papers in his hands, shaking his head slowly from side to side. Finally he laid the papers down on the desk, folded his spectacles away into their case and lit a cigarette. His hands were still trembling.

“This is fantastic,” he muttered. “This is quite fantastic. There can only be a few of these in existence. All Northern Australia—blueprints for invasion!”

“Complete in every relevant detail,” Farnholme assented. “The invasion ports and airfields, the times to the last minute, the forces to be used down to the last battalion of infantry.”

“Yes.” The colonel stared down at the photostats, his brows wrinkling. “But there’s something that——”

“I know, I know,” Farnholme interrupted bitterly. “We haven’t got the key. It was inevitable. The dates and primary and secondary objectives are in code. They couldn’t take the risk of having these in plain language —and Japanese codes are unbreakable, all of them. All of them, that is, except to a little old man in London who looks as if he couldn’t write his own name.” He paused and puffed some more blue smoke into the air. “Still, It’s quite something, isn’t it, Colonel?”

“But—but how did you happen to get——”

“That’s quite irrelevant, I’ve told you.” The steel below was beginning to show through the camouflage of lazy indifference. He shook his head, then laughed softly. “Sorry, Colonel. Must be getting edgy. There was no ‘happen’ about it, I assure you. I’ve worked for five years on one thing and one thing only—to get these delivered to me at the right time and the right place: the Japanese are not incorruptible. I managed to get them at the right time: not at the right place. That’s why I’m here.”

The colonel hadn’t even been listening. He had been staring down at the papers, shaking his head slowly from side to side, but now he looked up again. All at once his face was haggard and defeated and very old.

“These papers—these papers are priceless, sir.” He lifted the photostats in his hand and stared unseeingly at Farnholme. “God above, all the fortunes that ever were are nothing compared to these. It’s all the difference between life and death, victory and defeat. It’s—it’s—great heavens, sir, think of Australia! Our people must have these—they must have them!”

“Exactly,” Farnholme agreed. “They must have them.”

The colonel stared at him in silence, the tired eyes slowly widening in shocked understanding, then slumped back into his chair, his head resting on his chest. The spiralling cigarette smoke laced painfully across his eyes, but he didn’t even seem to notice it.

“Exactly, once again,” Farnholme said dryly. He reached out for the films and photostats and began to replace them carefully in the waterproof pouches of his belt. “You begin to understand, perhaps, my earlier anxiety for—ah—aerial transport out of Singapore.” He zipped the pouches shut. “I’m still as anxious as ever, I assure you.”

The colonel nodded dully, but said nothing.

“No ‘plane at all?” Farnholme persisted. “Not even the most dilapidated, broken down——” He stopped abruptly at the sight of the expression on the colonel’s face, then tried again. “Submarine?”

“No.”

Farnholme’s mouth tightened. “Destroyer, frigate, any naval vessel at all?”

“No.” The colonel stirred. “And not even a merchant ship. The last of them—the Grasshopper, Tien Kwang, Katydid, Kuala, Dragonfly and a few other small coastal vessels like these—pulled out of Singapore last night. They won’t be back. They wouldn’t get a hundred miles, even, the Jap air force is everywhere round the archipelago. Wounded, women and children aboard all these vessels, Brigadier. Most of them will finish up at the bottom of the sea.”

“A kindly alternative to a Japanese prison camp. Believe me, Colonel, I know.” Farnholme was buckling on the heavy belt again. He sighed. “This is all very handy, Colonel. Where do we go from here?”

“Why in God’s name did you ever come here?” the colonel demanded bitterly. “Of all places, of all times, you had to come to Singapore now. And how in the world did you manage to get here anyway?”

“Boat from Banjermasin,” Farnholme replied briefly. “The Kerry Dancer—the most dilapidated floating death-trap that was ever refused a certificate of seaworthiness. Operated by a smooth, dangerous character by the name of Siran. Hard to say, but I’d almost swear he was a renegade Englishman of some kind, and on more than nodding terms with the Japs. He stated he was heading for Kota Bharu—lord knows why—but he changed his mind and came here.”

“He changed his mind?”

“I paid him well. Not my money, so I could afford it. I thought Singapore would be safe enough. I was in North Borneo when I heard on my own receiver that Hong Kong and Guam and Wake had fallen, but I had to move in a considerable hurry. A long time passed before I heard the next item of news, and that was on board the Kerry Dancer. We waited ten days in Banjermasin before Siran condescended to sail,” Farnholme went on bitterly. “The only respectable piece of equipment and the only respectable man on that ship were both to be found in the radio room—Siran must have considered them both necessary for his nefarious activities—and I was in the radio room with this lad Loon on our second day aboard the ship—29th January, it was, when we picked up this B.B.C. broadcast that Ipoh was being bombarded, so, naturally, I thought the Japs were advancing very slowly and that we’d plenty of time to go to Singapore and pick up a ‘plane.”

The colonel nodded in understanding. “I heard that communiqué, too. Heaven only knows who was responsible for that appalling claptrap. Ipoh had actually fallen to the Japs more than a month before that, sir. The Japs were only a few miles north of the causeway at the time. My God, what a damnable mess!” He shook his head slowly. “A damnable, damnable mess!”

“You put things very mildly,” Farnholme agreed. “How long have we got?”

“We’re surrendering tomorrow.” The colonel stared down at his hands.

“Tomorrow!”

“We’re all washed up, sir. Nothing more we can do. And we’ve no water left. When we blew up the causeway we blew up the only water-pipe from the mainland.”

“Very clever, far-seeing chaps who designed our defences here,” Farnholme muttered. “And thirty million quid spent on it. Impregnable fortress. Bigger and better than Gib. Blah, blah, blah. God, it all makes you sick!” He snorted in disgust, rose to his feet and sighed. “Ah, well, nothing else for it. Back to the dear old Kerry Dancer. God help Australia!”

“The Kerry Dancer!” The colonel was astonished. “She’ll be gone an hour after dawn, sir. I tell you, the Straits are swarming with Japanese ‘planes.”

“What alternative can you offer?” Farnholme asked wearily.

“I know, I know. But even if you are lucky, what guarantee have you that the captain will go where you want him to?”

“None,” Farnholme admitted. “But there’s a rather handy Dutchman aboard, by the name of Van Effen. Together we may be able to persuade our worthy captain where the path of duty lies.”

“Perhaps.” A sudden thought occurred to the colonel. “Besides, what guarantee have you that he’ll even be waiting when you get back down to the waterfront?”

“Here it is.” Farnholme prodded the shabby valise lying by his feet. “My guarantee and insurance policy—I hope. Siran thinks this thing’s stuffed full of diamonds—I used some of them to bribe him to come here—and he’s not so far out. Just so long as he thinks there’s a chance of separating me from these, he’ll hang on to me like a blood brother.”

“He—he doesn’t suspect——”

“Not a chance. He thinks I’m a drunken old reprobate on the run with ill-gotten gains. I have been at some pains to—ah—maintain the impersonation.”

“I see, sir.” The colonel came to a decision and reached out for a bell. When the sergeant appeared, he said, “Ask Captain Bryceland to come here.”

Farnholme lifted an eyebrow in silent interrogation.

“It’s the least I can do, sir,” the colonel explained, “I can’t provide a plane. I can’t guarantee you won’t all be sunk before noon tomorrow. But I can guarantee that the captain of the Kerry Dancer will follow your instructions implicitly. I’m going to detail a subaltern and a couple of dozen men from a Highland regiment to accompany you on the Kerry Dancer.” He smiled. “They’re a tough bunch at the best of times, but they’re in an especially savage mood just now. I don’t think Captain Siran will give you very much trouble.”

“I’m sure he won’t. Damned grateful to you. Colonel. It should help a lot.” He buttoned his shirt, picked up his gladstone and extended his hand. “Thanks for everything, Colonel. It sounds silly knowing a concentration camp is awaiting you—but, well, all the best.”

“Thank you, sir. And all the luck to you—God knows you’re going to need it.” He glanced down in the region of the concealed belt that held the photostats, then finished sombrely. “We’ve at least got a chance.”

The smoke was slowly clearing when Brigadier Farnholme went out again into the darkness of the night, but the air still held that curious, unpleasant amalgam of cordite and death and corruption that the old soldier knows so well. A subaltern and a company of men were lined up outside waiting for him.

Musketry and machine-gun fire had increased now, visibility was far better, but the shell-fire had ceased altogether—probably the Japanese saw no sense in inflicting too much damage on a city which would be theirs on the following day anyway. Farnholme and his escort moved quickly through the deserted streets through the now gently falling rain, the sound of gunfire in their ears all the time, and had reached the waterfront within a few minutes. Here the smoke, lifted by a gentle breeze from the east, was almost entirely gone.

The smoke was gone, and almost at once Farnholme realised something that made him clutch the handle of the gladstone until his knuckles shone white and his forearms ached with the strain. The small lifeboat from the Kerry Dancer, which he had left rubbing gently against the wharf, was gone also, and the sick apprehension that at once flooded through his mind made him lift his head swiftly and stare out into the roads but there was nothing there for him to see. The Kerry Dancer was gone as if she had never existed. There was only the falling rain, the gentle breeze in his face and, away to his left, the quiet, heart-broken sobs of a little boy crying alone in the darkness.

TWO

The subaltern in charge of the soldiers touched Farnholme on the arm and nodded out to sea. “The boat, sir—she’s gone!”

Farnholme restrained himself with an effort. His voice, when he spoke, was as calm and as matter-of-fact as ever.

“So it would appear, Lieutenant. In the words of the old song, they’ve left us standing on the shore. Deuced inconvenient, to say the least of it.”

“Yes, sir.” Farnholme’s reaction to the urgency of the situation, Lieutenant Parker felt, was hardly impressive. “What’s to be done now, sir?”

“You may well ask, my boy.” Farnholme stood still for several moments, a hand rubbing his chin, an abstracted expression on his face. “Do you hear a child crying there, along the waterfront?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Have one of your men bring him here. Preferably,” Farnholme added, “a kindly, fatherly type that won’t scare the living daylights out of him.”

“Bring him here, sir?” The subaltern was astonished. “But there are hundreds of these little street Arabs——” He broke off suddenly as Farnholme towered over him, his eyes cold and still beneath the jutting brows.

“I trust you are not deaf, Lieutenant Parker,” he inquired solicitously. The low-pitched voice was for the lieutenant’s ears alone, as it had been throughout.

“Yes, sir! I mean, no, sir!” Parker hastily revised his earlier impression of Farnholme. “I’ll send a man right away, sir.”

“Thank you. Then send a few men in either direction along the waterfront, maybe half a mile or so. Have them bring back here any person or persons they find—they may be able to throw some light on the missing boat. Let them use persuasion if necessary.”

“Persuasion, sir?”

“In any form. We’re not playing for pennies tonight, Lieutenant. And when you’ve given the necessary orders, I’d like a private little talk with you.”

Farnholme strolled off some yards into the gloom. Lieutenant Parker rejoined him within a minute. Farnholme lit a fresh cheroot and looked speculatively at the young officer before him.

“Do you know who I am, young man?” he asked abruptly.

“No, sir.”

“Brigadier Farnholme.” Farnholme grinned in the darkness as he saw the perceptible stiffening of the lieutenant’s shoulders. “Now that you’ve heard it, forget it. You’ve never heard of me. Understand?”

“No, sir,” Parker said politely. “But I understand the order well enough.”

“That’s all you need to understand. And cut out the ‘sirs’ from now on. Do you know my business?”

“No, sir, I——”

“No ‘sirs,’ I said,” Farnholme interrupted. “If you cut them out in private, there’s no chance of your using them in public.”

“I’m sorry. No, I don’t know your business. But the colonel impressed upon me that it was a matter of the utmost importance and gravity.”

“The colonel was in no way exaggerating,” Farnholme murmured feelingly. “It is better, much better, that you don’t know my business. If we ever reach safety I promise you I’ll tell you what it’s all about. Meantime, the less you and your men know the safer for all of us.” He paused, drew heavily on the cheroot and watched the tip glow redly in the night. “Do you know what a beachcomber is, Lieutenant?”

“A beachcomber?” The sudden switch caught Parker off balance, but he recovered quickly. “Naturally.”

“Good. That’s what I am from now on, and you will kindly treat me as such. An elderly, alcoholic and somewhat no-account beachcomber hell-bent on saving his own skin. Good-natured and tolerant contempt—that’s your line. Firm, even severe when you’ve got to be. You found me wandering about the streets, searching for some form of transport out of Singapore. You heard from me that I had arrived on a little inter-island steamer and decided that you would commandeer it for your own uses.”

“But the ship’s gone,” Parker objected.

“You have a point,” Farnholme admitted. “We may find it yet. There may be others, though I very much doubt it. The point is that you must have your story—and your attitude—ready, no matter what happens. Incidentally, our objective is Australia.”

“Australia!” Parker was startled into momentary forgetfulness. “Good lord, sir, that’s thousands of miles away!”

“It’s a fairish bit,” Farnholme conceded. “Our destination, nevertheless, even if we can’t lay hands on anything larger than a rowing boat.” He broke off and swung round. “One of your men returning, I think, Lieutenant.”

It was. A soldier emerged out of the darkness, the three white chevrons on his arms easy to see. A very big man, over six feet tall and broad in proportion, he made the childish figure in his arms tiny by comparison. The little boy, face buried in the soldier’s sun-burned neck, was still sobbing, but quietly now.

“Here he is, sir.” The burly sergeant patted the child’s back. “The little duffer’s had a bad fright, I think, but he’ll get over it.”

“I’m sure he will, Sergeant.” Farnholme touched the child’s shoulder. “And what’s your name, my little man, eh?”

The little man took one quick look, flung his arms round the sergeant’s neck and burst into a fresh torrent of tears. Farnholme stepped back hastily.

“Ah, well.” He shook his head philosophically. “Never had much of a way with children, I’m afraid. Crusty old bachelors and what have you. His name can wait.”

“His name is Peter,” the sergeant said woodenly. “Peter Tallon. He’s two years and three months old, he lives in Mysore Road in north Singapore and he’s a member of the Church of England.”

“He told you all that?” Farnholme asked incredulously.

“He hasn’t spoken a word, sir. There’s an identity disc tied round his neck.”

“Quite,” Farnholme murmured. It seemed the only appropriate remark in the circumstances. He waited until the sergeant had rejoined his men, then looked speculatively at Parker.

“My apologies.” The lieutenant’s tone was sincere. “How the devil did you know?”

“Be damned funny if I didn’t know after twenty-three years in the East. Sure, you’ll find Malay and Chinese waifs, but waifs only of their own choice. You don’t find them crying. If they did, they wouldn’t be crying long. These people always look after their own—not just their own children, but their own kind.” He paused and looked quizzically at Parker. “Any guesses as to what brother Jap would have done to that kid, Lieutenant?”

“I can guess,” Parker said sombrely. “I’ve seen a little and I’ve heard a lot.”

“Believe it all, then double it. They’re an inhuman bunch of fiends.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Let’s rejoin your men. Berate me as we go. It’ll create no end of a good impression—from my point of view, that is.”

Five minutes passed, then ten. The men moved about restlessly, some smoked, some sat on their packs, but no one spoke. Even the little boy had stopped crying. The intermittent crackle of gunfire carried clearly from the north-west of the town, but mostly the night was very still. The wind had shifted, and the last of the smoke was clearing slowly away. The rain was still falling, more heavily than before, and the night was growing cold.

By and by, from the north-east, the direction of Kallang creek, came the sound of approaching footsteps, the measured paces of three soldiers marching in step and the quicker, more erratic click of feminine heels. Parker stared as they emerged out of the darkness, then turned to the soldier who had been leading the party.

“What’s all this? Who are these people?”

“Nurses, sir. We found them wandering a little way along the front.” The soldier sounded apologetic. “I think they were lost, sir.”

“Lost?” Parker peered at the tall girl nearest him. “What the dickens are you people doing wandering about the town in the middle of the night?”

“We’re looking for some wounded soldiers, sir.” The voice was soft and husky. “Wounded and sick. We—well, we don’t seem able to find them.”

“So I gather,” Parker agreed dryly. “You in charge of this party?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your name, please?” The lieutenant’s tone was a shade less peremptory now; the girl had a pleasant voice, and he could see that she was very tired, and shivering in the cold rain.

“Drachmann, sir.”

“Well, Miss Drachmann, have you seen or heard anything of a small motorboat or a coastal steamer, anywhere offshore?”

“No, sir.” Her tone held tired surprise. “All the ships have left Singapore.”

“I hope to heaven you’re wrong,” Parker muttered. Aloud, he said, “Know anything about kids, Miss Drachmann?”

“What?” She sounded startled.

“The sergeant there has found a little boy.” Parker nodded to the child still in the sergeant’s arms, but wrapped now in a waterproof cape against the cold and rain. “He’s lost, tired, lonely and his name is Peter. Will you look after him for the present?”

“Why, of course I will.”

Even as she was stretching out her hands for the child, more footsteps were heard approaching from the left. Not the measured steps of soldiers, nor the crisp clickety-clack of women’s heels, but a shambling, shuffling sound such as very old men might make. Or very sick men. Gradually there emerged out of the rain and the darkness a long, uncertain line of men, weaving and stumbling, in token column of twos. They were led by a little man with a high, hunched left shoulder, with a Bren gun dangling heavily from his right hand. He wore a balmoral set jauntily on his head and a wet kilt that flapped about his bare, thin knees. Two yards away from Parker he stopped, shouted out a command to halt, turned round to supervise the lowering of the stretchers—it was then that Parker saw for the first time that three of his own men were helping to carry the stretchers—then ran backwards to intercept the straggler who brought up the end of the column and was now angling off aimlessly into the darkness. Farnholme stared after him, then at the sick, maimed and exhausted men who stood there in the rain, each man lost in his suffering and silent exhaustion.

“My God!” Farnholme shook his head in wonder. “The Pied Piper never had anything on this bunch!”

The little man in the kilt was back at the head of the column now. Awkwardly, painfully, he lowered his Bren to the wet ground, straightened and brought his hand up to his balmoral in a salute that would have done credit to a Guards’ parade ground. “Corporal Fraser reporting, sir.” His voice had the soft burr of the north-east Highlands.

“At ease, Corporal.” Parker stared at him. “Wouldn’t it—wouldn’t it have been easier if you’d just transferred that gun to your left hand?” A stupid question, he knew, but the sight of that long line of haggard, half-alive zombies materialising out of the darkness had had a curiously upsetting effect on him.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I think my left shoulder is kind of broken, sir.”

“Kind of broken,” Parker echoed. With a conscious effort of will he shook off the growing sense of unreality. “What regiment, Corporal?”

“Argyll and Sutherlands, sir.”

“Of course.” Parker nodded. “I thought I recognised you.”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Parker, isn’t it, sir.”

“That’s right.” Parker gestured at the line of men standing patiently in the rain. “You in charge, Corporal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Why?” The corporal’s fever-wasted face creased in puzzlement. “Dunno, sir. Suppose it’s because I’m the only fit man here.”

“The only fit——” Parker broke off in mid-sentence, lost in incredulity. He took a deep breath. “That’s not what I meant, Corporal. What are you doing with these men? Where are you going with them?”

“I don’t rightly know, sir,” Fraser confessed. “I was told to lead them back out of the line to a place of safety, get them some medical attention if I could.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the intermittent firing. “Things are a little bit confused up there, sir,” he finished apologetically.

“They’re all of that,” Parker agreed. “But what are you doing down here at the waterfront?”

“Looking for a boat, a ship, anything.” The little corporal was still apologetic. “‘ Place of safety’ was my orders, sir. I thought I’d have a real go at it.”

“A real go at it.” The feeling of unreality was back with Parker once again. “Aren’t you aware, Corporal, that by the time you get anywhere the nearest place of safety would be Australia—or India?”

“Yes, sir.” There was no change of expression on the little man’s face.

“Heaven give me strength.” It was Farnholme speaking for the first time, and he sounded slightly dazed. “You were going to set out for Australia in a rowing-boat with that—that——” He gestured at the line of patient, sick men, but words failed him.

“Certainly 1 was,” Fraser said doggedly. “I’ve got a job to do.”

“My God, you don’t give up easy, do you, Corporal?” Farnholme stared at him. “You’d have a hundred times more chance in a Jap prison camp. You can thank your lucky stars that there isn’t a boat left in Singapore.”

“Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t,” the corporal said calmly. “But there’s a ship lying out there in the roads.” He looked at Parker. “I was just planning how to get out to it when your men came along, sir.”

“What!” Farnholme stepped forward and gripped him by his good shoulder. “There’s a ship out there? Are you sure, man?”

“Sure I’m sure.” Fraser disengaged his shoulder with slow dignity. “I heard its anchor going down not ten minutes ago.”

“How do you know?” Farnholme demanded. “Perhaps the anchor was coming up and——”

“Look, pal,” Fraser interrupted. “I may look stupid, I may even be stupid, but I know the bloody difference between——”

“That’ll do, Corporal, that’ll do!” Parker cut him off hastily. “Where’s this ship lying?”

“Out behind the docks, sir. About a mile out, I should say. Bit difficult to be sure—still some smoke around out there.”

“The docks? In the Keppel Harbour?”

“No, sir. We haven’t been near there tonight. Only a mile or so away—just beyond Malay Point.”

* * *

Even in the darkness the journey didn’t take long—fifteen minutes at the most. Parker’s men had taken over the stretchers, and others of them helped the walking wounded along. And all of them, men and women, wounded and well, were now possessed of the same overwhelming sense of urgency. Normally, no one among them would have placed much hope on any evidence so tenuous as the rattle of what might, or might not have been an anchor going down: but, so much had their minds been affected by the continuous retreats and losses of the past weeks, so certain had they been of capture before that day was through, capture and God only knew how many years of oblivion, so complete was their sense of hopelessness that even this tiny ray of hope was a blazing beacon in the dark despair of their minds. Even so the spirit of the sick men far exceeded their strength, and most of them were spent and gasping and glad to cling to their comrades for support by the time Corporal Fraser came to a halt.

“Here, sir. It was just about here that I heard it.”

“What direction?” Farnholme demanded. He followed the line indicated by the barrel of the corporal’s Bren, but could see nothing: as Fraser had said, smoke still lay over the dark waters … He became aware that Parker was close behind him, his mouth almost touching his ear.

“Torch? Signal?” He could barely catch the lieutenant’s soft murmur. For a moment Farnholme hesitated, but only a moment: they had nothing to lose. Parker sensed rather than saw the nod, and turned to his sergeant.

“Use your torch, Sergeant. Out there. Keep flashing until you get an answer or until we can see or hear something approaching. Two or three of you have a look round the docks—maybe you might find some kind of boat.”

Five minutes passed, then ten. The sergeant’s torch clicked on and off, monotonously, but nothing moved out on the dark sea. Another five minutes, then the searchers had returned to report that they were unable to find anything. Another five minutes passed, five minutes during which the rain changed from a gentle shower to a torrential downpour that bounced high off the metalled roadway, then Corporal Fraser cleared his throat.

“I can hear something coming,” he said conversationally.

“What? Where?” Farnholme barked at him.

“A rowing-boat of some sorts. I can hear the rowlocks. Coming straight at us, I think.”

“Are you sure?” Farnholme tried to listen over the drumming of the rain on the road, the hissing it made as it churned the surface of the sea to a white foam. “Are you sure, man?” he repeated. “I can’t hear a damn thing.”

“Aye, I’m sure. Heard it plain as anything.”

“He’s right!” It was the big sergeant who spoke, his voice excited. “By God, he’s right, sir. I can hear it, too!”

Soon everybody could hear it, the slow grinding creak of rowlocks as men pulled heavily on their oars. The tense expectancy raised by Fraser’s first words collapsed and vanished in the almost palpable wave of indescribable relief that swept over them and left them all chattering together in low ecstatic voices. Lieutenant Parker took advantage of the noise to move closer to Farnholme.

“What about the others—the nurses and the wounded?”

“Let ’em come, Parker—if they want to. The odds are high against us. Make that plain—and make it plain that it must be their own choice. Then tell them to keep quiet, and move back out of sight. Whoever it is—and it must be the Kerry Dancer—we don’t want to scare ‘em away. As soon as you hear the boat rubbing alongside, move forward and take over.”

Parker nodded and turned away, his low urgent tones cutting through the babble of voices.

“Right. Take up these stretchers. Move back, all of you, to the other side of the road—and keep quiet. Keep very quiet, if you ever want to see home again. Corporal Fraser?”

“Sir?”

“You and your men—do you wish to come with us? If we go aboard that ship it’s highly probably that we’ll be sunk within twelve hours. I must make that clear.”

“I understand, sir.”

“And you’ll come, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you asked the others?”

“No, sir.” The corporal’s injured tone left no doubt about his contempt for such ridiculously democratic procedures in the modern army, and Farnholme grinned in the darkness. “They’ll come too, sir.”

“Very well. On your head be it. Miss Drachmann?”

“I’ll come, sir,” she said quietly. She lifted her left hand to her face in a strange gesture. “Of course I’ll come.”

“And the others?”

“We’ve discussed it.” She indicated the young Malayan girl by her side. “Lena here wants to go too. The other three don’t care much, sir, one way or another. Shock, sir—a shell hit our lorry tonight. Better if they come, I think.”

Parker made to answer, but Farnholme gestured him to silence, took the torch from the sergeant and advanced to the edge of the dock. The boat could be seen now, less than a hundred yards away, vaguely silhouetted by the distant beam of the torch. Even as Farnholme peered through the heavy rain, he could see the flurry of white foam as someone in the sternsheets gave an order and the oars dug into the sea, back-watering strongly until the boat came to a stop and lay silently, without moving, a half-seen blur in the darkness.

“Ahoy, there!” Farnholme called. “The Kerry Dancer?”

“Yes.” The deep voice carried clearly through the falling rain. “Who’s there?”

“Farnholme, of course.” He could hear the man in the sternsheets giving an order, could see the rowers starting to pull strongly again. “Van Effen?”

“Yes, Van Effen.”

“Good man!” There was no questioning the genuineness of the warmth in Farnholme’s voice. “Never been so glad to see anyone in all my life. What happened?” The boat was only twenty feet away now, and they could talk in normal tones.

“Not much.” The Dutchman spoke perfect, colloquial English, with a scarcely discoverable trace of accent. “Our worthy captain changed his mind about waiting for you, and had actually got under way before I persuaded him to change his mind.”

“But—but how do you know the Kerry Dancer won’t sail before you get back? Good God, Van Effen, you should have sent someone else. You can’t trust that devil an inch.”

“I know.” Hand steady on the tiller, Van Effen was edging in towards the stonework. “If she sails, she sails without her master. He’s sitting in the bottom of the boat here, hands tied and with my gun in his back. Captain Siran is not very happy, I think.”

Farnholme peered down along the beam of the torch. It was impossible to tell whether Captain Siran was happy or not, but it was undoubtedly Captain Siran. His smooth, brown face was as expressionless as ever.

“And just to make certain,” Van Effen continued, “I’ve got the two engineers tied in Miss Plenderleith’s room—tied hand and foot by myself, I may say. They won’t get away. The door’s locked, and Miss Plenderleith’s in there with them, with a gun in her hand. She’s never fired a gun in her life, but she’s perfectly willing to try, she says. She’s a wonderful old lady, Farnholme.”

“You think of everything,” Farnholme said admiringly. “If only——”

“All right, that’ll do! Stand aside, Farnholme.” Parker was by his side, a powerful torch shining down on to the upturned faces below. “Don’t be a bloody fool!” he said sharply, as Van Effen made to bring up his pistol. “Put that thing away—there’s a dozen machine-guns and rifles lined up on you.”

Slowly Van Effen lowered his gun and looked up bleakly at Farnholme.

“That was beautifully done, Farnholme,” he said slowly. “Captain Siran here would have been proud to claim such a masterpiece of treachery.”

“It wasn’t treachery,” Farnholme protested. “They’re British troops, our friends, but I’d no option. I can explain——”

“Shut up!” Parker cut in brusquely. “You can do all your explaining later.” He looked down at Van Effen. “We’re coming with you, whether you like it or not. That’s a motor lifeboat you have there. Why were you using your oars?”

“For silence. Obviously. Much good it did us,” Van Effen added bitterly.

“Start the motor,” Parker ordered.

“I’ll be damned if I will!”

“Perhaps. You’ll probably be dead if you don’t,” Parker said coldly. “You look an intelligent man, Van Effen. You’ve got eyes and ears and should realise we’re desperate men. What’s to be gained by childish obstinacy at this stage?”

Van Effen looked at him for a long moment in silence, nodded, jammed his gun hard into Siran’s ribs and gave an order. Within a minute the engine had come to life and was putt-putting evenly away as the first of the wounded soldiers was lowered on to the thwarts. Within half an hour the last of the men and women who had been standing on the dockside were safely aboard the Kerry Dancer. It had taken two trips, but short ones: Corporal Fraser had been about right in his estimate of distance, and the ship was anchored just outside the three-fathom shoal line of the Pagar Spit.

The Kerry Dancer got under way just before half-past two in the morning, the last ship out of the city of Singapore before she fell into the hands of the Japanese later on that same day of 15th February, 1942. The wind had dropped away now, the rain fined to a gentle drizzle and a brooding hush lay over the darkened city as it faded swiftly into the gloom of the night. There were no fires to be seen now, no lights at all, and even the crackle of desultory gunfire had died away completely. Everything was unnaturally, uncannily silent, silent as death itself, but the storm would break when the first light of day touched the rooftops of Singapore.

Farnholme was in the bleak, damp aftercastle of the Kerry Dancer, helping two of the nurses and Miss Plenderleith to attend to the bandaging and care of the wounded soldiers, when a knock came to the door—the only door, the one that led out into the deep after well. He switched out the light, stepped outside and closed the door carefully behind him. He turned to look at the shadowy figure standing in the gloom.

“Lieutenant Parker?”

“Yes.” Parker gestured in the darkness. “Perhaps we’d better go up on the poop-deck here—we can’t be overheard there.”

Together they climbed the iron ladder and walked right aft to the taffrail. The rain had quite stopped now, and the sea was very calm. Farnholme leaned over the rail, gazed down at the phosphorescence bubbling in the Kerry Dancer’s creaming wake and wished he could smoke. It was Parker who broke the silence.

“I’ve a rather curious item of news for you, sir—sorry, no ‘sir’. Did the corporal tell you?”

“He told me nothing. He only came into the aftercastle a couple of minutes ago. What is it?”

“It appears that this wasn’t the only ship in the Singapore roads tonight. While we were coming out to the Kerry Dancer with the first boatload, it seems that another motor-boat came in and tied up less than a quarter of a mile away. A British crew.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Farnholme whistled softly in the darkness. “Who were they? What the hell were they doing there anyway? And who saw them?”

“Corporal Fraser and one of my own men. They heard the engine of the motor-boat—we never heard it, obviously, because the sound of our own drowned it—and went across to investigate. Only two men in it, both armed with rifles The only man who spoke was a Highlander—chap from the Western Isles, Fraser says, and he’d know. Very uncommunicative indeed, Fraser says, although he asked plenty of questions himself. Then Fraser heard the Kerry Dancer’s boat coming back, and they had to go. He thinks one of the men followed him, but he can’t be sure.”

“‘Curious’ is hardly the word to describe it, Lieutenant.” Farnholme bit his lower lip thoughtfully and stared out to sea. “And Fraser has no idea where they came from, or what kind of ship they had or where they were going?”

“He knows nothing,” Parker said positively. “They might have come straight from the moon for all Fraser knows.”

They talked about it for a few minutes, then Farnholme dismissed the matter.

“No good talking about it, Parker, so let’s forget it. It’s over and done with and no harm to anyone—we got clear away, which is all that matters.” Deliberately he changed the subject. “Got everything organised?”

“Yes, more or less. Siran’s going to co-operate, no doubt about that—his own neck’s at stake just as much as ours and he’s fully aware of it. The bomb or torpedo that gets us isn’t very likely to miss him. I’ve a man watching him, one watching the quarter-master and one keeping an eye on the duty engineer. Most of the rest of my men are asleep in the fo’c’sle—and heaven knows they need all the sleep they can get. I’ve got four of them asleep in the midships cabin—very handy in emergency.”

“Good, good.” Farnholme nodded his head in approval. “And the two Chinese nurses and the elderly Malayan one?”

“Also in one of the midships cabins. They’re pretty sick and dazed, all three of them.”

“And Van Effen?”

“Asleep on deck, under a boat. Just outside the wheel-house, not ten feet from the captain.” Parker grinned. “He’s no longer mad at you, but his knife is still pretty deep in Siran. It seemed a good place to have Van Effen sleep. A reliable sort of chap.”

“He’s all of that. How about food?”

“Lousy, but plenty of it. Enough for a week or ten days.”

“I hope we get the chance to eat it all,” Farnholme said grimly. “One more thing. Have you impressed on everyone, especially Siran, that I’m now pretty small beer around these parts and that there’s only one man that matters—yourself?”

“I don’t think you’re as well thought of as you were previously,” Parker said modestly.

“Excellent.” Unconsciously, almost, Farnholme touched the belt under his shirt. “But don’t over-do it—just ignore me whenever possible. By the way, there’s something you can do for me on your way for’ard. You know the radio shack?”

“Behind the wheelhouse? Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“The operator, Willie Loon or something like that, sleeps in it. I think he’s a pretty decent sort of lad—God knows what he’s doing aboard this floating coffin—but I don’t want to approach him myself. Find out from him what his set’s transmitting radius is and let me know before dawn. I’ll probably have a call to make round about that time.”

“Yes, sir.” Parker hesitated, made to speak, then changed his mind about the question he had been going to ask. “No time like the present. I’ll go and find out now. Good night.”

“Good night, Lieutenant.” Farnholme remained leaning over the taffrail for a few more minutes, listening to the asthmatic clanking of the Kerry Dancer’s superannuated engine as she throbbed her way steadily east-south-east through the calm and oily sea. By and by he straightened up with a sigh, turned and went below. The whisky bottles were in one of his bags in the aftercastle and he had his reputation to sustain.

Most men would have objected strongly to being waked at half-past three in the morning and asked a purely technical question about their work, but not Willie Loon. He merely sat up in his bunk, smiled at Lieutenant Parker, told him that the effective range of his transmitter was barely five hundred miles and smiled again. The smile on his round pleasant face was the essence of good will and cheerfulness, and Parker had no doubt but that Farnholme had been a hundred per cent correct in his assessment of Willie Loon’s character. He didn’t belong here.

Parker thanked him, and turned to go. On his way out he noticed on the transmitting table something he had never expected to see on a ship such as the Kerry Dancer—a round, iced cake, not too expertly made, it’s top liberally beskewered with tiny candles. Parker blinked, then looked at Willie Loon.

“What on earth is this for?”

“A birthday cake.” Willie Loon beamed proudly at him. “My wife—that’s her picture there—made it. Two months ago, now, to be sure I would have it. It is very pretty, is it not?”

“It’s beautiful,” Lieutenant Parker said carefully. He looked at the picture again. “Beautiful as the girl who made it. You must be a very lucky man.”

“I am.” Again he smiled, blissfully. “I am very lucky indeed, sir.”

“And when’s the birthday?”

“Today. That is why the cake is out. I am twenty-four years old today.”

“Today!” Parker shook his head. “You’ve certainly picked a wonderful day to have a birthday on, by all the signs. But it’s got to be some time, I suppose. Good luck, and many happy returns of the day.”

He turned, stepped over the storm combing, and closed the door softly behind him.

THREE

Willie Loon died when he was twenty-four years of age. He died on his twenty-fourth birthday, at the high noon of day, with the harsh glare of the equatorial sunlight striking savagely through the barred skylight above his head. A white light, a bright merciless light that mocked the smoking flame from the solitary candle still burning on the birthday cake, a yellow flame that bloomed and faded, bloomed and faded, regularly, monotonouly, as the ship rolled and the black bar of shadow from the skylight passed and repassed across it—across the candle, across the cake and across the picture of Anna May, the shy-smiling Batavian girl who had baked it.

But Willie Loon could not see the candle or the cake or the picture of his young wife, for he was blind. He could not understand why this should be so, for the last of these hammer-blows of just ten seconds ago had struck the back of his head, not the front. He could not even see his radio transmitting key, but that did not matter, for Mr. Johnson of the Marconi school had always insisted that no one could be a real Marconi man until he was as good in pitch darkness as he was in the light of day. And Mr. Johnson had also said that the Marconi man should be the last to leave his post, that he should leave the ship together with his captain. And so Willie Loon’s hand moved up and down, up and down, in the staccato, off-beat rhythm of the trained operator, triggering off the key, sending the same call over and over again: S.O.S., enemy air attack, 0.45 N, 104.24 E, on fire: S.O.S., enemy air attack, 0.45 N, 104.24 E, on fire: S.O.S. …

His back hurt, hurt abominably. Machine-gun bullets, he did not know how many, but they hurt, badly. But better that, he thought tiredly, than the transmitter. If his back hadn’t been there the transmitter would have been smashed, there would have been no distress signal, no hope at all. A fine Marconi man he would have been with the most important message of his life to send and no way of sending it … But he was sending that message, the most important message of his life, although already his hand was becoming terribly heavy and the transmitting key was starting to jump around from side to side, eluding the fumbling, sightless fingers.

There was a strange, muted thunder in his ears. He wondered vaguely, if it was the sound of aero engines, or if the flames that enveloped the fore-deck were bearing down on him, or if it was just the roaring of his own blood in his head. Most likely it was his own blood, for the bombers should have gone by now, their work done, and there was no wind to fan the flames. It didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered except that his hand should keep bearing down on that transmitting key, keep sending out the message. And the message went out, time and time again, but it was now only a jumbled, meaningless blur of dots and dashes.

Willie Loon did not know this. Nothing was very clear to him any longer. Everything was dark and confused and he seemed to be falling, but he could feel the edge of his chair catching him behind the knees and he knew he was still there, still sitting at his transmitter and he smiled at his own foolishness. He thought again of Mr. Johnson and he thought that perhaps Mr. Johnson would not be ashamed of him if he could see him then. He thought of his dark and gentle Anna May, and smiled again, without bitterness. And then there was the cake. Such a lovely cake, made as only she could make it, and he hadn’t even tasted it. He shook his head sadly, cried out once as the sharp scalpel of agony sliced through his shattered head and reached the unseeing eyes.

For a moment, just for a moment, consciousness returned. His right hand had slipped off the transmitting key. He knew it was desperately urgent that he should move his hand back, but all the power seemed to have gone from his right arm. He moved his left hand across, caught his right wrist and tried to lift it, but it was far too heavy, it might have been nailed to the table. He thought again, dimly, briefly, of Mr. Johnson, and he hoped he had done his best. Then silently, without even a sigh, he slid forward wearily on to the table, his head cradling on his crossed hands, his left elbow crushing down on the cake until the candle leaned over horizontally, the dripping wax pooling on the polished table, the smoke, thick now and very black, spiralling lazily upwards until it flattened against the deckhead, and spread across the tiny cabin. A dark, oily smoke, but it could do nothing to soften the cruel shafts of sunshine or hide the three little neat, red-ringed holes in the back of Willie Loon’s shirt as he lay sprawled tiredly across the table. By and by the candle flickered feebly, flared up once and died.

Captain Francis Findhorn, O.B.E., Commodore of the British-Arabian Tanker Company and master of the 12,000 ton motor-ship Viroma, gave the barometer a last two taps with his fingernail, looked at it without expression for a moment then walked back quietly to his seat in the port corner of the wheelhouse. Unthinkingly, he reached up to direct the overhead ventilation louver on to his face, winced as the blast of hot, humid air struck at him, then pushed it away again, quickly but without haste. Captain Findhorn never did anything with haste. Even the next simple gesture of taking off his gold-braided white cap and rubbing the dark, thinning hair with his handkerchief was made with an unhurried speed, with so complete a lack of unnecessary and wasted movement that one instinctively knew this calm deliberation, this unstudied economy of motion, to be an inseparable part of the man’s nature.

There was a soft padding behind him, footsteps crossing the iron-hard teak deck. Captain Findhorn replaced his cap, slewed round in his chair and looked at his chief officer who was standing where he himself had been seconds before, gazing thoughtfully at the barometer. For a few moments Captain Findhorn studied him in silence, thought that his chief officer was a classic refutation of the widely-held belief that light-haired, light-skinned people cannot sunburn well: between the white shirt and the fair flaxen hair, sun-bleached almost to a platinum blond, the back of the neck was a strip of old, dark oak. Then the chief officer had turned round and caught his eye, and Findhorn smiled, briefly.

“Well, Mr. Nicolson, what do you make of it?” The quartermaster was only feet away: with members of the crew within earshot, the captain was always punctiliousness itself towards his senior officers.

Nicolson shrugged his shoulders and walked across to the screen door. He had a peculiarly soft-footed, almost catlike gait, as if he were stepping on old, dry sticks and feared he might break them. He looked at the brassy oven of the sky, at the oily copper sheen of the water, at the far horizon to the east where the two met in a shimmer of metallic blue, and finally at the glassy swell that was building up to the northeast, pushing up on their port quarter. He shrugged again, turned and looked at the captain, and for the hundredth time Findhorn found himself marvelling at the clear, ice-blue of his officer’s eyes, doubly striking in the sunburnt darkness of the face. He had never seen eyes like them, remotely like them, anywhere. They always reminded Captain Findhorn of Alpine lakes, and this irritated the captain, for he had a precise, logical mind, and he had never been in the Alps in his life.

“Not much doubt about it, sir, is there?” The voice was soft, controlled, effortless—the perfect complement to the way he walked and carried himself: but it had a deep, resonant quality that enabled him to be heard through a roomful of talking people or in a high wind with an abnormal ease and clarity. He gestured through the open screen door. “All the signs. The glass is only 28.5, but it was.75 hardly an hour ago. It’s falling like a stone. The wrong time of the year, and I’ve never heard of a tropical storm in these latitudes, but we’re in for a bit of a blow, I’m afraid.”

“You have a genius for understatement, Mr. Nicolson,” Findhorn said dryly. “And don’t refer disrespectfully to a typhoon as ‘a bit of a blow’. It might hear you.” He paused a moment, smiled and went on softly. “I hope it does, Mr. Nicolson. It’s a Godsend.”

“It would be all of that,” Nicolson murmured. “And rain. There’ll be plenty of rain?”

“Buckets of it,” Captain Findhorn said with satisfaction. “Rain, high seas and a ten or eleven wind and there’s nary a son in the Nipponese army or navy will see us this night. What’s our course, Mr. Nicolson?”

“One-thirty, sir.”

“We’ll keep it there. The Carimata Straits for us by noon tomorrow, and then there’s always a chance. We’ll turn aside only for their Grand Fleet and we’ll turn back for nothing.” Captain Findhorn’s eyes were calm, untroubled. “Think there’ll be anyone out looking for us, Mr. Nicolson?”

“Apart from a couple of hundred aircraft pilots and every ship in the China Sea, no.” Nicolson smiled briefly, and the smile touched and whitened the wrinkles at his eyes and was gone. “I doubt if there’s any of our little yellow pals within 500 miles who doesn’t know that we broke out of Singapore last night. We must be the juiciest tit-bit since the Prince of Wales went down, and the size of the flap will be corresponding. They’ll have combed every exit—Macassar, Singapore, Durian and Rhio—and the High Command will be throwing blue fits and chucking themselves on to their swords by the dozen.”

“But they never thought to check the Tjombol Straits and Temiang?”

“I suppose they’re reasonably sane and do us the compliment of thinking we are also,” Nicolson said thoughtfully. “No sane man would take a big tanker through these waters at night, not with the draught we’ve got, and not a light in sight.”

Captain Findhorn inclined his head, half-nod, half-bow. “You have rather a pretty line in compliments yourself, Mr. Nicolson.”

Nicolson said nothing. He turned away and walked to the other side of the bridge, past the quartermaster and Vannier, the fourth officer. His feet on the deck made no more sound, almost, than the whisper of falling leaves. At the far end of the bridge he stopped, looked through the starboard wheel-house door at the haze-blurred silhouette of Linga Island melting softly into the purple distance, then turned back again. Vannier and the quartermaster watched him silently, tired speculation in tired eyes.

From above their heads came the occasional murmur of voices, or the shuffling of aimless, wandering feet. Up there were the gunners who manned the two wheelhouse top Hotchkisses, .5s well spaced on each side of the starboard compass platform teak screen. Old guns these, very old and feeble and inaccurate, good only for boosting the morale of those who had never had to use them against an enemy. The suicide seats, these two gun positions were called: the exposed wheel-house top, highest point of the bridge superstructure, always held priority for strafing attacks on tankers. The gunners knew this, and they were only human: they had been unhappy, increasingly restless, for days now.

But the fidgety unease of the gunners, the quartermaster’s hands moving gently on the spokes of the wheel—these were only small, insignificant sounds that punctuated the strange, hushed silence that lay over the Viroma, an enveloping, encompassing silence, thick, cocoon-like, almost tangible. And the little sounds came and went and left the silence deeper, more oppressive than before.

It was the silence that comes with great heat and the climbing humidity that spills out sweat over a man’s arms and body with every mouthful of liquid he drinks. It was the dead, flat silence that lies over the China Sea while the gathering storm bides its time beyond the horizon. It was the silence that comes upon men when they have not slept for a long, long time, and they are very tired. But, above all, it was the silence that comes with waiting. That kind of waiting where a man’s nerves are stretched out on a rack, and every hour more of waiting is another turn of the rack, and if the waiting doesn’t end soon the rack will turn too far and the nerves tear and sunder with the strain—but if the waiting does end then that will be even worse for it will be the end not only of the waiting, it will almost certainly be the end of everything.

The men of the Viroma had been waiting for a long time now, Or perhaps not such a long time—it was only a week since the Viroma, with a false funnel, dummy ventilators, the newly painted name of Resistencia and flying the flag of the Argentine republic, had rounded the Northern tip of Sumatra and steamed into the Malacca Straits in broad daylight. But a week has seven days, every day twenty-four hours and every hour sixty minutes. Even a minute can be a long time when you are waiting for something which must inevitably happen, when you know that the laws of chance are operating more and more inexorably against you, that the end cannot be much longer delayed. Even a minute can be a long, long time when the first bomb or the first torpedo may be only seconds away, and you have ten thousand, four hundred tons of fuel oil and high octane gasoline beneath your feet …

The telephone above the flag locker shrilled jarringly, insistently, cutting knife-like through the leaden silence on the bridge. Vannier, slight, brown-haired, an officer of only ten weeks standing, was nearest to it. He whirled round, startled, knocked over the binoculars on the locker-top behind him, and fumbled the receiver off its hook. Even through the tan the red flush could be seen creeping up through neck and face.

“Bridge here. What is it?” The voice was meant to be crisp, authoritative. It didn’t quite come off. He listened for a few moments, said thank you, hung up and turned round to find Nicolson standing beside him.

“Another distress signal,” he said quickly. Nicolson’s cold blue eyes always made him feel flustered. “Up north somewhere.”

“Up north somewhere.” Nicolson repeated the words, his tone almost conversational, but carrying an undertone that made Vannier squirm. “What position? What ship?” There was a sharp edge to Nicolson’s voice now.

“I—I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

Nicolson looked at him for a long second, turned away, reached down the phone and began to crank the generator handle. Captain Findhorn beckoned to Vannier and waited until the boy had walked hesitantly across to his corner of the bridge.

“You should have asked, you know,” the captain said pleasantly. “Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t think it necessary, sir.” Vannier was uncomfortable, on the defensive. “It’s our fourth call today. You—you ignored the others, so I——”

“True enough,” Findhorn agreed. “It’s a question of priorities, boy. I’m not going to risk a valuable ship, a priceless cargo and the lives of fifty men on the off-chance of picking up a couple of survivors from an inter-island steamer. But this might have been a troopship, or a cruiser. I know it’s not, but it might have been. And it might have been in a position where we could have given some help without sticking our necks out too far. All improbable ‘ifs’ and ‘mights’, but we must know where she is and what she is before we make a decision.” Findhorn smiled and touched the gold-braided epaulettes on his shoulders. “You know what these are for?”

“You make the decisions,” Vannier said stiffly. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Forget it, boy. But one thing you might remember—to call Mr. Nicolson ‘sir’ once in a while. It’s—ah—expected.”

Vannier flushed and turned away. “Sorry again, sir. I don’t usually forget. I’m—well, I think I’m just a little bit tired and edgy, sir.”

“We all are,” Findhorn said quietly. “And not a little bit, either. But Mr. Nicolson isn’t —he never is.” He raised his voice. “Well, Mr. Nicolson?”

Nicolson hung up the receiver and turned round.

“Vessel bombed, burning, possibly sinking,” he said briefly. “0.45 N, 104.24 E. That makes it the Southern entrance to the Rhio channel. Name of the vessel uncertain. Walters says the message came through very fast, very clear at first, but quickly deteriorated into crazy nonsense. He thinks the operator was seriously injured and finally collapsed over his table and key, for he finished up with a continuous send—it’s still coming through. Name of the ship, as far as Walters could make out, was the Kenny Danke.

“Never heard of it. Strange he didn’t send his international call-sign. Nothing big, anyway. Mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing, sir.” Nicolson shook his head, turned to Vannier. “Look it up in the Register anyway, please. Then look through the K’s. Obviously the wrong name.” He paused for a moment, the cold blue eyes remote, distant, then turned again to Vannier. “Look up the Kerry Dancer. I think it must be that.”

Vannier riffled through the pages. Findhorn looked at his chief officer, eyebrows raised a fraction.

Nicolson shrugged. “A fair chance, sir, and it makes sense. N and R are very close in Morse. So are C and K. A sick man could easily trade them—even a trained man. If he was sick enough.”

“You’re right, sir.” Vannier smoothed out a page of the directory. “The Kerry Dancer, 540 tons, is listed here. Clyde, 1922. Sulaimiya Trading Company——”

“I know them,” Findhorn interrupted. “An Arab company, Chinese backed, sailing out of Macassar. They’ve seven or eight of these small steamers. Twenty years ago they had only a couple of dhows—that was about the time they gave up legitimate trading as a bad business and went in for the fancy stuff—guns, opium, pearls, diamonds, and little of that legally come by. Plus a fair amount of piracy on the side.”

”No tears over the Kerry Dancer!”

“No tears over the Kerry Dancer, Mr. Nicolson. Course 130 and hold it there.” Captain Findhorn moved through the screen door on to the port wing of the door. The incident was closed.

“Captain!”

Findhorn halted, turned round unhurriedly and looked curiously at Evans. Evans was the duty quartermaster, dark, wiry, thin-faced and with tobacco stained teeth. His hands rested lightly on the wheel, and he was looking straight ahead.

“Something on your mind, Evans?”

“Yes, sir. The Kerry Dancer was lying in the roads last night.” Evans glanced at him for a moment then stared ahead again. “A Blue Ensign boat, sir.”

“What!” Findhorn was jerked out of his normal equanimity. “A Government ship? You saw her?”

“I didn’t see her, sir. The bo-sun did—I think. Anyway, I heard him talking about it last night—just after you’d come back from shore.”

“Are you quite certain, man? He said that?”

“No mistake, sir.” The high-pitched Welsh voice was very definite.

“Get the bo’sun up here at once!” Findhorn ordered. He went over to his chair, sat down, easy and relaxed, and thought back to the night just gone. He remembered his surprise—and relief—when he had gone over the side and found the bo’sun and carpenter manning the motor lifeboat that was to take him ashore, his surprise and relief when he had seen the butts of a couple of short Lee Enfields protruding beneath a piece of canvas thrown carelessly over them. He had said nothing about these. He remembered the distant sound of guns, the pall of smoke lying over Singapore from the last bombing raid—one could set a watch by the appearance of Japanese bombers over Singapore every morning—the weird, unnatural hush that had lain over city and roads. The roads themselves had been empty, deserted as he’d never known them, and he couldn’t remember seeing the Kerry Dancer or any other ship flying the Blue Ensign as they went in. It had been too dark and he had had too much on his mind. And he had had even more to worry about on the way out. He had learnt that the oil islands of Poko Bukum, Pulo Sambo and Pulo Sebarok had been fired, or were to be fired—he had been unable to find out or even see for himself, the pall of smoke obscured everything. The last of the naval units had pulled out and there was no one to take his fuel oil. Nor his aviation spirit—the Catalinas were gone, and the only Brewster Buffaloes and Wildebeeste torpedo bombers that remained were charred skeletons on the Selengar Airfield. 10,400 tons of explosive fuel, trapped in the harbour of Singapore and——

“McKinnon, sir. You sent for me.” Twenty years that hadn’t missed out a sea or port in the world worth looking at had turned McKinnon from a raw, shy, unknowing Lewis boy to a byword among the sixty odd ships of the British Arabian Company for toughness, shrewdness and unvarying competence—but they hadn’t altered a single inflexion in his slow, soft-spoken Highland voice, “About the Kerry Dancer?”

Findhorn nodded, said nothing, just continued looking at the dark, stocky figure before him. A commodore, he thought dryly, inconsequentially, has his privileges. The best first mate and the best bo’sun in the company …

“I saw her lifeboat yesterday evening, sir,” McKinnon said quietly. “She left before us—with a full complement of passengers.” He looked speculatively at the captain. “A hospital ship. Captain.”

Findhorn climbed down off his chair and stood in front of McKinnon, without moving, The two men were of a height, eye to eye. No one else moved. It was as if each one feared to break the sudden, utter stillness that had fallen on the bridge. The Viroma wandered one degree off course, then two, then three, and Evans made no move to correct it.

“A hospital ship,” Findhorn repeated tonelessly. “A hospital ship, Bo’sun? She’s only a little inter-island tramp—500 tons or so.”

“That’s right. But she’s been commandeered, sir. I was talking to some of the wounded soldiers while Ferris and myself were at the jetty, waiting for you. Her captain’s been given the option of losing his ship or sailing her to Darwin. There’s a company of soldiers aboard to see that he does.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all there is, sir. They filled up the second boatload before you came back—most of the cases were walking wounded but there were a few on stretchers. I believe there are five or six nurses, none British, and a little boy.”

“Women, children and sick men and they stick them aboard one of the Sulaimiya Company’s floating death-traps—and the whole archipelago swarming with Jap aircraft.” Findhorn swore, quietly, savagely. “I wonder what mutton-headed genius in Singapore thought that one up.”

“I don’t know, sir,” McKinnon said woodenly.

Findhorn looked at him sharply, then looked away again. “The question was purely rhetorical, McKinnon,” he said coldly. His voice dropped almost an octave and he went on quietly, musingly, speaking to no one in particular, a man thinking aloud and not liking his thoughts at all.

“If we go north, the chances of our getting as far as Rhio and back again are less than remote: they do not exist. Let us not deceive ourselves about that. It may be a trap—it probably is: the Kerry Dancer left before us and she should have been through Rhio six hours ago. If it’s not a trap, the probability is that the Kerry Dancer is at this moment sinking, or has sunk. Even if she is still afloat, fire will have forced passengers and crew to abandon ship. If they’re just swimming around—most of them wounded men—there’ll be mighty few of them left in the six or seven hours it would take us to get there.”

Findhorn paused for some moments, lit a cigarette in defiance of the company’s and his own regulations, and went on in the same flat monotone.

“They may have taken to their boats, if they had any boats left after bombs, machine-guns and fire had all had a go at them. Within a few hours all the survivors can land on any one of a score of islands. What chance have we got of finding the right island in total darkness in the middle of a storm—assuming that we were crazy enough—suicidal enough—to move into the Rhio Straits and throw away all the sea-room we must have in the middle of a typhoon?” He grunted in irritation as spiralling smoke laced his tired eyes—Captain Flndhorn hadn’t left the bridge all night—gazed down with mild surprise, as if seeing it for the first time, at the cigarette clipped between his fingers, dropped it and ground it out with the heel of his white canvas shoe. He stared down at the crushed stub for long seconds after it had gone out, then looked up, his gaze travelling slowly round the four men in the wheelhouse. The gaze meant nothing—Findhorn would never have included the quartermaster, bo’sun or the fourth officer in his counsels. “I can see no justification whatsoever for jeopardising the ship, the cargo and our lives on a wild goose chase.”

No one said anything, no one moved. The silence was back again, heavy, foreboding, impenetrable. The air was still, and very airless—the approaching storm, perhaps. Nicolson was leaning against the flag locker, hooded eyes looking down at his hands clasped before him: the others were looking at the captain, and not blinking: the Viroma had now slewed yet further off course, ten, perhaps twelve degrees, and still swinging steadily.

Captain Findhorn’s wandering gaze finally settled on Nicolson. The remoteness had gone from the captain’s eyes now, when he looked at his first mate.

“Well, Mr. Nicolson?” he asked.

“You’re perfectly right, sir, of course.” Nicolson looked up, gazed out the window at the foremast swaying slowly, gently, under the lift of the deepening swell. “A thousand to one that it’s a trap, or, if it isn’t, ship, crew and passengers will all be gone by now—one way or another.” He looked gravely at the quartermaster, at the compass, then back at Findhorn again. “But as I see we’re already ten degrees off course and still slewing to starboard, we might as well save trouble and just keep on going round to starboard. The course would be about 320, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nicolson.” Findhom let his breath escape in a long, almost inaudible sigh. He crossed over towards Nicolson, his cigarette case open. “For this once only, to hell with the rules. Mr. Vannier, you have the Kerry Dancer’s position. A course for the quartermaster, if you please.”

Slowly, steadily, the big tanker swung round, struck off to the north-west back in the direction of Singapore, into the heart of the gathering storm.

A thousand to one were the odds that Nicolson would have offered and the captain would have backed him in that and gone even further—and they would both have been wrong. There was no trap, the Kerry Dancer was still afloat and she hadn’t been abandoned—not entirely.

Still afloat, at 2 o’clock on that sultry, breathless mid-February afternoon in 1942, but not looking as if she would be afloat much longer. She was deep in the water, down by the head and listing over so heavily to starboard that the well-deck guardrail was dipping into the sea, now lost in it, now showing clear as the long, low swell surged up the sloping deck and receded, like waves breaking on a beach.

The for-ard mast was gone, broken off about six feet above the deck; a dark, gaping hole, still smouldering, showed where the funnel had been, and the bridge was unrecognisable, a scrapyard shambles of buckled steel plates and fractured angle-irons, outlined in crazy, surrealist silhouette against a brazen sky. The fo’c’sle—the crew’s quarters just for’ard of the well-deck—looked as if it had been opened up by a gigantic can-opener, the scuttles on the ship’s side had disappeared completely and there was no trace of anchors, wind lass or for’ard derrick winch; all this fo’c’sle damage the result, obviously, of a bomb that had penetrated the thin steel deck plating and failed to explode until it was deep inside the ship. No one there at the time could have known anything about it, for the lethal blast would have been far faster than realisation. Abaft the well-deck, the wood-lined accommodation quarters on the main and upper decks had been completely burnt out, gutted as far as the after well, sky and sea clearly visible through the gaunt and twisted framework.

It was impossible that human beings could have survived the bludgeoning, the consuming, metal-melting white heat that had reduced the Kerry Dancer to the charred, dead wreck drifting imperceptibly south-westwards towards the Abang Straits and faraway Sumatra. And, indeed, there was no life to be seen on what was left of the decks of the Kerry Dancer, no life to be seen anywhere, above or below. A deserted, silent skeleton, a dead hulk adrift on the China Sea. … But there were twenty-three people still alive in the after-castle of the Kerry Dancer.

Twenty-three people, but some of them had not much longer to live. These were the wounded soldiers, the stretcher cases that had been close enough to death already before the ship had pulled out from Singapore, and the conclusive impact of the bombs and the gasping heat of the fires that had stopped short at the break of the after well-deck had destroyed what feeble resources and hold of life were left to most of them, and tipped the scales against recovery. There might have been hope for them, some slender hope, had they been brought out of that panting suffocation while there was yet time and lowered to the rafts and boats. But there had been no time. Within seconds of the first bomb falling, someone outside had sledge-hammered tight the eight clips that secured the only door—the water-tight door—that gave access to the upper deck.

Through this smoke-blackened door a man cried out from time to time, a cry not of pain but of anguished memory lacerating a darkening mind; there were whimpers, too, from other badly wounded men, again not moans of pain; the Eurasian nursing sister had with her all the drugs and sedatives she required, not pain but just the feeble, aimless murmur of dying men. Now and again a woman’s voice could be heard, soothing, consoling, the soft sound of it punctuated from time to time by the deep angry rumble of a man. But mostly it was just the husky undertones of sick men and, very occasionally, the quivering indrawn breaths, the lost and lonely wailing of a little child.

Twilight, the brief tropical twilight, and the sea was milky white from horizon to horizon. Not close at hand—there it was green and white, great steep-sided walls of green, broken-topped and parallel-streaked with the wind-blown spume, waves that collapsed in a boiling, seething cauldron of rushing phosphorescence and foamed whitely across the low, wide decks of the Viroma, burying hatch-covers, pipe-lines and valves, burying, at times, even the catwalks, the gangways that stretched fore-and-aft eight feet above the deck. But further away from the ship, as far as the eye could see in the darkening night, there was nothing but the eerie, glistening whiteness of wind-flattened wave-tops and driving spray.

The Viroma, her big single screw thrusting under maximum power, lurched and staggered northwards through the storm. North-west should have been her course, but the fifty-knot wind that had hit her on the starboard beam, almost without warning and with the typical typhoon impact of a tidal wave moving at express speed, had pushed her far off course to the south and west close in to Sebanga. She was far round into the sea now, corkscrewing violently and pitching steeply, monotonously, as the big, quartering seas bore down on her starboard bow and passed over and below her. She shuddered every time her bows crashed into a trough, then quivered and strained throughout every inch of her 460 foot length when the bows lifted and fought their way clear of the press of cascading white water. The Viroma was taking punishment, severe punishment—but that was what she had been built for.

Up on the starboard wing of the bridge, muffled in oilskins, crouched down behind the negligible shelter of the canvas dodger, and with his eyes screwed almost shut against the lash of the driving rain, Captain Findhorn peered out into the gathering dusk. He didn’t look worried, his chubby face was as composed, as impassive as ever, but he was worried, badly, and not about the storm. The wild staggering of the Viroma, the explosive, shuddering impact of plummeting bows burying themselves to the hawse-pipes in a massive head sea, would have been a terrifying experience for any landsman: Captain Findhorn barely noticed it. A deep-laden tanker has a remarkably low centre of gravity with corresponding stability—which doesn’t make it roll any less but what matters is not the extent of the roll but whether or not a ship will recover from a roll, and a tanker always does: its system of water-tight cross bulkheads gives it enormous strength: and with the tiny access hatches securely battened down, the smooth, unbroken sweep of steel decks makes it the nearest thing afloat to a submarine. Where wind and weather are concerned, a tanker is virtually indestructible. Captain Findhorn knew that only too well, and he had sailed tankers through typhoons far worse than this, and not only across the rim, where he was now, but through the heart. Captain Findhorn was not worried about the Viroma.

Nor was he worried about himself. Captain Findhorn had nothing left to worry about—literally: he had a great deal to look back upon, but nothing to look forward to. The senior captain of the British-Arabian Tanker Company, neither the sea nor his employers had anything more to offer him than two more years of command, retirement, and a sufficient pension. He had nowhere to go when he retired: his home for the past eight years, a modest bungalow off the Bukit Timor road, just outside the town of Singapore, had been destroyed by bombs in mid-January. His twin sons, who had always maintained that anyone who went to sea for a livelihood wanted his head examined, had joined the R.A.F. at the outbreak of war, and died in their Hurricanes, one over Flanders, one over the English Channel. His wife, Ellen, had survived the second son for only a few weeks. Cardiac failure, the doctor had said, which was a neat enough medical equivalent for a broken heart. Captain Findhorn had nothing to worry about, just nothing in the world—as far as he himself was concerned.

But selfishness had no root, no hold in Captain Findhorn’s nature, and the emptiness of all that lay ahead had not robbed him of his concern for those for whom life still held much. He thought of the men under his command, men not like himself but men with parents and children, wives and sweethearts, and he wondered what moral justification, if any, he had had for risking the life of non-combatants in turning back towards the enemy. He wondered, too, about the oil beneath his feet again, about his justification, if any, for hazarding a priceless cargo so desperately needed by his country—the thought of the loss to his company he dismissed with the mental equivalent of an indifferent shrug. Lastly, and most deeply of all, he thought about his chief officer of the past three years, John Nicolson.

He did not know and he did not understand John Nicolson. Some woman might, some day, but he doubted whether any man ever would. Nicolson was a man with two personalities, neither of them in any way directly connected with his professional duties, or the manner of the performance of them, which was exceptional: next in line for command in the Anglo-Arabian fleet, Nicolson was regarded by Captain Findhorn as the finest officer he had had serve under him in his thirty-three years as master: unvaryingly competent when competence was called for, brilliant when competence was not enough, John Nicolson never made a mistake. His efficiency was almost inhuman. Inhuman, Findhorn thought, that was it, that was the other side of his character. Nicolson normally was courteous, considerate, even humorously affable: and then some strange sea-change would come over him and he became aloof, remote, cold—and above all ruthless.

There had to be a link, a meeting point between the two Nicolsons, something that triggered off the transition from one personality to another. What it was Captain Findhorn did not know. He did not even know the nature of the slender bond between Nicolson and himself, he was not close to Nicolson, but he believed he was closer than anyone he knew. It could have been the fact that they were both widowers, but it was not that. It should have been that, for the parallels were striking—both wives had lived in Singapore, Nicolson’s on her first and his on her second five-year tour of duty in the Far East: both had died within a week of each other, and within a hundred yards of each other. Mrs. Findhorn had died at home grieving: Caroline Nicolson had died in a high-speed car smash almost outside the white-painted gates of Captain Findhorn’s bungalow, victim of a drunken maniac who had escaped without as much as a single scratch.

Captain Findhorn straightened up, tightened the towel round his neck, wiped some salt from his eyes and lips and glanced at Nicolson, farther out on the wing of the bridge. He was quite upright, seeking no shelter behind the venturi dodger, hands resting lightly on the side of the bridge, the intense blue eyes slowly quartering the dusk-blurred horizon, his face impassive, indifferent. Wind and rain, the crippling heat of the Persian Gulf or the bitter sleet storms of the Scheldt in January were all the same to John Nicolson. He was immune to them, he remained always indifferent, impassive. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

The wind was backing now, slowly, very slowly, and as steadily increasing in strength, the brief tropical twilight was almost over, but the seas were as milky-white as ever, stretching away into the gloom. Findhorn could see their gleaming phosphorescence off to port and starboard, curving in a great heaving horseshoe round the stern, but he could see nothing for-ard. The Viroma was now thrusting north dead in the eye of the gale-force wind, and the heavy driving rain, strangely cold after the heat of the day, was sweeping almost horizontally fore and aft across the decks and the bridge, numbing his face with a thousand little lances, filling his eyes with pain and tears. Even with eyes screwed tight to the narrowest slits, the rain still stung and blinded: they were blind men groping in a blind world and the end of the world was where they stood.

Captain Findhorn shook his head impatiently, an impatience compounded equally of anxiety and exasperation, and called to Nicolson. There was no sign that he had been heard. Findhorn cupped his hands to his mouth and called again, realised that what little of his voice was not being swept away by the wind was being drowned by the crash of the plunging bows and the thin high whine in the halyards and rigging. He moved across to where Nicolson stood, tapped him on the shoulder, jerked his head towards the wheelhouse and made for there himself. Nicolson followed him. As soon as he was inside Findhorn waited for a convenient trough in the sea, eased forward the sliding door with the downward pitch of the ship, and secured it. The change from driving rain, wind and the roaring of the sea to dryness, warmth and an almost miraculous quiet was so abrupt, so complete, that it took mind and body seconds to accustom themselves to the change.

Findhorn towelled his head dry, moved across to the port for-ard window and peered through the Clear View Screen—a circular, inset plate or glass band-driven at high speed by an electric motor. Under normal conditions of wind and rain centrifugal force is enough to keep the screen clear and provide reasonable visibility. There was nothing normal about the conditions that night and the worn driving belt, for which they had no spare, was slipping badly. Findhorn grunted in disgust and turned away.

“Well, Mr. Nicolson, what do you make of it?”

“The same as you, sir.” He wore no hat and the blond hair was plastered over head and forehead. “Can’t see a thing ahead.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“I know.” Nicolson smiled, braced himself against a sudden, vicious pitch, against the jarring shock that shook the windows of the wheelhouse. “This is the first time we’ve been safe in the past week.”

Findhorn nodded. “You’re probably right. Not even a maniac would come out looking for us on a night like this. Valuable hours of safety, Johnny,” he murmured quietly, “and we would be better employed putting even more valuable miles between ourselves and brother Jap.”

Nicolson looked at him, looked away again. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but Findhorn knew something at least of what he must be thinking, and swore quietly to himself. He was making it as easy as possible—Nicolson had only to agree with him.

“The chances of there being any survivors around are remote,” Findhorn went on. “Look at the night. Our chances of picking anybody up are even more remote. Again, look at the night—and as you say yourself we can’t see a damn’ thing ahead. And the chances of piling ourselves up on a reef—or even a fair-sized island—are pretty high.” He looked out a side window at the driving fury of the rain and the low, scudding cloud. “We haven’t a hope of a star-sight while this lot lasts.”

“Our chances are pretty thin,” Nicolson agreed. He lit a cigarette, automatically returned the spent match to its box, watched the blue smoke eddying lazily in the soft light of the binnacle, then looked up at Findhorn. “How much do you give for the chances of any survivors on the Kerry Dancer, sir?”

Findhorn looked into the ice-cold blue of the eyes, looked away again, said nothing.

“If they took to the boats before the weather broke down, they’ll be on an island now,” Nicolson went on quietly. “There are dozens of them around. If they took to the boats later, they’re gone long ago—a dozen of these coasters couldn’t muster one regulation lifeboat between them. If there are any survivors we can save, they’ll still be on the Kerry Dancer. A needle in a haystack, I know, but a bigger needle than a raft or a baulk of wood.”

Captain Findhorn cleared his throat. “I appreciate all this, Mr. Nicolson——”

“She’ll be drifting more or less due south,” Nicolson interrupted. He looked up from the chart on the table. “Two knots, maybe three. Heading for the Merodong Straits—bound to pile up later tonight. We could come round to port a bit, still give Mesana Island a good offing and have a quick looksee.”

“You’re assuming an awful lot,” Findhorn said slowly.

“I know. I’m assuming that she wasn’t sunk hours ago.” Nicolson smiled briefly, or maybe it was only a grimace, it was very dark in the wheelhouse now. “Perhaps I’m feeling fey tonight, sir. Perhaps it’s my Scandinavian ancestry coming out … An hour and a half should get us there. Even in this head sea, not more than two.”

“All right, damn you!” Findhorn said irritably. “Two hours, and then we turn back.” He glanced at the luminous figures on his wrist-watch. “Six twenty-five now. The deadline is eight-thirty.” He spoke briefly to the helmsman, turned and followed Nicolson, who was holding the screen door open for him against the wild lurching of the Viroma. Outside the howling wind was a rushing, irresistible wall that pinned them helplessly, for seconds on end, against the after end of the bridge, fighting for their breath: the rain was no longer rain but a deluge, driving horizontally, sleet-cold, razor edged, that seemed to lay exposed foreheads and cheeks open to the bone: the wind in the rigging was no longer a whine but an ululating scream, climbing off the register, hurtful to the ear. The Viroma was moving in on the heart of the typhoon.

FOUR

Two hours, Captain Findhorn had given them, two hours at the outside limit, but it might as well have been two minutes or two days, for all the hope that remained. Everyone knew that, knew that it was just a gesture, maybe to their own consciences, maybe to the memory of a few wounded soldiers, a handful of nurses and a radio operator who had leaned over his transmitting key and died. But still only a hopeless gesture …

They found the Kerry Dancer at twenty-seven minutes past eight, three minutes before the deadline. They found her, primarily, because Nicolson’s predictions had been uncannily correct, the Kerry Dancer was almost exactly where he had guessed they would find her and a long, jagged fork of lightning had, for a brief, dazzling moment, illumined the gaunt, burnt-out scarecrow as brightly as the noonday sun. Even then they would never have found her had not the hurricane force of the wind dropped away to the merest whisper, and the blinding rain vanished as suddenly as if someone had turned off a gigantic tap in the heavens.

That there was no miracle about the almost instantaneous transition from the clamour of the storm to this incredible quiet Captain Findhorn was grimly aware. Always, at the heart of a typhoon, lies this oasis of peace. This breathless, brooding hush was no stranger to him—but on the two or three previous occasions he had had plenty of sea room, could turn where he wished when the going became too bad. But not this time. To the north, to the west and to the southwest their escape route was blocked off by islands of the archipelago. They couldn’t have entered the heart of the typhoon at a worse time.

And they couldn’t have done it at a better time. If anyone lived on the Kerry Dancer conditions for rescue would never be more favourable than this. If anyone lived—and from what they could see of her in the light of their canal searchlights and the port signalling lamp as they bore slowly down on her, it seemed unlikely. More, it seemed impossible. In the harsh glare of the searchlights she seemed more forlorn, more abandoned than ever, so deep now by the head that the for’ard well deck had vanished, and the fo’c’sle, like some lonely rock, now awash, now buried deep as the big seas rolled it under—the wind had gone, the rain had gone, but the seas were almost as high as ever, and even more confused.

Captain Findhorn gazed out silently at the Kerry Dancer his eyes bleak. Caught in a cone of light, broached to and broadside on to the waves, she was rolling sluggishly in the troughs, her centre of gravity pulled right down by the weight of hundreds of tons of water. Dead, he thought to himself, dead if ever a ship was dead but she just won’t go. Dead, and that’s her ghost, he thought inconsequentially, and ghost-like she seemed, eerie and foreboding with the searchlights shining through the twisted rectangular gaps in her burnt-out upper-works. She reminded him vaguely, tantalisingly, of something, then all of a sudden he had it—the Death Ship of the Ancient Mariner, with the red, barred sun shining through the skeleton of her timbers. No deader than this one here, he thought grimly. Nothing could have been emptier of life than this. … He became aware that the chief officer was standing just behind his shoulder.

“Well, there she is, Johnny,” he murmured “Candidate-elect for the Sargasso Sea, or wherever dead ships go. It’s been a nice trip. Let’s be getting back.”

“Yes, sir.” Nicolson didn’t seem to have heard him. “Permission to take a boat across, sir.”

“No.” Findhorn’s refusal was flat, emphatic. “We’ve seen all we want to see.”

“We’ve come back a long way for this.” There was no particular inflection in Nicolson’s voice. “Vannier, the bo’sun, Ferris, myself and a couple of others. We could make it.”

“Maybe you could.” Bracing himself against the heavy rolling of the Viroma, Findhorn made his way to the outer edge of the port wing and stared down at the sea. Even in the lee of the ship, there were still ten or fifteen feet between troughs and wavecrests, the short, steep seas confused and treacherous. “And maybe you couldn’t. I don’t propose to risk anyone’s life just to find that out.”

Nicolson said nothing. Seconds passed, then Findhorn turned to him again, the faintest edge of irritation in his voice.

“Well, what’s the matter. Still feeling—what do you call it?—fey? Is that it?” He flung out an impatient arm in the direction of the Kerry Dancer. “Damn it all, man, she’s obviously abandoned. Burnt-out and hammered till she looks like a floating colander. Do you honestly think there would be any survivors after she had been through that little lot? And even if there were, they’re bound to see our lights. Why aren’t they all dancing about the upper deck—if there’s any deck left—waving their shirts above their heads? Can you tell me that?” Captain Findhorn was being heavily sarcastic.

“No idea, sir, though I should imagine a badly-wounded soldier—McKinnon said there were a few stretcher cases aboard—would find it difficult, far too difficult, even to get out of bed and take his shirt off, far less wave it all over the upper deck,” Nicolson said dryly. “A favour, sir. Switch our searchlights off and on, a few 12-pounder ack-ack shots, half-a-dozen rockets. If there’s anyone left alive, that’ll attract their attention.”

Findhorn considered for a moment, then nodded his head. “It’s the least I can do, and I don’t suppose there’s a Jap within fifty miles. Go ahead, Mr. Nicolson.”

But the flicking on and off of the searchlights, the flat, sharp crack of the 12-pounder echoing emptily over the sea had no effect, just no effect at all. The Kerry Dancer looked even more lifeless than before, a floating, burnt-out skeleton, deeper than ever in the water, the fo’c’sle only awash now in the deepest troughs. And then came the rockets, seven or eight of them, dazzling white in the pitchy darkness, curving away in shallow arcs to the west; one of them landed on the poop of the Kerry Dancer, lay there for long seconds bathing the heaving deck in a fierce white glare, then sputtering to extinction. And still nothing moved aboard the Kerry Dancer, no sign of life at all.

“Well, that’s it.” Captain Findhorn sounded a little weary: even with no hope in the first place he was still disappointed, more than he would have cared to admit. “Satisfied, Mr. Nicolson?”

“Captain, sir!” It was Vannier speaking before Nicolson could answer, his voice high-pitched, excited. “Over there, sir. Look!”

Findhorn had steadied himself on the handrail and had his night glasses to his eyes before Vannier had finished talking. For a few seconds he stood motionless, then he swore softly, lowered his glasses and turned to Nicolson. Nicolson forestalled him.

“I can see it, sir. Breakers. Less than a mile south, of the Kerry Dancer—she’ll pile up there in twenty minutes, half an hour. Metsana, it must be—it’s not just a reef.”

“Metsana it is,” Findhorn growled. “Good God, I never dreamed we were so close! That settles it. Cut the lights. Full ahead, hard a starboard and keep her 090—biggest possible offing in the shortest possible time. We’re about due to move out of the eye of the typhoon any minute now and heaven only knows how the wind is going to break—what the devil!”

Nicolson’s hand was on his upper arm, the lean fingers digging hard into his flesh. His left arm was stretched out, finger pointing towards the stern of the sinking ship.

“I saw a light just now—just after ours went out.” His voice was very quiet, almost hushed. “A very faint light—a candle, or maybe even a match. The porthole nearest the well-deck.”

Findhorn looked at him, stared out at the dark, tenebrous silhouette of the steamer, then shook his head.

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Nicolson. Some optical trick, nothing else. The retina can hold some queer after-images, or maybe it was just the scuttle reflecting the dying glow from one of our——”

“I don’t make mistakes of that kind,” Nicolson interrupted flatly.

A few seconds passed, seconds of complete silence, then Findhorn spoke again: “Anybody else see that light?” The voice was calm, impersonal enough, the faint edge of anger just showing through.

Again the silence, longer this time, then Findhorn turned abruptly on his heel. “Full ahead, quartermaster, and—Mr. Nicolson! What are you doing?”

Nicolson replaced the phone he had been using without any sign of haste. “Just asking for a little light on the subject,” he murmured laconically. He turned his back to the captain and gazed out over the sea.

Findhorn’s mouth tightened; he took a few quick steps forward but slowed up suddenly as the port light switched on, wavered uncertainly, then settled on the aftercastle of the Kerry Dancer. More slowly still the captain came alongside Nicolson, shoulder to shoulder, both hands reaching up for the dodger rail to steady himself: but seeking balance alone could not have accounted for the strength of his grip on the rail, a grip that tightened and tightened until the straining knuckles were burnished ivory in the washback of light from the beam pinned on the Kerry Dancer.

The Kerry Dancer was barely three hundred yards away now, and there could be no doubt about it, none at all. Everybody saw it, clearly—the narrow scuttle swinging in, then the long, bare arm stretching out and frantically waving a white towel or sheet, an arm that withdrew suddenly, thrust out a flaming bundle either of paper or rags, held on to it until the flames began to lick and twist around the wrist, then dropped it hissing and smoking, into the sea.

Captain Findhorn sighed, a long, heavy sigh, and unclamped his aching fingers from the dodger rail. His shoulders sagged, the tired, dispirited droop of a man no longer young, a man who has been carrying too heavy a burden for too long a time. Beneath the dark tan his face was almost drained of colour.

“I’m sorry, my boy.” It was only a whisper; he spoke without turning round, his head shaking slowly from side to side. “Thank God you saw it in time.”

No one heard him, for he was talking only to himself. Nicolson was already gone, sliding on his forearms down the teak ladder rails without his feet touching one step, before the captain had started speaking. And even before he was finished Nicolson had knocked off the gripes’ release links on the port lifeboat, and was already easing off the handbrake, shouting for the bo’sun to muster the emergency crew at the double.

Fireman’s axe in one hand, a heavy, rubber-sheathed torch in the other, Nicolson made his way quickly along the fore and aft passage through the Kerry Dancer’s gutted midships superstructure. The steel deck beneath his feet had been buckled and twisted into fantastic shapes by the intense heat, and pieces of charred wood were still smouldering in sheltered corners. Once or twice the heavy, jerky rolling of the ship threw him against the walls of the passage and the fierce heat struck at him even through the canvas gloves on his outflung hands: that the metal should still be so hot after hours of gale force winds and torrential rain gave him a very vivid idea of the tremendous heat that must have been generated by the fire. He wondered, vaguely, what sort of cargo she had been carrying: probably contraband of some sort.

Two-thirds of the way along the passage, on the right hand side, he noticed a door, still intact, still locked. He leaned back and smashed at the lock, straight-legged, with the sole of his shoe: the door gave half an inch, but held. He swung his axe viciously against the lock, kicked the door open with his foot, pressed the button of his torch and stepped over the coaming. Two charred, shapeless bundles lay on the floor at his feet. They might have been human beings once, they might not. The stench was evil, intolerable, striking at his wrinkling nostrils like a physical blow. Nicolson was back in the passage within three seconds, hooking the door shut with the blade of the axe. Vannier was standing there now, the big red fire extinguisher under his arm, and Nicolson knew that even in those brief moments Vannier had had time to look inside. His eyes were wide and sick, his face like paper.

Nicolson turned abruptly, continued down the passage, Vannier behind him, followed by the bo’sun with a sledge and Ferris with a crowbar. He kicked open two more doors, shone his torch inside. Empty. He came to the break of the after well-deck, and here he could see better, for all the lights of the Viroma were trained there. Quickly he looked round for a ladder or companionway, as quickly found it—a few charred sticks of wood lying on the steel deck eight feet below. A wooden companionway, completely destroyed by the fire. Nicolson turned swiftly to the carpenter.

“Ferris, get back to the boat and tell Ames and Docherty to work it aft as far as the well deck here. I don’t care how they do it, or how much damage is done to the boat—we can’t get sick and wounded men up here. Leave your crowbar.”

Nicolson had swung down on his hands and dropped lightly to the deck below before he had finished speaking. In ten paces he had crossed the deck, rung the haft of his axe hard against the steel door of the aftercastle.

“Anyone inside there?” he shouted.

For two or three seconds there was complete silence, then there came a confused, excited babble of voices, all calling to him at once. Nicolson turned quickly to McKinnon, saw his own smile reflected in the wide grin on the bo’sun’s face, stepped back a pace and played his torch over the steel door. One clip was hanging loose, swinging pendulum-like with the heavy, water-logged rolling of the Kerry Dancer, the other seven jammed hard in position.

The seven-pound sledgehammer was a toy in McKinnon’s hands. He struck seven times in all, once for each clip, the metallic clangs reverberating hollowly throughout the sinking ship. And then the door had swung open of its own accord and they were inside.

Nicolson flashed his torch over the back of the steel door and his mouth tightened: only one clip, the one that had been hanging loose, was continued through the door—the rest just ended in smooth rivet heads. And then he was facing aft again, the beam circling slowly round the aftercastle.

It was dark and cold, a dank, dripping dungeon of a place with no covering at all on the slippery steel deckplates, and barely enough headroom for a tall man to stand upright. Three-tiered metal bunks, innocent of either mattresses or blankets, were ranged round both sides, and about a foot or so above each bunk a heavy iron ring was welded to the bulkheads. A long, narrow table ran fore and aft the length of the compartment, with wooden stools on either side.

There were maybe twenty people in the room, Nicolson estimated; some sitting on the bottom bunks, one or two standing, hanging on to the uprights of the bunks to brace themselves, but most of them still lying down. Soldiers they were, those who were lying on the bunks, and some of them looked as if they would never get up again: Nicolson had seen too many dead men, the waxen cheek, the empty lustreless eye, the boneless relaxation that inhabits a shapeless bundle of clothes. There were also a few nurses in khaki skirts and belted tunics, and two or three civilians. Everyone, even the dusky skinned nurses, seemed white and strained and sick. The Kerry Dancer must have lain in the troughs since early afternoon, rolling wickedly, continuously, for endless hours.

“Who’s in charge here?” Nicolson’s voice beat back at him hollowly from the iron walls of the aftercastle.

“I think he is. Rather, I think he thinks he is.” Slim, short, very erect, with silver hair drawn back in a tight bun beneath a liberally be-skewered straw hat, the elderly lady by Nicolson’s side still had the fire of authority in the washed-out blue of her eyes. There was disgust in them now, too, as she pointed down at the man huddled over a half-empty whisky bottle on the table. “But he’s drunk, of course.”

“Drunk, madam? Did I hear you say I was drunk?” Here was one man who wasn’t pale and sick, Nicolson realised: face, neck, even the ears were burnt brick in colour, a dramatic background for the snow-white hair and bristling white eyebrows. “You have the effrontery to—to——” He rose spluttering to his feet, hands pulling down the jacket of his white linen suit. “By heaven, madam, if you were a man——”

“I know,” Nicolson interrupted. “You’d horsewhip her within an inch of her life. Shut up and sit down.” He turned to the woman again. “What is your name, please?”

“Miss Plenderleith. Constance Plenderleith.”

“The ship is sinking, Miss Plenderleith,” Nicolson said rapidly. “She’s lower by the head every minute. We’ll be on the rocks in about half an hour, and the typhoon is going to hit us again any moment.” Two or three torches were on now, and he looked round the silent half-circle of faces. “We must hurry. Most of you look like death, and I’m quite sure you feel that way, but we must hurry. We have a lifeboat waiting on the port side, not thirty feet away. Miss Plenderleith, how many can’t walk that far?”

“Ask Miss Drachmann. She’s the sister in charge.” Miss Plenderleith’s quite different tone left no doubt that she thoroughly approved of Miss Drachmann.

“Miss Drachmann?” Nicolson asked expectantly.

A girl in a faraway corner turned to look at him. Her face was in shadow. “Only two, I’m afraid, sir.” Beneath the overtones of strain, the voice was soft and low and musical.

“You’re afraid?”

“All the other stretcher cases died this evening,” she said quietly. “Five of them, sir. They were very sick—and the weather was very bad.” Her voice was not quite steady.

“Five of them,” Nicolson repeated. He shook his head slowly, wonderingly.

“Yes, sir.” Her arm tightened around the child standing on the seat beside her, while her free hand pulled a blanket more tightly round him. “And this little one is just very hungry and very tired.” Gently she tried to remove a grubby thumb from his mouth, but he resisted her efforts and continued to inspect Nicolson with a certain grave detachment.

“He’ll feed and sleep well tonight,” Nicolson promised. “Right, all those who can, walk into the boat. Fittest first—you can help steady the boat and guide the wounded into it. How many arm or leg wounds, apart from the stretcher cases, nurse?”

“Five, sir.”

“No need to call me ‘sir’. You five wait till there’s someone down there to help you.” He tapped the whisky-drinker on the shoulder. “You lead the way.”

“Me?” He was outraged. “I’m in charge here, sir—the captain, in effect, and a captain is always last to——”

“Lead the way,” Nicolson repeated patiently.

“Tell him who you are, Foster,” Miss Plenderleith suggested acidly.

“I certainly shall.” He was on his feet now, a black gladstone bag in one hand, the half-empty bottle in the other. “Farnholme is the name, sir. Brigadier Foster Farnholme.” He bowed ironically. “At your service, sir.”

“Delighted to hear it.” Nicolson smiled coldly. “On your way.” Behind him, Miss Plenderleith’s low chuckle of amusement came unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.

“By God, you shall pay for this, you insolent young——”

He broke off hurriedly and took a step backwards as Nicolson advanced on him. “Dammit all, sir,” he spluttered. “The traditions of the sea. Women and children first.”

“I know. Then we’ll all line up on the deck and die like little gentlemen while the band plays us under. I won’t tell you again, Farnholme.”

“Brigadier Farnholme to you—you——”

“You’ll get a seventeen gun salute as you go aboard,” Nicolson promised. His stiff-armed push sent Farnholme, still clutching his bag, reeling back into the arms of the expectant bo’sun. McKinnon had him outside in less than four seconds.

Nicolson’s torch probed round the aftercastle and came to rest on a cloaked figure sitting huddled on a bunk.

“How about you?” Nicolson asked. “You hurt?”

“Allah is good to those who love Allah.” The voice was deep, almost sepulchral, the dark eyes deepset above an eagle nose. He stood up, tall, dignified, pulling his black cap tightly over his head. “I am unhurt.”

“Good. You next, then.” Nicolson swivelled the torch round, picked out a corporal and two soldiers. “How do you boys feel?”

“Ach, we’re fine.” The thin, dark corporal withdrew his puzzled, suspicious stare from the doorway through which Farnholme had just vanished and grinned at Nicolson. It was a grin that belied the bloodshot eyes, the yellow, fever-ridden face. “Britain’s hardy sons. We’re just in splendid form.”

“You’re a liar,” Nicolson said pleasantly. “But thanks very much. Off you go. Mr. Vannier, will you see them into the boat, please? Have them jump every time the lifeboat rides up near the well-deck—it should come within a couple of feet. And a bowline round each person—just in case. The bo’sun will give you a hand.”

He waited until the broad, retreating back of the cloaked man had vanished through the door, then looked curiously at the little lady by his side. “Who’s the boy friend, Miss Plenderleith?”

“He’s a Muslim priest, from Borneo.” She pursed her lips in disapproval. “I spent four years in Borneo once. Every river bandit I ever heard of was a Muslim.”

“He should have a wealthy congregation,” Nicolson murmured. “Right, Miss Plenderleith, you next, then the nurses. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind staying a bit longer, Miss Drachmann? You can see to it that we don’t do too much damage to your stretcher cases when we start carrying them out.”

He turned without waiting for a reply and hurried through the door on the heels of the last of the nurses. On the well-deck he stood blinking for a few seconds, unaccustomed eyes adjusting themselves to the fierce glare of light from the Viroma that threw everything into harsh relief, a merciless whiteness broken by black, impenetrable blocks of shadow. The Viroma couldn’t be more than a hundred and fifty yards away: with seas like these, Captain Findhorn was gambling, and gambling high.

Less than ten minutes had elapsed since they had come on board, but the Kerry Dancer was already appreciably lower in the water; the seas were beginning to break over the starboard side of the after well-deck. The lifeboat was on the port side, one moment plunging a dozen feet down into the depths of a trough, the next riding up almost to the level of the well-deck rail, the men in the boat screwing shut their eyes and averting their heads as they were caught in the glare of the searchlights. Even as Nicolson watched, the corporal released his grip on the rail, stepped into the lifeboat, was grabbed by Docherty and Ames and dropped from sight like a stone. Already McKinnon had swung one of the nurses over the rail and was holding her in readiness for the next upward surge of the boat.

Nicolson stepped to the rail, switched on his torch and peered down over the side. The lifeboat was down in the trough, smashed jarringly into the side of the Kerry Dancer, despite all the crew could do to fend her off, as opposing seas flung the lifeboat and ship together: the two upper planks of the lifeboat were stove in and broken, but the gunwale of tough American elm still held. Fore and aft Farnholme and the Muslim priest clung desperately to the ropes that held them alongside, doing their best to keep the boat in position and to ease it against the shocks of the sea and the hull of the Kerry Dancer: as far as Nicolson could judge in the confusion and near darkness, their best was surprisingly good.

“Sir!” Vannier was by his side, his voice agitahed, his arm pointing out into the darkness. “We’re almost on the rocks!”

Nicolson straightened up and stared along the line of the pointing arm. The sheet-lightning was still playing around the horizon, but even in the intervals of darkness there was no difficulty in seeing it—a long, irregular line of seething white, blooming and fading, creaming and dying as the heavy seas broke over the outlying rocks of the coastline. Two hundred yards away now, Nicolson estimated, two fifty at the most, the Kerry Dancer had been drifting south at almost twice the speed he’d estimated. For a moment he stood there immobile, racing mind calculating his chances, then he staggered and almost fell as the Kerry Dancer struck heavily, with a grinding, tearing screech of metal, on an underground reef, the decks canting far over on the port side. Nicolson caught a glimpse of McKinnon, feet wide braced on the deck, an arm crooked tightly round the nurse outside the rail, bared teeth white and deepset eyes screwed almost shut as he twisted round and stared into the searchlight, and he knew that McKinnon was thinking the same thing as himself.

“Vannier!” Nicolson’s voice was quick, urgent. “Get the Aldis out of the boat. Signal the captain to stand well off, tell him it’s shoal ground, with rocks, and we’re fast. Ferris—take the bo’sun’s place. Heave ‘em in any old how. We’re pinned for’ard and if she slews round head into the sea we’ll never get anybody off. Right, McKinnon, come with me.”

He was back inside the aftercastle in five seconds, McKinnon close behind him. He swept his torch once, quickly, round the metal bunks. Eight left in all—the five walking wounded, Miss Drachmann and the two seriously injured men lying stretched out at full length on the lowest bunks. One was breathing stertorously through his open mouth, moaning and twisting from side to side in deep-drugged sleep. The other lay very still, his breathing so shallow as to be almost imperceptible, his face a waxen ivory: only the slow, aimless wandering of pain-filled eyes showed that he was still alive.

“Right, you five.” Nicolson gestured at the soldiers. “Outside as fast as you can. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He reached out, tore a knapsack from the hands of a soldier who was struggling to slip his arms through the straps, flung it into a corner. “You’ll be lucky to get out of this with your life, far less your damn luggage. Hurry up and get outside.”

Four of the soldiers, urged on by McKinnon, stumbled quickly through the door. The fifth—a pale-faced boy of about twenty—had made no move to rise from his seat. His eyes were wide, his mouth working continuously and his hands were clasped tightly in front of him. Nicolson bent over him.

“Did you hear what I said?” he asked softly.

“He’s my pal.” He didn’t look at Nicolson, gestured to one of the bunks behind him. “He’s my best friend. I’m staying with him.”

“My God!” Nicolson murmured. “What a time for heroics.” He raised his voice, nodded to the door. “Get going.”

The boy swore at him, softly, continuously, but broke off as a dull booming sound echoed and vibrated throughout the ship, the noise accompanied by a sharp, sickening lurch even farther to port.

“Water-tight bulkhead abaft the engine-room gone, I’m thinking, sir.” McKinnon’s soft-spoken Highland voice was calm, almost conversational.

“And she’s filling up aft,” Nicolson nodded. He wasted no further time. He stooped over the soldier, twisted his left hand in his shirt, jerked him savagely to his feet, then stiffened in sudden surprise as the nurse threw herself forward and caught his free right arm in both her hands. She was tall, taller than he had thought, her hair brushed his eyes and he could smell the faint fragrance of sandalwood. What caught and held his almost shocked attention, however, was her eyes—or, rather, her eye, for the beam from McKinnon’s torch lit up only the right hand side of her face. It was an eye of a colour and an intensity that he had seen only once before—in his own mirror. A clear Arctic blue, it was very Arctic right then, and hostile.

“Wait! Don’t hit him—there are other ways, you know.”

The voice was still the same, soft, well-modulated, but the earlier respect had given way to something edged with near-contempt. “You do not understand. He is not well.” She turned away from Nicolson and touched the boy lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, Alex. You must go, you know. I’ll look after your friend—you know I will. Please, Alex.”

The boy stirred uncertainly and looked over his shoulder at the man lying in the bunk behind him. The girl caught his hand, smiled at him and urged him gently to his feet. He muttered something, hesitated, then stumbled past Nicolson out on to the well-deck.

“Congratulations.” Nicolson nodded towards the open door. “You next, Miss Drachmann.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You heard me promise him—and you asked me to stay behind a little time ago.”

“That was then, not now,” Nicolson said impatiently. “We’ve no time to fool around with stretchers now—not with a slippery deck canted over at twenty degrees. Surely you can see that.”

She stood irresolute a moment, then nodded without speaking and turned round to grope in the shadowed darkness of a bunk behind her.

Nicolson said roughly, “Hurry up. Never mind your precious belongings. You heard what I said to that soldier.”

“Not my belongings,” she said quietly. She turned round and pulled a wrap more tightly round the sleeping child in her arms. “But very precious to someone, I’m sure.”

Nicolson stared at the child for a moment, then shook his head slightly. “Call me what you like, Miss Drachmann. I just plain forgot. And you can call that what you like—‘criminal negligence’ will do for a start.”

“Our lives are all with you.” The tone was no longer hostile. “You cannot think of everything.” She walked past him along the sharply sloping deck, propping herself against the line of bunks with her free hand. Again the faint smell of the sandalwood drifted past him, a scent so faint that it was just a fleeting memory lost in the dank airlessness of the aftercastle. Near the door she slipped and almost fell, and McKinnon put out his hand to help her. She took it without any hesitation, and they went out on deck together.

Within a minute both the seriously injured men had been brought out on deck, Nicolson carrying the one and McKinnon the other. The Kerry Dancer, already settling deep by the stern, was still pinned fast for’ard, working jerkily round with every pounding wave that smashed along its starboard length, the bows coming slowly, inexorably, head on to the seas. A minute at the most, Nicolson estimated, and the lifeboat would have lost the last of its shelter and would be exposed, head on, to the heavy combers shorter and steeper than ever as they raced in over the shoaling seabed. Already the lifeboat, now plunging, now rolling in short, vicious arcs, was corkscrewing almost uncontrollably in the quartering seas, shipping gallons of water at a time over the port gunwale. Not even a minute left, Nicolson felt sure. He jumped over the rail, waited for the bo’sun to hand him the first of the two injured men. Seconds only, just seconds, and any more embarkation would be quite impossible—the lifeboat would have to cast off to save itself. Seconds, and the devil of it was that they had to work with sick men, maybe even dying men, in almost total darkness: the Kerry Dancer was so far round now that her superstructure completely blocked off the searchlights of the Viroma.

Nicolson, leaning inboard against the slope of the deck, took the first man from McKinnon, waited until the bo’sun had hooked his fingers in his belt, twisted round and leaned far out as the lifeboat came surging up out of the darkness into the thin beam of Vannier’s torch. Docherty and Ames, each securely anchored by a couple of soldiers sitting on the side benches, rode up almost level with Nicolson—with the stern of the Kerry Dancer settling in the water the lifeboat was now riding comparatively higher—caught the wounded man neatly at the first attempt, had him lowered to the thwarts just as the lifeboat dropped from sight and fell heavily into the next trough in a welter of spray and phosphorescent foam. Only six or seven seconds later the other wounded man had joined his companion in the bottom of the boat. Inevitably their handling had been hurried, rough, and must have been agonising, but neither man had uttered even a whimper.

Nicolson called to Miss Drachmann, but she pushed forward two of the walking wounded: they jumped together, landed safely in the boat. One more soldier to come: even with all speed it was going to be touch and go, Nicolson thought grimly—the Kerry Dancer was far round into the sea already. But the last soldier didn’t come. In the darkness Nicolson couldn’t see him. but he could hear his voice, high-pitched and fearful, at least fifteen feet away. He could hear the nurse talking too, urgency in the soft, persuasive voice, but her arguments didn’t seem to be getting her anywhere.

“What the hell’s the matter there?” Nicolson shouted savagely.

There was a confused murmur of voices, and then the girl called, “Just a minute, please.”

Nicolson twisted round, looked for’ard along the port side of the Kerry Dancer, then flung up a forearm in instinctive defence as the searchlights of the Viroma cleared the slowly swinging superstructure of the Kerry Dancer and struck at his dark-accustomed eyes. The Kerry Dancer was right round now, heading straight into the seas, and the lifeboat with all protection gone. He could see the first of the steep-walled, spume-veined waves racing smoothly, silently, down the listing side of the ship, the next not far behind. How big they were Nicolson couldn’t tell: the searchlights, paralleling the surface of the sea, high-lit the broken white of the wave-tops but left the troughs in impenetrable blackness. But they were big enough, too big and too steep: half-a-dozen of these and the lifeboat would fill right up and overturn. At the very least they would flood the engine air intake, and then the results would be just as disastrous.

Nicolson wheeled round, vaulted over the rail, shouted at Vannier and Ferris to get into the lifeboat, called to McKinnon to cast off aft, and half-ran, half-stumbled up the heeling, slippery deck to where the girl and the soldier stood half-way between the aftercastle screen door and the ladder leading to the poop-deck above.

He wasted no time on ceremony but caught the girl by the shoulders, twisted her round and propelled her none too gently towards the ship’s side, turned round again, grabbed the soldier and started to drag him across the deck. The boy resisted and, as Nicolson sought for a better grip, struck out viciously, catching Nicolson squarely between the eyes. Nicolson stumbled and half fell on the wet, sloping deck, got to his feet again like a cat and jumped towards the soldier, then swore, softly, bitterly, as his swinging arm was caught and held from behind. Before he could free it the soldier had turned and flung himself up the poop ladder, his studded soles scrabbling frantically on the metal steps.

“You fool!” Nicolson said quietly. “You crazy little fool!” Roughly he freed his arm, made to speak again, saw the bo’sun, in sharp silhouette against the glare of the searchlight, beckoning frantically from where he stood outside the well-deck rail. Nicolson waited no longer. He turned the nurse round, hustled her across the deck, swung her across the rail. McKinnon caught her arm, stared down at the lifeboat two-thirds lost in the shrouded gloom of a trough and waited for his chance to jump. Just for a moment he looked round and Nicolson could tell from the anger and exasperation on his face that he knew what had happened.

“Do you need me, sir?”

“No.” Nicolson shook his head decisively. “The lifeboat’s more important.” He stared down at the boat as she came surging up sluggishly into the light, water from a high, breaking wave-crest cascading into her bows.” My God, McKinnon, she’s filling right up already! Get her away from here as fast as you can! I’ll cast off for’ard.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Mckinnon nodded matter-of-fact acknowledgment, judged his time perfectly, stepped off the side on to the mast thwart, taking the girl with him: ready hands caught and steadied them as the boat dropped down again into the darkness of a trough. A second later the for’ard rope went snaking down into the lifeboat, Nicolson bending over the rail and staring down after it.

“Everything all right, bo’sun?” he called.

“Aye, no bother, sir. I’m going under the stern, in the lee.”

Nicolson turned away without waiting to see what happened. The chances of a water-logged lifeboat broaching to in the initial moments of getting under way in those heavy seas were no better than even, but if McKinnon said everything was under control then everything was: and if he said he would heave to under the stern, he would be waiting there. Nicolson shared Captain Findhorn’s implicit faith in McKinnon’s initiative, reliability and outstanding seamanship.

He reached the top of the poop-deck ladder and stood there with his hand on the rail, looking slowly round him. Ahead was the superstructure, and in the distance, beyond it and on either side of it, stretched the long, lean shadow of the tanker, a dark smudge on the water, half-seen, half-imagined behind the white brilliance of its searchlights. But the lights, Nicolson suddenly realised, weren’t nearly as brilliant or intense as they had been, even ten minutes earlier. For a fleeting moment he thought that the Viroma must be standing out to sea, working her way clear of the shoal water, then almost instantly realised, from the size and unaltered fore-and-aft position of the vague silhouette, that it hadn’t moved at all. The ship hadn’t changed, the searchlights hadn’t changed—but the beams from the searchlights were no longer the same, they seemed to have lost their power, to be swallowed up, dissipated in the blackness of the sea. And there was something else, too—the sea was black, a darkness unrelieved by the slightest patch of white, by even one breaking whitecap on a wave: and then all of a sudden Nicolson had it—oil.

There could be no doubt about it—the sea between the two ships was covered in a wide, thick film of oil. The Viroma must have been pumping it overboard for the past five minutes or so—hundreds of gallons of it, enough to draw the teeth of all but the wildest storm. Captain Findhorn must have seen the Kerry Dancer swinging head on to the sea and quickly realised the danger of the lifeboat being swamped by inboard breaking seas. Nicolson smiled to himself, an empty smile, and turned away. Admitted the oil all but guaranteed the safety of the lifeboat, he still didn’t relish the prospect of having his eyes burnt, ears, nostrils and mouth clogged, and being fouled from head to foot when he went overboard in just a few seconds—he and young Alex, the soldier.

Nicolson walked easily aft across the poop-deck towards the stern. The soldier was standing there, pressed against the taffrail in a stiff, unnatural fashion, his back to it and his hands grasping the stanchions on either side. Nicolson went close up to him, saw the wide, fixed eyes, the trembling of a body that has been tensed far too long; a leap into the water with young Alex, Nicolson thought dryly, was an invitation to suicide, either by drowning or strangulation—terror lent inhuman strength and a grip that eased only with death. Nicolson sighed, looked over the taffrail and switched on the torch in his hand. McKinnon was exactly where he had said he would be, hove to in the lee of the stern, and not fifteen feet away.

The torch snapped off and quietly, without haste, Nicolson turned away from the rail and stood in front of the young soldier. Alex hadn’t moved, his breath came in short, shallow gasps. Nicolson transferred the torch to his left hand, lined it up, snapped it on, caught a brief glimpse of a white, strained face, bloodless lips drawn back over bared teeth and staring eyes that screwed tight shut as the light struck at them, then hit him once, accurately and very hard, under the corner of the jawbone. He caught the boy before he had started falling, heaved him over the taffrail, slid across himself, stood there for a second, sharply limned in a cone of light from a torch new lit in the boat—McKinnon had prudently bided his time until he had heard the sharp thud of the blow—crooked an arm round the young soldier’s waist and jumped. They hit the water within five feet of the boat, vanished almost silently beneath the oil-bound sea, surfaced, were caught at once by waiting hands and dragged inside the lifeboat, Nicolson cursing and coughing, trying to clear gummed-up eyes, nose and ears, the young soldier lying motionless along the starboard side bench, Vannier and Miss Drachmann working over him with strips torn from Vannier’s shirt.

The passage back to the Viroma was not dangerous, just very brief and very rough indeed, with almost all the passengers so seasick and so weak that they had to be helped out of the boat when they finally came alongside the tanker. Within fifteen minutes of his jump into the water with the young soldier Nicolson had the lifeboat safely heaved home on her housing on the patent gravity davits, the last of the gripes in position and had turned for a final look at the Kerry Dancer. But there was no sign of her anywhere, she had vanished as if she had never been; she had filled up, slid off the reef and gone to the bottom. For a moment or two Nicolson stood staring out over the dark waters, then turned to the ladder at his side and climbed slowly up to the bridge.

FIVE

Half an hour later the Viroma was rolling steadily to the south-west under maximum power, the long, low blur of Metsana falling away off the starboard quarter and vanishing into the gloom. Strangely, the typhoon still held off, the hurricane winds had not returned. It could only be that they were moving with the track of the storm: but they had to move out, to break through it sometime.

Nicolson, showered, violently scrubbed and almost free from oil, was standing by the screen window on the bridge, talking quietly to the second mate when Captain Findhorn joined them. He tapped Nicolson lightly on the shoulder.

“A word with you in my cabin, if you please, Mr. Nicolson. You’ll be all right, Mr. Barrett?”

“Yes, sir, of course. I’ll call you if anything happens?” It was half-question, half-statement, and thoroughly typical of Barrett. A good many years older than Nicolson, stolid and unimaginative, Barrett was reliable enough but had no taste at all for responsibility, which was why he was still only a second officer.

“Do that.” Findhorn led the way through the chartroom to his day cabin—it was on the same deck as the bridge—closed the door, checked that the blackout scuttles were shut, switched on the light and waved Nicolson to a settee. He stooped to open a cupboard, and when he stood up he had a couple of glasses and an unopened bottle of Standfast in his hand. He broke the seal, poured three fingers into each glass, and pushed one across to Nicolson.

“Help yourself to water, Johnny. Lord only knows you’ve earned it—and a few hours’ sleep. Just as soon as you leave here.”

“Delighted,” Nicolson murmured. “Just as soon as you wake up, I’ll be off to my bunk. You didn’t leave the bridge all last night. Remember?”

“All right, all right.” Findhorn held up a hand in mock defence. “We’ll argue later.” He drank some whisky, then looked thoughtfully at Nicolson over the rim of his glass. “Well, Johnny, what did you make of her?”

“The Kerry Dancer?”

Findhorn nodded, waiting.

“A slaver,” Nicolson said quietly. “Remember that Arabian steamer the Navy stopped off Ras al Hadd last year?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Identical, as near as makes no difference. Steel doors all over the shop, main and upper decks. Most of them could only be opened from one side. Eight-inch scuttles—where there were scuttles. Ring-bolts beside every bunk. Based on the islands, I suppose, and no lack of trade up round Amoy and Macao.”

“The twentieth century, eh?” Findhorn said softly. “Buying and selling in human lives.”

“Yes,” Nicolson said dryly. “But at least they keep ’em alive. Wait till they catch up with the civilised nations of the west and start on the wholesale stuff—poison gas, concentration camps, the bombing of open cities and what have you. Give ’em time. They’re only amateurs yet.”

“Cynicism, young man, cynicism.” Findhorn shook his head reprovingly. “Anyway, what you say about the Kerry Dancer bears out Brigadier Farnholme’s statements.”

“So you’ve been talking to his Lordship.” Nicolson grinned. “Court-martialling me at dawn tomorrow?”

“What’s that?”

“He didn’t approve of me,” Nicolson explained. “He wasn’t backward about saying so either.”

“Must have changed his mind.” Findhorn refilled their glasses. “‘Able young man that, very able, but—ah—impetuous.’ Something like that. Very pukka, the Tuan Besar to the life.”

Nicolson nodded. “I can just see him stuffed to the ears, stewed to the gills and snoring his head off in an armchair in the Bengal Club. But he’s a curious bird. Did a good job with a rope in the lifeboat. How phoney do you reckon he is?”

“Not much.” Findhorn considered for a moment. “A little, but not much. A retired army officer for a certainty. Probably upped himself a little bit in rank after his retirement.”

“And what the hell’s a man like that doing aboard the Kerry Dancer?” Nicolson asked curiously.

“All sorts of people are finding themselves with all sorts of strange bed-fellows these days,” Findhorn replied. “And you’re wrong about the Bengal Club, Johnny. He didn’t come from Singapore. He’s some sort of businessman in Borneo—he was a bit vague about the business—and he joined the Kerry Dancer in Banjermasin, along with a few other Europeans who found the Japanese making things a little too hot for them. She was supposed to be sailing for Bali, and they hoped to find another ship there that would take them to Darwin. But apparently Siran—that’s the name of the captain, and a thorough-going bad lot according to old Farnholme—got radio orders from his bosses in Macassar to proceed to Kota Bharu. Farnholme bribed him to go to Singapore, and he agreed. Why, heaven only knows, with the Japs more or less knocking at the gates, but there’s always opportunity for sufficiently unscrupulous men to exploit a situation such as exists there just now. Or maybe they expected to make a quick fortune by charging the earth for passages out of Singapore. What they didn’t expect, obviously, was what happened—that the Army should commandeer the Kerry Dancer.”

“Yes, the army,” Nicolson murmured. “I wonder what happened to the soldiers—McKinnon says there were at least two dozen—who went aboard to see that the Kerry Dancer did go straight to Darwin, and no funny tricks?”

“I wonder.” Findhorn was tight-lipped. “Farnholme says they were quartered in the fo’c’sle.”

“With one of these clever little doors that you can only open from one side, maybe?”

“Maybe. Did you see it?”

Nicolson shook his head. “The whole fo’c’sle was practically under water by the time we went aboard. I shouldn’t be surprised. But it could have been jammed by bomb burst.” He swallowed some more of the whisky and grimaced in distaste, not at the drink but at his thoughts. “A pleasant little alternative, drowning or cremation. I should like to meet Captain Siran some day. I suspect a great number of other people would too … How are the rest of our passengers? They got anything to add?”

Findhorn shook his head. “Nothing. Too sick, too tired, too shocked or they just don’t know anything.”

“All sorted out, washed up and bedded down for the night, I suppose?”

“More or less. I’ve got them all over the ship. All the soldiers are together, aft—the two really sick boys in the hospital, the other eight in the smoke-room and the two spare engineers’ cabins on the port side. Farnholme and the priest are together in the engineers’ office.”

Nicolson grinned. “That should be worth seeing—the British Raj breathing the same air as the dusky heathen!”

“You’d be surprised,” Findhorn grunted. “They have a settee each there, a table between them and a bottle of whisky, almost full, on the table. They’re getting along very well indeed.”

“He had a half bottle when I saw him last,” Nicolson said thoughtfully. “I wonder——”

“Probably drank it without coming up for air once. He’s lugging around a great big gladstone bag and if you ask me it’s full of nothing but whisky bottles.”

“And the rest?”

“The what? Oh, yes. The little old lady’s in Walter’s room—he’s taken a mattress into his radio room. The senior nurse, the one that seems to be in charge——”

“Miss Drachmann?”

“That’s her. She and the child are in the apprentices’ cabin. And Vannier and the Fifth engineer have doubled up with Barrett and the fourth engineer—two nurses in Vannier’s cabin and the last of them in the Fifth’s.”

“All accounted for.” Nicolson sighed, lit a cigarette and watched the blue smoke drift lazily up to the ceiling. “I only hope they haven’t exchanged the frying pan for the fire. We having another go at the Carimata Straits, sir?”

“Why not? Where else can we——”

He broke off as Nicolson stretched out for the ringing telephone and put it to his ear.

“Yes, captain’s cabin … Oh, it’s you, Willy … Yes, he’s here. Hang on a minute.” Nicolson rose easily to his feet, vacating his seat for the captain. “The second engineer, sir.”

Findhorn talked for perhaps half a minute, mostly in monosyllabic grunts. Nicolson wondered idly what Willoughby had wanted. He had sounded almost bored but then nobody had ever seen Willoughby excited about anything. Ernest Willoughby never found anything in life worth getting excited about. A crazy, dreaming old coot—he was the oldest man in the ship—with a passion for literature matched only by his utter contempt for engines and the means whereby he earned his livelihood, he was the most honest man, and the most completely unselfish, that Nicolson had ever met. Willoughby himself took no pride in this, and was probably unaware of it: he was a man who had little, but wanted nothing at all. With him Nicolson had little in common, superficially at any rate: but, almost as if by the attraction of opposites, he had formed the greatest liking and admiration for the old engineer, and Willoughby, unmarried and with only a threadbare bed-sitting-room in the company club in Singapore, had spent a good few evenings in his home. Caroline, he remembered, had thought the world of old Willy and had usually made a point of seeing that the best meals and the longest, coolest drinks were always waiting for the old engineer. Nicolson stared down at his glass, and his mouth twisted in bitter memory … Suddenly he became aware that Captain Findhorn was on his feet, looking down at him with a peculiar expression on his face.

“What’s the matter, Johnny? You feel all right?”

“Just wandering, sir.” Nicolson smiled and waved a hand at the whisky bottle. “A great help, this, when you’re taking a walk around in your mind.”

“Help yourself: take another walk round.” Findhorn picked up his hat and turned for the door. “Wait here for me, will you? I have to go below.”

Two minutes after the captain had gone the phone rang again. It was Findhorn speaking, asking Nicolson to come below to the dining-saloon. He gave no reason. On his way below Nicolson met the fourth officer coming out of the wireless operator’s cabin. Vannier was looking neither happy nor pleased. Nicolson looked at him, an eyebrow raised in interrogation, and Vannier glanced back at the wireless operator’s door, his expression a nice mixture of indignation and apprehension.

“That old battleaxe in there is in full cry, sir.” He kept his voice low.

“The what?”

“Miss Plenderleith,” Vannier explained. “She’s in Walter’s cabin. I was just dropping off to sleep when she started hammering on the bulkhead between us, and when I ignored that she went out to the passage and started calling.” Vannier paused, then went on feelingly: “She has a very loud voice, sir.”

“What did she want?”

“The captain.” Vannier shook his head incredulously.

“‘Young man, I want to see the captain. At once. Tell him to come here.’ Then she pushed me out the door. What will I do, sir?”

“Exactly what she asks, of course.” Nicolson grinned. “I want to be there when you tell him. He’s below in the saloon.”

They dropped down one deck and went into the dining-saloon together. It was a big room, with two fore-and-aft tables with seating for twenty. But it was almost empty now: there were only three people there and they were all standing.

The captain and the second engineer stood side by side, facing aft, giving easily with the rolling of the ship. Findhorn, immaculately correct in uniform as always, was smiling. So was Willoughby, but there all resemblance between the two men ended. Tall, stooped, with a brown, wrinkled face and a thick, unkempt shock of grey hair, Willoughby was a tailor’s nightmare. He wore a white shirt—what had originally been a white shirt—unpressed, buttonless and frayed at the collar and half-sleeves, a pair of khaki duck trousers, wrinkled like an elephant’s legs and far too short for him, diamond-patterned plaid socks and unlaced canvas shoes. He hadn’t had a shave that day, he probably hadn’t had a shave that week.

Half-standing, half-leaning against the buffet table, the girl was facing them, hands gripping the edge of the table to steady herself. Nicolson and Vannier could see only her profile as they went in, but they could see that she, too, was smiling, the righthand corner of her mouth curving up and dimpling the olive-tinted peach of her cheek. She had a straight nose, very finely chiselled, a wide smooth forehead, and long, silky hair gathered in a deep roll round her neck, hair black with that intense blackness that reflects blue under the strong sun and gleams like a raven’s wing. With her hair, complexion and rather high cheekbones, she was a typical Eurasian beauty: but after a long, long look—and all men would always give Miss Drachmann a long, long look—she was neither typical nor Eurasian: the face was not broad enough, the features were too delicate and those incredible eyes spoke only of the far north of Europe. They were as Nicolson had first seen them in the harsh light of his torch aboard the Kerry Dancer—an intense, startling blue, very clear, very compelling, the most remarkable features in a remarkable face. And round and beneath these eyes, just then, were the faint, blue smudges of exhaustion.

She had got rid of her hat and belted bush-jacket, Nicolson saw. She wore only her stained khaki skirt and a clean white shirt, several sizes too large for her, with the sleeves rolled far up the slender arms. Vannier’s shirt, Nicolson felt sure. He had sat beside her all the way back in the lifeboat, talking in a low voice and most solicitous for her welfare. Nicolson smiled to himself, sought back in his memory for the days when he too had been an impressionable young Raleigh with a cloak always ready to hand, a knight-errant for any lady in distress. But he couldn’t remember the days: there probably hadn’t been any.

Nicolson ushered Vannier into the room ahead of him—Findhorn’s reactions to Miss Plenderleith’s request would be worth watching—closed the door softly behind him, turned round and checked himself just in time to stop from bumping into Vannier, who had halted suddenly and was standing motionless, rigid, not three feet from the door, his clenched fists by his side.

All three had fallen silent and turned to the door as Nicolson and Vannier had come in. Vannier had no eyes for Findhorn and Willoughby—he was staring at the nurse, his eyes widening, his lips parting in shock. Miss Drachmann had turned so that the lamplight fell full on the left hand side of her face, and that side of her face was not pretty. A great, long, jagged scar, still raw and livid and puckering up the cheek where it had been roughly, clumsily stitched, ran the whole length of her face from the hairline of the temple to the corner of the soft, round chin. Near the top, just above the cheekbone, it was half an inch wide. On anyone’s face it would have looked ghastly: on the smooth loveliness of hers it had the unreality of a caricature, the shocking impact of the most impious blasphemy.

She looked at Vannier in silence for a few seconds, then she smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was enough to dimple one cheek and to whiten the scar on the other, at the corner of the mouth and behind the eye. She reached up her left hand and touched her cheek lightly.

“I’m afraid it’s really not very nice, is it?” she asked. There was neither reproach nor condemnation in her voice: it was apologetic, rather, and touched with a queer kind of pity, but the pity was not for herself.

Vannier said nothing. His face had turned a shade paler, but when she spoke the colour returned and began to flood all over his neck and face. He looked away—one could almost see the sheer physical effort it cost him to pull his eyes off that hideous scar—and opened his mouth to speak. But he said nothing; perhaps there was nothing he could say.

Nicolson walked quickly past him, nodded to Willoughby and stopped in front of the girl. Captain Findhorn was watching him closely, but Nicolson was unaware of it.

“Good evening, Miss Drachmann.” His tone was cool but friendly. “All your patients nice and comfortable?” If you want banal remarks, he thought, Nicolson’s your man.

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir’,” he said irritably. “I’ve told you that once already.” He lifted his hand and gently touched the scarred cheek. She didn’t flinch, there was no movement at all but for a momentary widening of the blue eyes in the expressionless face. “Our little yellow brothers, I take it?” His voice was as gentle as his hand.

“Yes,” she nodded. “I was caught near Kota Bharu.”

“A bayonet?”

“Yes.”

“One of these notched, ceremonial bayonets, wasn’t it?” He looked closely at the scar, saw the narrow deep incision on the chin and the rough tear beneath the temple. “And you were lying on the ground at the time?”

“You are very clever,” she said slowly.

“How did you get away?” Nicolson asked curiously. “A big man came into the room—a bungalow we were using as a field hospital. A very big man with red hair—he said he was an Argyll, some word like that. He took the bayonet away from the man who had stabbed me. He asked me to look away, and when I turned back the Japanese soldier was lying on the floor, dead.”

“Hooray for the Argylls,” Nicolson murmured. “Who stitched it up for you?”

“The same man: he said he wasn’t very good.”

“There was room for improvement,” Nicolson admitted. “There still is.”

“It’s horrible!” Her voice rose sharply on the last word. “I know it’s horrible.” She looked down at the floor for some seconds, then looked up at Nicolson again and tried to smile. It wasn’t a very happy smile. “It’s hardly an improvement, is it?”

“It all depends.” Nicolson jerked a thumb at the second engineer. “On Willy here it would look good: he’s just an old sourpuss anyway. But you’re a woman.” He paused for a moment, looked at her consideringly and went on in a quiet voice: “You’re more than good-looking, I suppose —Miss Drachmann, you’re beautiful, and on you it looks bloody awful, if you’ll excuse my saying so. You’ll have to go to England,” he finished abruptly.

“England?” The high cheekbones were stained with colour. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, England. I am pretty sure that there are no plastic surgeons in this part of the world who are skilled enough. But there are two or three men in England—I don’t think there are any more—who could repair that scar and leave you with a hairline so fine that even a dancing partner wouldn’t notice it.” Nicolson waved a deprecating hand. “A little bit of powder and the old war-paint, naturally.”

She looked at him in silence, her clear blue eyes empty of expression, then said in a quiet, flat voice: “You forget that I am a nurse myself. I am afraid I don’t believe you.”

“‘Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know’,” Willoughby intoned.

“What? What did you say?” The girl looked startled.

“Pay no attention to him, Miss Drachmann.” Captain Findhorn took a step towards her, smiling. “Mr. Willoughby would have us think that he is always ready with apt quotations, but Mr. Nicolson and I know better—he makes them up as he goes along.”

“‘Be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny’.” Willoughby shook his head sadly.

“Thou shalt not,” Findhorn agreed. “But he’s right, Miss Drachmann, in that you shouldn’t be quite so ready with your disbelief. Mr. Nicolson knows what he’s talking about. Only three men in England, he said—and one of them is his uncle.” He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “But I didn’t bring you here to discuss surgery or to give me the pleasure of refereeing a slanging match. Mr. Nicolson, we appear to have run out of——”

He broke off abruptly, fists clenching tightly by his sides, as the klaxon above his head blared into sudden, urgent life, drowning his words as the raucous clangour, a harsh, discordant, shocking sound in a confined space, filled the dining-cabin. Two longs and a short, two longs and a short—the emergency action stations call. Nicolson was first out of the room, Findhorn only a pace behind him.

To the north and east thunder rumbled dully along the distant horizon, sheet-lightning flickered intermittently all round the Rhio straits, on the inner vortex of the typhoon, and, overhead, the half-seen clouds were beginning to pile up, rampart upon rampart, the first huge, tentative raindrops spattering on the wheelhouse top of the Viroma, so heavily, so slowly, that each single one could be heard and counted. But to the south and west there was no rain, no thunder, just an occasional flash of lightning over the islands, half-seen, half-imagined, far off and feeble flickers that left the darkness more impenetrable than before.

But not quite impenetrable. For the fifth time in two minutes the watchers on the bridge of the Viroma, elbows braced against the wind-dodger and night-glasses held hard and motionless against their straining eyes, caught the same signal winking out of the darkness to the south-west—a series of flashes, about a half-dozen in all, very weak and not lasting more than ten seconds altogether. “Starboard 25 this time,” Nicolson murmured, “and opening. I would say it’s stationary in the water, sir.”

“As near as makes no difference.” Findhorn lowered his binoculars, rubbed aching eyes with the back of his hand, and raised the glasses again, waiting. “Let’s hear you thinking aloud, Mr. Nicolson.”

Nicolson grinned in the darkness. Findhorn might have been sitting in the front parlour of his bungalow at home instead of where he was, in the eye of a typhoon, not knowing which way it would break, with a million pounds and fifty lives in his hand and a new, unknown danger looming up in the darkness.

“Anything to oblige, sir.” He lowered his own binoculars and stared out thoughtfully into the darkness. “It might be a lighthouse, buoy or beacon, but it’s not: there are none hereabouts, and none I know of anywhere that have that sequence. It might be wreckers—the gentlemen of Romney, Rye and Penzance had nothing on the lads out here—but it’s not: the nearest island is at least six miles to the south-west and that light’s not more than two miles off.”

Findhorn walked to the wheelhouse door, called for half speed, then came back beside Nicolson. “Go on,” he said.

“It might be a Jap warship—destroyer, or something, but again it’s not: only suicide cases like ourselves sit out in the middle of a typhoon instead of running for shelter—and, besides, any sensible destroyer commander would sit quiet until he could give us the benefit of his searchlights at minimum range.”

Findhorn nodded. “My own way of thinking exactly. Anything you think it might be? Look, there he goes again!”

“Yes, and still nearer. He’s stationary, all right … Could be a sub, hears us as something big on his hydrophones, not sure of our course and speed and wants us to answer and give him a line of sight for his tin fish.”

“You don’t sound very convinced.”

“I’m not convinced one way or the other, sir. I’m just not worried. On a night like this any sub will be jumping so much that it couldn’t hit the Queen Mary at a hundred feet.”

“I agree. It’s probably what would be obvious to anyone without our suspicious minds. Someone’s adrift—open boat or raft—and needs help, badly. But no chances. Get on the intercom to all guns, tell them to line up on that light and keep their fingers on their triggers. And get Vannier to come up here. Ring down for dead slow.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Nicolson went inside the wheelhouse and Findhorn again raised his night glasses to his eyes, then grunted in irritation as someone jogged his elbow. He lowered his glasses, half-turned and knew who it was before the man spoke. Even in the open air the fumes of whisky were almost overpowering.

“What the devil’s happening, Captain?” Farnholme was irate, peevish. “What’s all the fuss about? That damn’ great klaxon of yours just about blasted my ears off.”

“I’m sorry about that, Brigadier.” Findhorn’s tone was even polite and disinterested. “Our emergency signal. We’ve sighted a suspicious light. It may be trouble.” His voice changed, subtly. “And I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave. No one is allowed on the bridge without permission. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Farnholme’s tone was that of a man being asked to comprehend the incomprehensible. “Surely you can’t expect that to apply to me?”

“I do. I’m sorry.” The rain was beginning to fall now, faster and faster, the big fat drops drumming so heavily on his shoulders that he could feel the weight of them through his oilskins: yet another soaking was inevitable, and he didn’t relish the prospect. “You will have to go below, Brigadier.”

Farnholme, strangely, did not protest. He did not even speak, but turned abruptly on his heel and vanished into the darkness. Findhorn felt almost certain that he hadn’t gone below, but was standing in the darkness at the back of the wheelhouse. Not that it mattered: there was plenty of room on the bridge, it was just that Findhorn didn’t want anyone hanging over his shoulder when he had to move fast and make fast decisions.

Even as Findhorn lifted his glasses the light came on again, nearer, this time, much nearer, but fainter: the battery in that torch was dying, but it was more than strong enough to let them see the message being flashed: not the steady series of flashes of the last few times, but an unmistakable S.O.S., three shorts, three longs, three shorts, the universal distress signal at sea.

“You sent for me, sir?”

Findhorn lowered his glasses and looked round. “Ah, it’s you, Vannier. Sorry to drag you out into this damned deluge, but I want a fast hand on the signal lamp. See that signal just now?”

“Yes, sir. Someone in trouble, I take it?”

“I hope so,” Findhorn said grimly. “Get the Aldis out, ask him who he is.” He looked round as the screen door opened. “Mr. Nicolson?”

“Yes, sir. Ready as we can be, sir. Everybody lined up with their guns, and everybody so damned edgy after the last few days that I’m only afraid that someone may fire too soon. And I’ve got the bo’sun rigging up a couple of floodlamps, starboard side, number three tank, and a couple of A.B.s—all we can spare from the guns—getting a scrambling net out over the side.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nicolson. You think of everything. How about the weather?”

“Wet,” Nicolson said morosely. He pulled the towel more tightly round his neck, listened to the clack of the Aldis trigger and watched the beam lancing its way whitely through the sheeting rain. “Wet and stormy—going to be very soon. What’s happening and where it’s going to hit us I haven’t a clue. I think Buys Ballot’s law and the book on tropical storms are about as useful to us here as a match in hell.”

“You’re not the only one,” Findhorn confessed. “We’ve been an hour and fifteen minutes now in the centre of this storm. I was in one, about ten years ago, for twenty-five minutes, and I thought that was a record.” He shook his head slowly, scattering raindrops. “It’s crazy. We’re six months too early—or too late—for a real hurricane. Anyway, it’s not bad enough for that, not for a real force twelve job. But it’s far out of season and a complete freak in these waters at any season, and that must be throwing the book of rules out of kilter. I’m certain that we’re at the point of recurvature of the storm, and I’m almost certain that it will break north-east, but whether we’ll find ourselves in the dangerous quadrant or——” He broke off abruptly and stared at the tiny pinpoint of yellowing light winking mistily through the pouring rain. “Something about sinking. What else does he say, Walters?”

“‘Van Effen, sinking’. That’s all, sir—at least I think it was that. Bad morse. The Van Effen.”

“Oh, lord, my lucky night.” Again Findhorn shook his head. “Another Kerry Dancer. The Van Effen. Who ever heard of the Van Effen? You, Mr. Nicolson?”

“Never.” Nicolson turned and shouted through the screen door. “Are you there, Second?”

“Sir?” The voice came from the darkness, only feet away.

“The Register, quickly. The Van Effen. Two words, Dutch. Fast as you can.”

“Van Effen? Did I hear someone say ‘Van Effen’?” There was no mistaking the clipped Sandhurst drawl, this time with an overtone of excitement in it. Farnholme’s tall shadow detached itself from the gloom at the back of the wheelhouse.

“That’s right. Know any ship by that name?”

“It’s not a ship, man—it’s a friend of mine, Van Effen, a Dutchman. He was on the Kerry Dancer—joined her with me at Banjermasin. He must have got away on her boat after we’d been set on fire—there was only one boat, as far as I can remember.” Farnholme had pushed his way through the screen door now and was out on the wing of the bridge, peering excitedly over the canvas dodger, oblivious to the rain thumping down on his unprotected back. “Pick him up, man, pick him up!”

“How do we know it’s not a trap?” The captain’s relaxed, matter-of-fact voice came like a cold douche after Farnholme’s impatient vehemence. “Maybe it is this man, Van Effen, maybe it isn’t. Even if it is, how do we know that we can trust him?”

“How do you know?” Farnholme’s tone was that of a man with a tight hold, a very tight hold on himself. “Listen. I’ve just been talking to that young man in there, Vannier or whatever his name is——”

“Get to the point, please,” Findhorn interrupted coldly. “That boat—if it is a boat—is only a couple of hundred yards away now.”

“Will you listen?” Farnholme almost shouted the words, then went on more quietly. “Why do you think I’m standing here alive? Why do you think these nurses are alive, these wounded soldiers you took off the Kerry Dancer only an hour ago? Why do you think all of us you picked up, with the exception of Miss Plenderleith and the priest, are alive? For one reason only—when the captain of the Kerry Dancer was scuttling out of Singapore to save his own skin a man stuck a pistol in his back and forced him to return to Singapore. That man was Van Effen, and he’s out in that boat now: we all owe our lives to Van Effen, Captain Findhorn.”

“Thank you, Brigadier.” Findhorn was calm, unhurried as ever. “Mr. Nicolson, the searchlight. Have the bo’sun switch on the two floods when I give the word. Slow astern.”

The searchlight beam stabbed out through the darkness and lit up a heavy, rolling sea churned milky white by the torrential rain. For a moment or two the searchlight stayed stationary, the almost solid curtain of rain sheeting palely through its beam, then started to probe forward and almost immediately picked it up—a lifeboat very close to hand, riding on its sea-anchor and plunging violently up and down as it rode the short, steep seas that swept down upon it. But the waves in the heart of a tropical storm have little set pattern, and every so often a twisting cross sea would curve over and break in-board. There were seven or eight men in the boat, stooping and straightening, stooping and straightening as they baled for their lives—a losing struggle, for she was already deep in the water, settling by the minute. One man alone seemed indifferent: he was sitting in the sternsheets, facing the tanker, a forearm across his eyes to ward off the glare of the searchlight. Just above the forearm something white gleamed in the light, a cap, perhaps, but at that distance it was difficult to be sure.

Nicolson dropped down the bridge ladder, ran quickly past the lifeboat, down another ladder to the fore and aft gangway, along to a third ladder that led down to the top of number three tank, and picked his way surely round valves and over the maze of discharge lines, gas lines and steam smothering pipes until he came to the starboard side: Farnholme followed close behind all the way. Just as Nicolson put his hands on the guardrail and leaned out and over, the two floodlights switched on together.

Twelve thousand tons and only a single screw, but Findhorn was handling the big ship, even in those heavy seas, like a destroyer. The lifeboat was less than forty yards away now, already caught in the pool of light from the floods, and coming closer every moment, and the men in the boat, safely into the lee of the Viroma, had stopped baling and were twisted round in their seats, staring up at the men on deck, and making ready to jump for the scrambling net. Nicolson looked closely at the man in the sternsheets: he could see now that it was no cap that the man was wearing on his head but a rough bandage, stained and saturated with blood: and then he saw something else, too, the stiff and unnatural position of the right arm.

Nicolson turned to Farnholme and pointed to the man in the sternsheets. “That your friend sitting at the back there?”

“That’s Van Effen all right,” Farnholme said with satisfaction “What did I tell you?”

“You were right.” Nilcolson paused, then went on: “He seems to have a one-track mind in some things.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that he’s still got a gun in his hand. He’s got it lined up on his pals in front, and he hasn’t taken his eyes off them once while I’ve been watching.”

Farnholme stared, then whistled softly. “You’re dead right, he has.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I really can’t guess at all. But you can take it from me, Mr. Nicolson, that if my friend Van Effen thinks it necessary to have a gun on them, then he has an excellent reason for it.”

Van Effen had. Leaning against a bulkhead in the dining-saloon, a large whisky in his hand and the water pooling from his soaking clothes on to the corticene at his feet, he told it all quickly, concisely and convincingly. Their lifeboat had been fitted with an engine, had carried them quickly clear of the Kerry Dancer after she had gone on fire and they had managed to reach the shelter of a small island miles away to the south just as the storm broke. They had pulled the boat up on to the shingle on the lee side, huddling there for hours until the wind had suddenly dropped: it was shortly afterwards that they had seen the rockets going up to the northwest.

“Those were ours,” Findhorn nodded. “So you decided to make a break for us?”

“I did.” A wintry smile touched the Dutchman’s steady brown eyes as he gestured towards the group of men, dark-eyed and swarthy-skinned, standing huddled in one corner. “Siran and his little friends weren’t keen. They’re not exactly pro-Allied and they knew there weren’t any Jap ships in these waters. Besides, for all we knew these were distress rockets from a sinking ship.” Van Effen downed the rest of his whisky at a gulp and laid the glass carefully on the table beside him. “But I had the gun.”

“So I saw.” It was Nicolson speaking. “And then?”

“We took off, towards the north-west. We ran into a long stretch of confused water, not too rough, and made good time. Then heavy seas hit us and flooded the engine. We just had to sit there and I thought we were finished till I saw your phosphorescence—you can see it a long way off on a night as black as this. If the rain had come five minutes earlier we would never have seen you. But we did, and I had my torch.”

“And your gun,” Findhorn finished. He looked at Van Effen for a long time, his eyes speculative and cold. “It’s a great pity you didn’t use it earlier, Mr. Van Effen.”

The Dutchman smiled wryly. “It is not difficult to follow your meaning, Captain.” He reached up, grimaced, tore the blood-stained strip of linen from his head: a deep gash, purple-bruised round the edges, ran from the corner of his forehead to his ear. “How do you think I got this?”

“It’s not pretty,” Nicolson admitted. “Siran?”

“One of his men. The Kerry Dancer was on fire, the boat—it was the only boat—was out on the falls and Siran here and all that were left of his crew were ready to pile into it.”

“Just their sweet little selves,” Nicolson interrupted grimly.

“Just their sweet little selves,” Van Effen acknowledged. “I had Siran by the throat, bent back over the rail, going to force him to go through the ship. That was a mistake—I should have used my gun. I didn’t know then that all his men were—what is the phrase?—tarred with the same brush. It must have been a belaying pin. I woke up in the bottom of the boat.”

“You what?” Findhorn was incredulous.

“I know.” Van Effen smiled, a little tiredly. “It doesn’t make any kind of sense at all, does it? They should have left me to fry. But there I was—not only alive, but with my head all nicely tied up. Curious, is it not, Captain?”

“Curious is hardly the word.” Findhorn’s voice was flat, without inflection. “You are telling the truth, Mr. Van Effen? A silly question, I suppose—whether you are or not, you’d still say ‘yes’.”

“He is, Captain Findhorn.” Farnholme’s voice sounded oddly confident and, for that moment, not at all like the voice of Brigadier Farnholme. “I am perfectly certain of that.”

“You are?” Findhorn turned to look at him, as had everyone, caught by something peculiar in Farnholme’s tone. “What makes you so sure, Brigadier?”

Farnholme waved a deprecating hand, like a man who finds himself being taken more seriously than he intended. “After all, I know Van Effen better than anybody here. And his story has to be true: if it weren’t true, he wouldn’t be here now. Something of an Irishism, gentlemen, but perhaps you follow?”

Findhorn nodded thoughtfully but made no comment. There was silence for some time in the dining-saloon, a silence broken only by the distant crash of bows in a trough in the seas, the indefinable creaking noises a ship makes when it works with the waves in heavy weather, and the shuffling of the feet of the crew of the Kerry Dancer. Then Findhorn looked at his watch and turned to Nicolson.

“The bridge for us, Mr. Nicolson, I suggest: from the feel of things we’re running into the heavy stuff again. For Captain Siran and his crew, an armed guard for the remainder of the night, I think.” Findhorn’s eyes were as bleak and cold as his voice. “But there’s one little point I’d like to clear up first.”

He walked unhurriedly towards the crew of the Kerry Dancer, balancing himself easily against the heavy rolling of the ship, then halted as Van Effen stretched out his hand.

“I’d watch them if I were you,” the Dutchman said quietly. “Half of them carry more than one knife and they’re not slow with them.”

“You have a gun.” Findhorn put out his hand and took the automatic which Van Effen had stuck in his waistband. “May I?” He glanced down at the weapon, saw that the safety catch was still on. “A Colt .38.”

“You know guns, yes?”

“A little.” Soft-footed, Findhorn walked across to the nearest man in the group in the corner. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a brown, smooth, expressionless face: he looked as if he had got out of the habit of using expressions a long time ago. He wore a hairline moustache, black sideburns that reached three inches below his ears, and he had black, empty eyes. “You are Siran?” Findhorn asked, almost indifferently.

“Captain Siran. At your service.” The insolence lay in the faint emphasis on the ‘captain,’ the millimetric inclination of the head. The face remained quite expressionless.

“Formalities bore me.” Findhorn was looking at him with sudden interest. “You are English, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.” This time the lips curled, less in a smile than in a token of lazy contempt, perfectly done. “Anglo-Saxon, shall we say?”

“It doesn’t matter. You are the captain—were the captain—of the Kerry Dancer. You abandoned your ship—and abandoned all the people that you left behind to die, locked behind steel doors. Maybe they drowned, maybe they were burnt to death: it doesn’t make any difference now. You left them to die.”

“Such melodramatics!” Siran lazily patted a yawn to extinction, a masterpiece of weary insolence. “You forget the traditions of the sea. We did all in our power for those unfortunates.”

Findhorn nodded slowly and turned away, looking over Siran’s six companions. None of them seemed at all happy, but one—a thin-faced man with a cast in one eye—was especially nervous and apprehensive. He shuffled his feet constantly and his hands and fingers seemed to have an independent life of their own. Findhorn walked across and stood in front of him.

“Do you speak English?”

There was no answer, just a furrowing of brows, the raising of shoulders and outspread palms in the universal gesture of incomprehension. “You picked well, Captain Findhorn,” Van Effen drawled slowly. “He speaks English almost as well as you do.”

Findhorn brought the automatic up quickly, placed it against the man’s mouth and pushed, none too lightly. The man gave way and Findhorn followed. The second step backward brought the man against the bulkhead, palms of his outstretched hands pressing hard against the wall, his one good eye staring down in terror at the gun that touched his teeth.

“Who hammered shut all the clips on the poop-deck door?” Findhorn asked softly. “I’ll give you five seconds.” He pressed more heavily on the gun and the sudden click of the safety catch snicking off was unnaturally loud in the strained silence. “One, two——”

“I did, I did!” His mouth was working and he was almost gibbering with fear. “I closed the door.”

“On whose orders?”

“The captain. He said that——”

“Who shut the fo’c’sle door?”

“Yussif. But Yussif died——”

“On whose orders?” Findhorn asked relentlessly.

“Captain Siran’s orders.” The man was looking at Siran now, sick fear in his eye. “I’ll die for this.”

“Probably,” Findhorn said carelessly. He pushed the gun into his pocket and walked across to Siran. “Interesting little talk, wasn’t it, Captain Siran?”

“The man’s a fool,” Siran said contemptuously. “Any terrified man will say anything with a gun in his face.”

“There were British soldiers—probably your own countrymen—in the fo’c’sle. A score, maybe two dozen, I don’t know, but you couldn’t have them cluttering up your getaway in the only boat.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Siran’s brown face was still the same, still without expression. But his voice was wary now, the calculated insolence gone.

“And there were over twenty people in the aftercastle.”

Siran might not have spoken for all the attention Findhorn paid to him, “Wounded men, dying men, women—and one little child.”

This time Siran said nothing. The smooth face was impassive as ever, but his eyes had narrowed, just perceptibly. When he spoke, however, his voice still held its insolent indifference.

“And just what do you hope to achieve by all this stupid rigmarole, Captain Findhorn?”

“I hope for nothing.” Findhorn’s lined face was grim, the faded eyes bleak and relentless. “It’s not a question of hope, Siran, but of certainty—the certainty of your conviction for murder. In the morning we shall take independent statements from all the members of your own crew and have them signed in the presence of neutral witnesses from my crew. I shall make it my personal responsibility to see to it that you arrive in Australia safely and in good health.” Findhorn picked up his hat and prepared to leave. “You will have a fair trial, Captain Siran, but it shouldn’t last long, and the penalty for murder, of course, is known to us all.”

For the first time, Siran’s mask of impassivity cracked and the faintest shadow of fear touched the dark eyes, but Findhorn wasn’t there to see it. He was already gone, climbing up the companionway to the shrieking bridge of the Viroma.

SIX

Dawn, a cloudless, windless dawn with a lightening eastern sky mother-of-pearl in its opalescent beauty, found the Viroma far to the south-eastwards of the Rhio channel, twenty miles due north of the Rifleman Rock and almost half-way towards the Carimata Straits. The big tanker was travelling under full power, a wisp of hazed blue drifting aft from its funnel, the after-decks shaking in teeth-rattling vibration as Carradale, the chief engineer, pushed the big engine to its limit, and then a little beyond.

The typhoon of that long night was gone, the great winds had vanished as if they had never been. But for the salt-stained decks and upper-works and the long, heaving swell that would not die away for many hours yet, it might all have been a dream. But it had been no dream while it had lasted: a nightmare, perhaps, but no dream, not with Captain Findhorn driving the lurching, staggering tanker through the great quartering seas and cyclonic winds for hour upon endless hour, with no thought for the grievous punishment the Viroma was taking, with no thought for the comfort and welfare of passengers and crew, with no thought for anything but to put as many miles as possible between himself and Singapore before the day broke and the enemy could see them again.

The delicately-hued pastel shades to the east faded and whitened and vanished, all in a matter of minutes, and the big blurred silhouette of the sun climbed swiftly above the horizon, stretching out a broad, shimmering band of dazzling white across the sea, between itself and the Viroma. Not quite an unbroken band, however: something lay in the water, miles away, a big fishing-boat perhaps, or a small coaster, hull down, black as midnight against the rising sun and steaming steadily east, soon diminished to a little black speck in the distance and then nothing at all. Captain Findhorn, on the bridge with Barrett, watched and wondered until it was gone. Perhaps it had seen them, perhaps not. Perhaps it was Japanese, or pro-Japanese, perhaps not. Perhaps it carried a radio, perhaps it didn’t. There was nothing they could do about it anyway.

The sun, as it always does in the open sea, seemed to rise straight up into the sky. By half-past seven it was already hot, hot enough to dry out the rain and sea-soaked decks and upperworks of the Viroma, hot enough for Findhorn to hang up his oilskins and move far out on to the wing of the bridge to bask in its heat and draw in great lungfuls of the fresh morning air—it wouldn’t, he knew, be fresh much longer. Findhorn himself felt fresh enough, if a little tired in his bones: about half-way through the middle watch, when the teeth of the typhoon had lost their edge, Nicolson had persuaded him to go to his cabin and he had slept like a dead man for over three hours.

“Good morning, sir. Quite a change this, isn’t it?” Nicolson’s soft voice, directly behind him, jerked Findhorn out of his reverie. He turned round.

“Morning, Johnny. What are you doing up at this unearthly hour?” Nicolson, Findhorn knew, couldn’t have had much more than a couple of hours’ sleep, but he had the rested look of a man with at least eight solid hours behind him. Not for the first time Findhorn had to remind himself that, where durability and resilience were concerned, John Nicolson was a man apart.

“Unearthly hour?” Nicolson glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eight o’clock.” He grinned. “Conscience and the calls of duty, sir. I’ve just been making a quick round of our non-paying guests.”

“No complaints?” Findhorn asked humorously.

“I gather that most of them were a bit under the weather during the night, but otherwise no complaints.”

“And those who might have know a damn sight better than to make them,” Findhorn nodded. “How are the sick nurses?”

“The two Chinese girls and the elderly ones are much better. A couple of them were down in the hospital and smoke-room when I was there, changing bandages. All five of the soldiers there were in fine form and hungry as hunters.”

“An excellent sign,” Findhorn interrupted dryly. “How about the two boys in the hospital?”

“Holding their own, the nurses say. I think that they suffer a good deal of pain, which is more than our worthy Brigadier and his pal are doing. You can hear ’em snoring twenty feet away and the engineers’ office smells like a distillery.”

“And Miss Plenderleith?”

“Taking her constitutional, of course. From one end of the fore and aft gangway to the other. The English cherish the delusion that they are a nautical race: Miss Plenderleith is enjoying herself thoroughly. And then there are three soldiers in the dining-saloon—Corporal Fraser and his two men. They’ve got a chair apiece, and they’re all sitting very comfortably with their. 3O3s and Brens cradled in their hands. I think they’re praying for Siran or one of his men to take an extra deep breath so that they can have a cast-iron excuse for shooting a lot of big holes through them. Siran and his pals know exactly how these boys are feeling about them; they’re only taking very small breaths indeed and blinking one eye at a time.”

“I tend to share your confidence in the guards.” Findhorn looked sideways at his chief officer, a quizzical expression on his face. “And how is our worthy Captain Siran looking this morning? A trifle worse of the wear, you would say?”

“Not he. Anyone can see that he’s slept the deep, untroubled sleep of a man with the conscience of a new-born child.” Nicolson stared out to sea for a few moments, then said quietly: “I’d appreciate the opportunity of giving the hangman any assistance he may require.”

“You’d probably be one of the last in a long queue,” Findhorn said grimly. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic, Johnny, but I think the man’s an inhuman fiend and should be shot down the same way as you’d destroy a mad dog.”

“It’ll probably come to that one of these days.” Nicolson shook his head. “Mad or not, he’s queer enough.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s English, or three parts English, I’ll bet my last penny. He’s come up through one of the big public schools, and it’s an odds-on guess that he’s had a damn sight more education than I ever had. What’s a man like that doing in charge of a miniature hell-ship like the Kerry Dancer?”

Findhorn shrugged. “Lord knows. I could give you a dozen explanations, all different and with only one thing in common—they’d all be wrong. You’ll find half the dead-beats and black sheep of the world within a couple of hundred miles of Singapore—but he wouldn’t come in either category, so that still doesn’t answer your question. Frankly, I’m at a loss.” Findhorn drummed his fingers on the dodger rail. “He baffles me, but, by Harry, he’s not the only one!”

“Van Effen? Our worthy Brigadier?”

“Among others.” Findhorn shook his head. “Our passengers are a strange bunch, but not half as strange as the way they act. Take the Brigadier and this Muslim priest. They’re thick as thieves. Unusual, you might say?”

“Incredible. The doors of the Bengal and Singapore Clubs would be for ever shut against him. Not done, in capital letters.” Nicolson grinned. “Think of the shock and the fearful mortality rate if it were known—in the upper military circles, I mean: all the best bars in the East littered with apoplectic cases, sundowners still clutched in their stiffening hands. Brigadier Farnholme is carrying a fearful responsibility.”

Findhorn smiled faintly. “And you still think he’s not a phoney?”

“No, sir—neither do you. Colonel Blimp, Grade A—then he does or says something offbeat, completely out of character. He just doesn’t classify easily. Inconsiderate of him, very.”

“Very,” Findhorn murmured dryly. “Then there’s his other pal, Van Effen. Why the devil should Siran show such tender concern for his health?”

“It’s difficult,” Nicolson admitted. “Especially when Van Effen didn’t show much concern for his, what with threatening to blow holes in his spine and trying to throttle him. But I’m inclined to believe Van Effen. I like him.”

“I believe him, too. But Farnholme just doesn’t believe him—he knows Van Effen is telling the truth—and when I ask him why he backwaters at high speed and advances piffling reasons that wouldn’t convince a five year old.” Findhorn sighed wearily. “Just about as puerile and unconvincing as the reasons Miss Plenderleith gave me for wanting to see me when I went to her cabin just after you and Siran had finished your—ah—discussion.”

“So you went after all?” Nicolson smiled. “I’m sorry I missed that.”

“You knew?”

“Vannier told me. I practically had to drag him to the saloon to get him to give you her message. What did she say?”

“First of all she denied having sent for me at all, then gave me some nonsense about when would we arrive in port and could she send a cable to her sister in England, just something fabricated on the spur of the moment, obviously. She’s worried about something and I think she was going to tell me what it was, then changed her mind.” Captain Findhorn shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the problem. “Did you know that Miss Plenderleith came from Borneo too? She’s been headmistress in a girls’ school there and hung on to the last minute.”

“I know. We had a long conversation on the catwalk this morning. Called me ‘young man’ all the time and made me wonder whether I had washed behind the ears.” Nicolson looked speculatively at the captain. “Just to add to your worries, I’ll tell you something else you don’t know. Miss Plenderleith had a visitor, a gentleman friend, in her cabin last night.”

“What! Did she tell you this?”

“Good lord, no. Walters told me. He was just stretching out on his settee after coming off watch last night when he heard a knock on Miss Plenderleith’s door—pretty soft, but he heard it: his settee in the wireless office is right up against the bulkhead of his cabin. Walters says he was curious enough to listen at the communicating door, but it was shut tight and he couldn’t hear much, it was all very whispery and conspiratorial. But one of the voices was very deep, a man’s murmur for certain. He was there almost ten minutes, then he left.”

“Midnight assignations in Miss Plenderleith’s cabin!” Findhorn still hadn’t recovered from his astonishment. “I would have thought she would have screamed her head off.”

“Not her!” Nicolson grinned and shook his head positively. “She’s a pillar of respectability, all right, but any midnight visitor would have been hauled in, lectured over the old girl’s wagging forefinger and sent on his way a chastened man, bent on leading a better life. But this was no lecture, I gather, but a very hush-hush discussion.”

“Walters any idea who it was?”

“None at all—just that it was a man’s voice and that he himself was too damn tired and sleepy to worry about it anyway.”

“Yes. Maybe he has the right idea at that.” Findhorn took off his cap and mopped his dark head with a handkerchief: only eight o’clock, but already the sun was beginning to burn. “We’ve more to do than worry about them anyway. I just can’t figure them out. They’re a strange bunch—each one I talk to seems queerer than the last.”

“Including Miss Drachmann?” Nicolson suggested. “Good heavens, no! I’d trade the bunch of them for that girl.” Findhorn replaced his cap and shook his head slowly, his eyes distant. “A shocking case, Johnny—what a ghastly mess those diabolical little butchers made of her face.” His eyes came into focus again, and he looked sharply at Nicolson. “How much of what you told her last night was true?”

“About what the surgeons could do for her, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Not much. I don’t know a great deal, but that scar will have stretched and set long before anyone can do anything about it. They can still do something, of course—but they’re not miracle workers: none of them claims to be.”

“Then damn it all, mister, you’d no right to give her the impression they are.” Findhorn was as near anger as his phlegmatic nature would allow. “My God, think of the disillusionment!”

“Eat, drink and be merry,” Nicolson quoted softly. “Do you think you’ll ever see England again, sir?”

Findhorn looked at him for a long moment, craggy brows drawn deep over his eyes, then nodded in slow understanding and turned away. “Funny how we keep thinking in terms of peace and normality,” he murmured. “Sorry, boy, sorry. Yet I’ve been thinking about nothing else since the sun came up. Young Peter, the nurses, everyon—mostly the child and that girl, I don’t know why.” He was silent for a few moments, eyes quartering the cloudless horizon, then added with only apparent inconsequence: “It’s a lovely day, Johnny.”

“It’s a lovely day to die,” Nicolson said sombrely. Then he caught the captain’s eye and smiled, briefly. “It’s a long time waiting, but the Japanese are polite little gentlemen—ask Miss Drachmann: they always have been polite little gentlemen: I don’t think they’ll keep us waiting much longer.”

But the Japanese did keep them waiting. They kept them waiting a long, long time. Not long, perhaps, as the world reckons seconds and minutes and hours, but when men, despairing men too long on the rack of suspense, momentarily await and expect the inevitable, then the seconds and the minutes and the hours lose any significance as absolute units of time and, instead, become relative only to the razor-edged expectancy of the passing moment, to the ever-present anticipation of what must inexorably come. And so the seconds crawled by and became minutes, and the minutes stretched themselves out interminably and lengthened into an hour, and then another hour, and still the skies were empty and the line of the shimmering horizon remained smooth and still and unbroken. Why the enemy—and Findhorn knew hundreds of ships and planes must be scouring the seas for them—held off so long was quite beyond his understanding: he could only hazard the guess that they must have swept that area the previous afternoon after they had turned back to the aid of the Kerry Dancer and were now searching the seas farther to the south. Or perhaps they thought the Viroma had been lost in the typhoon—and even as that explanation crossed his mind Findhorn dismissed it as wishful thinking and knew that the Japanese would think nothing of the kind. … Whatever the reason, the Viroma was still alone, still rolling south-eastwards in a vast expanse of empty sea and sky. Another hour passed, and then another and it was high noon, a blazing, burning sun riding almost vertically overhead in the oven of the sky and for the first time Captain Findhorn was allowing himself the luxury of the first tentative stirrings of hope: the Carimata Straits and darkness and the Java Sea and they might dare begin to think of home again. The sun rolled over its zenith, noon passed, and the minutes crept on again, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, each minute dragging longer and longer as hope began to rise once more. And then, at twenty-four minutes past noon, hope had turned to dust and the long wait was over.

A gunner on the fo’c’sle saw it first—a tiny black speck far to the south-west, materialising out of the heat haze, high above the horizon. For a few seconds it seemed to remain there, stationary in the sky, a black, meaningless dot suspended in the air, and then, almost all at once, it was no longer tiny but visibly swelling in size with every breath the watchers took, and no longer meaningless, but taking shape, hardening in definition through the shimmering haze until the outline of fuselage and wings could be clearly seen, so clearly as to be unmistakable. A Japanese Zero fighter, probably fitted with long-range tanks, and even as the watchers on the Viroma recognised it the muted thunder of the aero engine came at them across the stillness of the sea.

The Zero droned in steadily, losing height by the second and heading straight for them. It seemed at first as if the pilot intended flying straight across the Viroma, but, less than a mile away, he banked sharply to starboard and started to circle the ship at a height of about five hundred feet. He made no move to attack, and not a gun fired aboard the Viroma. Captain Findhorn’s orders to his gunners had been explicit—no firing except in self-defence: their ammunition was limited and they had to conserve it for the inevitable bombers. Besides, there was always the chance that the pilot might be deceived by the newly-painted name of Siyushu Maru and the large flag of the Rising Sun which had taken the place of Resistencia and the flag of the Argentine Republic a couple of days previously—about one chance in ten thousand, Findhorn thought grimly. The brazen effrontery and the sheer unexpectedness that had carried the Viroma thus far had outlived their usefulness.

For almost ten minutes the Zero continued to circle the Viroma, never much more than half a mile away, banking steeply most of the time. Then two more ’planes—Zero fighters also—droned up from the south-west and joined the first. Twice all three of them circled the ship, then the first pilot broke formation and made two fore-and-aft runs, less than a hundred yards away, the canopy of his cockpit pushed right back so that the watchers on the bridge could see his face—or what little of it was visible behind helmet, goggles on forehead and transmitter mouthpiece—as the pilot took in every detail of the ship. Then he banked away sharply and rejoined the others: within seconds they were in line ahead formation, dipping their wings in mocking salute and heading north-west, climbing steadily all the time.

Nicolson let go his breath in a long, soundless sigh and turned to Findhorn. “That bloke will never know how lucky he is.” He jerked his thumb upwards towards the Hotchkiss emplacements. “Even our pop-gun merchants up top could have chewed him into little bits.”

“I know, I know.” His back against the dodger screen, Findhorn stared bleakly after the disappearing fighters. “And what good would it have done? Just wasted valuable ammunition, that’s all. He wasn’t doing us any harm—all the harm he could do he’d done long before he came anywhere near us. Our description, right down to the last rivet, our position, course and speed—his command H.Q. got that over the radio long before he came anywhere near us.” Findhorn lowered his glasses and turned round heavily. “We can’t do anything about our description and position, but we can about our course. 200, Mr. Nicolson, if you please. We’ll try for the Macclesfield Channel.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Nicolson hesitated. “Think it’ll make any difference, sir?”

“None whatsoever.” Findhorn’s voice was just a little weary. “Somewhere within two hundred and fifty miles from here laden bombers—altitude bombers, dive-bombers, torpedo bombers—are already taking off from Japanese airfields. Scores of them. Prestige is vital. If we escaped, Japan would be the laughing-stock of their precious Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and they can’t afford to lose anybody’s confidence.” Findhorn looked directly at Nicolson, his eyes quiet and sad and remote. “I’m sorry, Johnny, sorry for little Peter and the girl and all the rest of them. They’ll get us all right. They got the Prince of Wales and the Repulse: they’ll massacre us. They’ll be here in just over an hour.”

“So why alter course, sir?”

“So why do anything. Give us another ten minutes, perhaps, before they locate us. A gesture, my boy—empty, I know, but still a gesture. Even the lamb turns and runs before the wolf-pack tears him to pieces.” Findhorn paused a moment, then smiled. “And speaking of lambs, Johnny, you might go below and drive our little flock into the fold.”

Ten minutes later Nicolson was back on the bridge. Findhorn looked at him expectantly.

“All safely corralled, Mr. Nicolson?”

“Afraid not, sir.” Nicolson touched the three golden bars on his epaulets. “The soldiers of today are singularly unimpressed by authority. Hear anything, sir?”

Findhorn looked at him in puzzlement, listened, then nodded his head. “Footsteps. Sounds like a regiment up above.”

Nicolson nodded. “Corporal Fraser and his two merry men. When I told them to get into the pantry and stay there the corporal asked me to raffle myself. His feelings were hurt, I think. They can muster three rifles and a sub-machine-gun between them, and I suspect they’ll be ten times as effective as the two characters with the Hotchkisses up there.”

“And the rest?”

“Same story with the other soldiers—off with their guns right aft. No heroics anywhere—all four of them just kind of grim and thoughtful. Just kids. The sick men are still in the hospital—too sick to be moved. Safe there as anywhere, I suppose: there’s a couple of nurses with them.”

“Four of them?” Findhorn frowned. “But I thought——”

“There were five,” Nicolson acknowledged. “Fifth’s a shell-shock case, I imagine. Alex something—don’t know his name. He’s useless—nerves shot to ribbons. I dragged him along to join the others in the pantry.

“All the others accounted for. Old Farnholme wasn’t too keen on leaving the engineers’ office but when I pointed out that the pantry was the only compartment in the superstructure that didn’t open to the outside, that it had steel instead of the usual wooden bulkheads, and that it had a couple of protective bulkheads fore and aft and three on either side he was over there like a shot.”

Findhorn’s mouth twisted. “Our gallant army. Colonel Blimp to the ramparts, but not when the guns start firing. A bad taste in the mouth, Johnny, and quite out of character. The saving grace of the Blimps of this world is that they don’t know what fear is.”

“Neither does Farnholme.” Nicolson was positive. “I’d take very long odds on that. But I think he’s worried about something, badly worried.” Nicolson shook his head. “He’s a queer old bird, sir, and he’s some very personal reason for taking shelter: but it’s got nothing to do with saving his own skin.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Findhorn shrugged. “I don’t see that it matters anyway, not now. Van Effen with him?”

“In the dining-saloon. He thought Siran and his pals might pick an awkward time to start trouble. He has his gun on them. They won’t start anything.” Nicolson smiled faintly.

“Van Effen strikes me as a very competent gentleman indeed.”

“You left Siran and his men in the saloon?” Findhorn pursed his lips. “Our suicide parlour. Wide open to fore-and-aft strafing attacks and a cannon shell wouldn’t even notice the shuttering on these windows.” It was more a question than statement, and Findhorn matched it with his look, half-quizzical, half-expectant, but Nicolson merely shrugged his shoulders and turned away, the cold blue eyes lost in indifference and quartering the sun-hazed horizon to the north.

The Japanese returned at twelve minutes past two o’clock in the afternoon, and they came in force. Three or four planes would have been enough: the Japanese sent fifty. There were no delays, no tentative skirmishing, no preliminary altitude bombing, just the long curving sweep to the south-west and then that single, shattering attack out of the sun, a calculated, precision-engineered attack of dovetailing torpedo-bombers, dive-bombers and Zeros, an attack the skill of whose execution was surpassed only by its single-minded savagery and ferocity. From the moment that the first Zero swept in at deck level, shells from its twin cannon smashing into the bridge, until the last torpedo-bomber lifted and banked away from the concussive blast of its own detonating torpedo, only three minutes passed. But they were three minutes that transformed the Viroma from the finest, most modern tanker of the Anglo-Arabian fleet, from twelve thousand tons of flawless steel with all the guns on deck chattering their puny defiance at the incoming enemy, to a battered, blazing, smoke-enshrouded shambles with all the guns fallen silent, the engines gone and nearly all the crew dying or already dead. Massacre, ruthless, inhuman massacre with but one saving grace—the merciless fury of the attack tempered only by its merciful speed.

Massacre, but massacre aimed not at the ship primarily, but at the men who manned the ship. The Japanese, obviously flying under strict orders, had executed these, and brilliantly. They had concentrated their attacks on the engine-room, bridge, fo’c’sle and gun positions, the first of these suffering grievously: two torpedoes and at least a dozen bombs had entered the machinery space and the decks above: half the stern was blown away and in the after part of the ship there were no survivors at all. Of all the gunners, only two survived—Jenkins, an able seaman who had manned a fo’c’sle gun, and Corporal Fraser. Perhaps Corporal Fraser would not be a survivor for long: half his already crippled left arm had been shot away and he was too weak, too shocked, to make more than a token attempt to stem the welling arterial blood.

On the bridge, crouched flat on the floor behind the armoured steel bulkheads of the wheelhouse, half-stunned with the blast and concussion of exploding cannon shells, both Findhorn and Nicolson dimly realised the significance of the plan of attack, the reason for the overwhelming weight of bombers used in the onslaught and the heavy escort of Zero fighters. They realised, too, why the bridge remained miraculously immune from bombs, why no torpedo had as yet smashed into any of the oil cargo tanks—a target impossible to miss—and torn the heart out of the Viroma. The Japanese weren’t trying to destroy the Viroma: they were trying to save the Viroma and to destroy the crew. What matter if they blew the stern off the ship—her nine great oil tanks, still intact, and the fo’c’sle had enough reserve buoyancy to keep the ship afloat: awash, perhaps, but still afloat. And if they could ensure that none of the Viroma’s crew lived to blow up or scuttle the shattered ship, ten thousand tons of oil would be theirs for the taking: millions of gallons of high grade fuel for their ships and tanks and planes.

And then, quite suddenly, the almost continuous roar and teeth-chattering vibration of bursting bombs and torpedoes were at an end, the off-beat drone of heavy bomber engines faded quickly in the distance and the abrupt, comparative silence was almost as hurting to the ear as the clamour that had just ended. Wearily Nicolson shook his head to clear it of the shock and sound and smoke and choking dust, levered himself groggily to his hands and knees, caught the handle of the screen door and pulled himself to his feet, then dropped to the deck like a stone as cannon shells whistled evilly through the smashed windows just above his head and exploded against the chartroom bulkhead, filling the wheelhouse with the shocking blast of sound and a lethal storm of splintered steel.

For a few seconds Nicolson remained prone on the deck, face down with his hands over his ears and his cradling forearms protecting his head, half-dazed and cursing himself silently for his precipitate, unthinking folly in rising so quickly to his feet. He should have known better than to imagine for a moment that the entire Japanese assault force would withdraw. It had been inevitable that they would leave some planes behind to take care of any survivor who might move out on deck and try to rob them of their prize—and these planes, Zero fighters, would remain to the limit of their long range tanks.

Slowly, this time, moving with infinite caution, Nicolson rose to his feet again and peered out over the jagged glass in the bottom of the shattered window frame. Puzzled for a moment, he tried to orientate himself and the ship, then realised from the black bar of shadow from the foremast what had happened. A torpedo must have blown off or jammed the rudder, for the Viroma, losing way rapidly in the water until she was now almost stopped, had swung right round through a hundred and eighty degrees and was facing in the direction she had come. And then, almost at the same time, Nicolson saw something else again, something that made the position of the Viroma of no importance at all, something that made a mockery of the vigil of the planes watching and waiting in the sky.

It hadn’t been miscalculation on the part of the bomber pilots, just ignorance. When they had attacked the fo’c’sle, destroying guns and gunners and using armour piercing cannon shells to penetrate the fo’c’sle deck and kill any of the crew members sheltering beneath, it must have been a reasonable supposition to them that that was all they were doing. But what they did not know, what they could have had no means of knowing, was that the storage space beneath the fo’c’sle deck, the ’tween-deck cargo hold beneath that and the even larger hold beneath that were not empty. They were full, completely, filled to capacity with hundreds of closely stacked barrels, with tens of thousands of gallons of high-octane aircraft fuel—petrol intended for the shattered, burnt-out wrecks that now littered the Selengar airfield.

The flames rose a hundred, two hundred feet into the still, breathless air, a great, solid column so white, so intensely hot and free from smoke that it was all but invisible in the bright glare of the afternoon sun, not flames really but a broad shimmering band of super-heated air that narrowed as it climbed and ended in a twisting, wavering point that reached far up beyond the tip of the foremast and died in a feathery wisp of pale blue smoke. Every now and then another barrel would explode deep in the hold and, just for a moment, a gout of thick smoke would lace the almost invisible flame and then, as quickly, it would be gone. And the fire, Nicolson knew, was only starting. When the flames really got hold, when the barrels started bursting by the dozen, the aviation spirit in the for’ard fuel tank, number nine, would go up like an exploding ammunition dump. The heat of the flames already fierce on his forehead, he stared at the fo’c’sle a few moments longer, trying to estimate how much time they had left. But it was impossible to know, impossible even to guess. Perhaps only two minutes, perhaps as long as twenty—after two years of war the toughness of tankers, their reluctance to die, had become almost legendary … But certainly not more than twenty minutes.

Nicolson’s attention was suddenly caught by something moving among the maze of pipes on the deck, just aft of the foremast. It was a man, dressed only in a pair of tattered blue denims, stumbling and falling as he made his way towards a ladder that led up to the catwalk. He seemed dazed and kept rubbing his forearm across his eyes, as if he couldn’t see too well, but he managed to reach the foot of the ladder, drag himself to the top and began, at a lurching run, to make his way along the catwalk to the bridge superstructure. Nicolson could see him clearly now—Able Seaman Jenkins, trainer of the fo’c’sle pompom. And someone else had seen him too and Nicolson had time only for a desperate shout of warning before he flung himself to the deck and listened, with clenched fists, to the hammerblows of exploding cannon shells as the Zero pulled out of its short, sudden dive and raked the foredeck from fo’c’sle to bridge.

This time Nicolson didn’t get to his feet. Getting to his feet inside that wheelhouse, he realised, was a good way of committing suicide. There could be only one good reason for getting to his feet, and that was to see how Jenkins was. But he didn’t have to look to know how Jenkins was. Jenkins should have bided his time and chosen his chance for making his dash, but perhaps he had been too dazed: or perhaps the only alternative he’d had was between running and being killed, and staying and being incinerated.

Nicolson shook his head to clear away the fumes and smell of cordite, pushed himself to a sitting position and looked round the scarred and shattered wheelhouse. There were four people in it apart from himself—and there had only been three a moment ago. McKinnon, the bo’sun, had just arrived, just as the last shells had exploded inside the bridge. He was half-crouched, half-lying across the threshold of the chartroom door, propped on one elbow and looking cautiously around him. He was unhurt, but taking no chances before moving any further.

“Keep your head down!” Nicolson advised him urgently. “Don’t stand up or you’ll get it blown off.” Even to himself his voice sounded hoarse and whispery and unreal.

Evans, the duty quartermaster, was sitting on his duckboard grill, his back to the wheel and swearing softly, fluently, continuously in his high-pitched Welsh voice. Blood dripped from a long gash on his forehead on to his knees, but he ignored it and concentrated on wrapping a makeshift bandage round his left forearm. How badly the arm was gashed Nicolson couldn’t tell: but every fresh strip of ragged white linen torn from his shirt became bright red and saturated the moment it touched his arm.

Vannier was lying against the deck in the far corner. Nicolson crawled across the deck and lifted his head, gently. The fourth officer had a cut and bruised temple, but seemed otherwise unharmed: he was quite unconscious, but breathing quietly and evenly. Carefully, Nicolson lowered his head to the deck and turned to look at Findhorn. The captain was sitting watching him on the other side of the bridge, back against the bulkhead, palms and splayed fingers resting on the deck beside him. The old man looks a bit pale, Nicolson thought: he’s not a kid any longer, not fit for it, especially this kind of fun and games. He gestured at Vannier.

“Just knocked out, sir. He’s as lucky as the rest of us—all alive, if not exactly kicking.” Nicolson made his voice sound more cheerful than he felt. Even as he stopped speaking he saw Findhorn bending forward to get up, his fingernails whitening as he put pressure on his hands. “Easy does it, sir!” Nicolson called out sharply. “Stay where you are. There are some characters snooping around outside just begging for a sight of you.”

Findhorn nodded and relaxed, leaning back against the bulkhead. He said nothing. Nicholson looked at him sharply. “You all right, sir?”

Findhorn nodded again and made to speak. But no words came, only a strange gravelly cough and suddenly his lips were flecked with bright bubbles of blood, blood that trickled down his chin and dripped slowly on to the fresh, white crispness of his tunic shirt. Nicolson was on his feet in a moment, crossed the wheelhouse in a stumbling run and fell on his knees in front of the captain.

Findhorn smiled at him and tried to speak, but again there was only the bubbling cough and more blood at his mouth, bright arterial blood that contrasted pitifully with the whiteness of the lips. His eyes were sick and glazed.

Quickly, urgently, Nicolson searched body and head for evidence of a wound. At first he could see nothing, then all at once he had it—he’d mistaken it for one of the drops of blood soaking into Findhorn’s shirt. But this was no blood-drip, but a hole—a small, insignificant looking hole, quite circular and reddening at the edges. That was Nicolson’s first shocked reaction—how small a hole it was, and how harmless. Almost in the centre of the captain’s chest, but not quite. It was perhaps an inch or so to the left of the breastbone and two inches above the heart.

SEVEN

Gently, carefully, Nicolson caught the captain by the shoulders, eased his back off the bulkhead and turned to look for the bo’sun. But McKinnon was already kneeling by his side, and one glance at McKinnon’s studiously expressionless face told Nicolson that the stain on the captain’s shirt-front must be spreading. Quickly, without any word from Nicolson, McKinnon had his knife out and the back of the captain’s shirt slit open in one neat movement, then he closed the knife, caught the edges of the cut cloth in his hands and ripped the shirt apart. For a moment he scanned the captain’s back, then he closed the tear together, looked up at Nicolson and shook his head. As carefully as before Nicolson eased the captain back against the bulkhead.

“No success, gentlemen, eh?” Findhorn’s voice was only a husky, strained murmur, a fight against the blood welling up in his throat.

“It’s bad enough, not all that bad though.” Nicolson picked his words with care. “Does it hurt much, sir?”

“No.” Findhorn closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Please answer my question. Did it go right through?”

Nicolson’s voice was detached, almost clinical. “No, sir. Must have nicked the lung, I think, and lodged in the ribs at the back. We’ll have to dig for it, sir.”

“Thank you.” ‘Nicked’ was a flagrant meiosis and only a fully equipped hospital theatre could hope to cope with surgery within the chest wall, but if Findhorn appreciated these things he gave no sign by either tone or expression. He coughed painfully, then tried to smile. “The excavations will have to wait. How is the ship, Mr. Nicolson?”

“Going,” Nicolson said bluntly. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You can see the flames, sir. Fifteen minutes if we’re lucky. Permission to go below, sir?”

“Of course, of course! What am I thinking of?” Findhorn struggled to rise to his feet, but McKinnon held him down, talking to him in his soft Highland voice, looking at Nicolson for guidance. But the guidance came not from Nicolson but in the shape of a crescendoing roar of an aircraft engine, the triphammer thudding of aircraft cannon and a shell that screamed through the smashed window above their heads and blasted the top of the chartroom door off its hinges. Findhorn ceased to struggle and leaned back tiredly against the bulkhead, looking up at McKinnon and half smiling. Then he turned to speak to Nicolson, but Nicolson was already gone, the chartroom door half closing behind him, swinging crazily on its shattered hinges.

Nicolson dropped down the centre ladder, turned for’ard and went in the starboard door of the dining-saloon. Van Effen was sitting on the deck by the door as he went in, his gun in his hand, unhurt. He looked up as the door opened.

“A great deal of noise indeed, Mr. Nicolson. Finished?”

“More, or less. I’m afraid the ship is. Still two or three Zeros outside, looking for the last drop of blood. Any trouble?”

“With them?” Van Effen waved a contemptuous pistol barrel at the crew of the Kerry Dancer: five of them lay huddled fearfully on the deck at the foot of the for’ard settees, two more were prostrate under the tables. “Too worried about their own precious skins.”

“Anyone hurt?”

Van Effen shook his head regretfully. “The devil is good to his own kind, Mr. Nicolson.”

“Pity.” Nicolson was already on his way across to the port door of the dining-saloon. “The ship’s going. We haven’t long. Herd our little friends up to the deck above—keep ‘em in the passageway for the time being. Don’t open the screen doors—” Nicolson broke off suddenly, halted in mid-stride. The wooden serving hatch into the pantry was riddled and smashed in a dozen places. From the other side he could hear the thin, quavering sobbing of a little child.

Within three seconds Nicolson was out in the passage, wrestling with the handle of the pantry door. The handle turned, but the door refused to open—locked, perhaps, more probably jammed and buckled. A providential fire axe hung on the bulkhead outside the fifth engineer’s cabin and Nicolson swung it viciously against the lock of the pantry door. On the third blow the lock sprang open and the door crashed back on its hinges.

Nicolson’s first confused impressions were of smoke, burning, a sea of smashed crockery and an almost overpowering reek of whisky. Then the rush of fresh air quickly cleared the air and he could see the two nurses sitting on the deck, almost at his feet, Lena, the young Malayan girl, with her dark, sooty eyes wide and shadowed with terror, and Miss Drachmann beside her, her face pale and strained but calm. Nicolson dropped on his knees beside her.

“The little boy?” he asked harshly.

“Do not worry. Little Peter is safe.” She smiled at him gravely, eased back the heavy metal door of the hot press, already ajar. The child was inside, snugly wrapped in a heavy blanket, staring out at him with wide, fearful eyes. Nicolson reached in a hand, gently ruffled the blond hair, then rose abruptly to his feet and let his breath go in a long sigh.

“Thank God for that, anyway.” He smiled down at the girl. “And thank you, too, Miss Drachmann. Damned clever idea. Take him outside in the passage, will you? It’s stifling in here.” He swung round, then halted and stared down in disbelief at the tableau at his feet. The young soldier, Alex, and the priest were stretched out on the deck, side by side, both obviously unconscious—at least. Farnholme was just straightening up from examining the priest’s head. The smell of whisky from him was so powerful that his clothes might have been saturated in it.

“What the hell’s been going on here?” Nicolson demanded icily. “Can’t you keep off the bottle for even five minutes, Farnholme?”

“You’re a headstrong young man, young man.” The voice came from the far corner of the pantry. “You mustn’t jump to conclusions, especially wrong conclusions.”

Nicolson peered through the gloom. With the dynamos and lighting gone the windowless pantry was half-shrouded in darkness. He could barely distinguish the slight form of Miss Plenderleith sitting straight-backed against the ice-box. Her head was bent over her hands and the busy click-click, click-click of needles seemed unnaturally loud. Nicolson stared at her in utter disbelief.

“What are you doing, Miss Plenderleith?” Even to himself, Nicolson’s voice sounded strained, incredulous.

“Knitting, of course. Have you never seen anyone knitting before?”

“Knitting!” Nicolson murmured in awe. “Knitting, of course! Two lumps or three, vicar.” Nicolson shook his head in wonder. “If the Japs knew this they’d demand an armistice tomorrow.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Miss Plenderleith demanded crisply. “Don’t tell me that you’ve lost your senses, too.”

“Too?”

“This unfortunate young man here.” She pointed at the young soldier. “We jammed some trays against the serving hatch when we came in—it’s only wood, you know. The Brigadier thought it might give protection from bullets.” Miss Plenderleith was talking very rapidly, very concisely, her knitting now laid aside. “When the first bombs hit, this young man tried to get out. The Brigadier locked the door—and very quick he was about it, too. Then he started to pull the trays down—going to go out the hatch, I suppose. The—ah —priest here was trying to pull him back when the bullets came through the hatch.”

Nicolson turned away quickly, looked at Farnholme and then nodded down at the Muslim priest. “My apologies, Brigadier. Is he dead?”

“Thank God, no.” Farnholme straightened on his knees, his Sandhurst drawl temporarily in abeyance. “Creased, concussed, that’s all.” He looked down at the young soldier and shook his head in anger. “Bloody young fool.”

“And what’s the matter with him?”

“Laid him out with a whisky bottle,” Farnholme said succinctly. “Bottle broke. Must have been flawed. Shockin’ waste, shockin’.”

“Get him outside, will you? The rest of you outside, too.” Nicolson turned round as someone entered the door behind him. “Walters! I’d forgotten all about you. Are you all right?”

“All right, sir. Wireless room’s a bit of a shambles, I’m afraid.” Walters looked pale and sick, but purposeful as ever.

“Doesn’t matter now.” Nicolson was grateful for Walters’ presence, his solidity and competence. “Get these people up to the boat-deck—in the passage, better still in your office or cabin. Don’t let ‘em out on deck. If there’s anything they want to get from their cabins, give ‘em a couple of minutes.”

Walters smiled wryly. “We’re taking a little trip, sir?”

“Very shortly. Just to be on the safe side.” It would hardly benefit the morale of the passengers, Nicolson reflected, by adding what Walters himself must have been aware of—that the only alternatives were cremation or disintegration when the ship went up. He went out the door quickly, then staggered and almost fell as a tremendous detonation, right aft, seemed to lift the stern of the Viroma out of the water and sent a shuddering, convulsive shock through her every plate and rivet. Instinctively Nicolson reached out and caught the lintel of the door, caught and held Miss Drachmann and Peter as the nurse fell against him, steadied her and turned quickly to Walters.

“Belay that last order. No one to go to their cabins. Just get ‘em up there and see that they stay there.” In four strides he was at the after screen door, opening it cautiously. Seconds later he was outside on deck, standing at the top of the iron ladder that led down to the main deck, and staring aft.

The heat struck at him almost with the physical impact of a blow and brought tears of pain to his eyes. No complaints that he couldn’t see this fire, he thought grimly. Billowing, convoluted clouds of oily black smoke stretched up hundreds of feet into the sky, reaching higher and higher with the passing of every second, not tailing off to a peak but spreading out at the top in a great, black anvil-head, spreading over the ship like a pall: at the base, however, just at deck level, there was hardly any smoke at all, only a solid wall of flame perhaps sixty feet in diameter, a wall that rose forty feet, then broke into a dozen separate pillars of fire; fiery, twisting tongues of flame that reached hungrily upwards, their flickering points swallowed up in the rolling darkness of the smoke. In spite of the intense heat, Nicolson’s first reaction was to cover not his face but his ears: even at a hundred and fifty feet the roaring of the flames was all but intolerable.

Another miscalculation on the part of the Japs, he thought grimly. A bomb meant for the engine-room had exploded in the diesel oil bunkers, blowing aft through the engine-room bulkhead and for’ard clear through both walls of the cofferdam into number one cargo tank. And it was almost certainly number one tank that was on fire, its quarter of a million gallons of fuel oil ignited and fanned by the fierce down-draught of air through the wrecked cofferdam. Even if they had had firefighting apparatus left, and the men to man the apparatus, tackling that inferno, an inferno that would have engulfed and destroyed any man before he could have come within fifty feet of it, would only have been the suicidal gesture of an imbecile. And then, above the deep, steady roar of the flames, Nicolson heard another, more deadly sound, the high-pitched, snarling howl of an aero engine under maximum boost, caught a momentary glimpse of a Zero arrowing in off the starboard beam, at mast-top height, flung himself convulsively backward through the open door behind him as cannon-shells struck and exploded where he had been only two seconds before.

Cursing himself for his forgetfulness, Nicolson pushed himself to his feet, clipped the door shut and looked around him. Already both pantry and passage were quite empty—Walters was not a man to waste time. Quickly Nicolson made his way along the passage, through the dining-saloon to the foot of the companionway leading up to the boat deck. Farnholme was there, struggling to carry the young soldier up the stairs. Nicolson helped him in silence, and at the top Walters met him and relieved him of his share of the burden. Nicolson glanced along the passage towards the wireless office.

“All safely corralled, Sparks?”

“Yes, sir. The Arab Johnny’s just coming to and Miss Plenderleith’s packing her bag as if she were off to Bournemouth for a fortnight.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed. The worrying kind.” Nicolson looked along to the for’ard end of the passage. Siran and his men were huddled round the ladder that led up to the chartroom, fearful and unhappy. All, that is, except Siran himself. Despite its cuts and bruises, the brown face still held its expressionless calm. Nicolson looked sharply at Walters. “Where’s Van Effen?”

“No idea, sir. Haven’t seen him.”

Nicolson walked to face Siran. “Where’s Van Effen?”

Siran shrugged his shoulders, twisted his lips into a smile and said nothing.

Nicolson jammed a pistol into Siran’s solar plexus, and the smile faded from the brown face. “I’d just as soon you died,” Nicolson said pleasantly.

“He went above.” Siran nodded at the ladder. “A minute ago.”

Nicolson swung round. “Got a gun, Sparks?”

“In the office, sir.”

“Get it. Van Effen had no right to leave this lot.” He waited till Walters returned. “No reasons required for shooting this bunch. Any flimsy excuse will do.”

He went up the stairs three at a time, passed through the chartroom and into the wheelhouse. Vannier was conscious now, still shaking his head to free it from muzziness, but recovered enough to help Evans bind his arm. McKinnon and the captain were still together.

“Seen Van Effen, Bo’sun?”

“Here a minute ago, sir. He’s gone up top.”

“Up top? What in heaven’s name——” Nicolson checked himself. Time was too short as it was. “How do you feel, Evans?”

“Bloody well mad, sir,” Evans said, and looked it. “If I could get my hands on those murderin’——”

“All right, all right.” Nicolson smiled briefly. “I can see you’ll live. Stay here with the captain. How are you, Fourth?”

“O.K. now, sir.” Vannier was very pale. “Just a crack on the head.”

“Good. Take the bo’sun with you and check the boats. Just numbers one and two—three and four are finished.” He broke off and looked at the captain. “You said something, sir?”

“Yes.” Findhorn’s voice was still weak, but clearer than it had been. “Three and four gone?”

“Bombed to bits and then burnt to a cinder,” Nicolson said without bitterness. “A very thorough job. Number one tank’s on fire, sir.”

Findhorn shook his head. “What hope, boy?”

“None, just none at all.” Nicolson turned back to Vannier. “If they’re both serviceable we’ll take them both.” He glanced at Findhorn, raised eyebrows seeking confirmation. “We don’t want Siran and his cut-throat pals in the same open boat as us when night falls.”

Findhorn nodded silently, and Nicolson went on: “As many spare blankets, food, water, arms and ammunition as you can find. And first-aid kits. All these in the better boat—ours. That clear. Fourth?”

“All clear, sir.”

“One other thing. When you’re finished, a strap stretcher for the captain. Don’t get yourselves shot full of cannon holes—they nearly got me a couple of minutes ago. And for God’s sake hurry! Five minutes for the lot.”

Nicolson moved just outside the wheelhouse starboard door and stood there for two or three seconds, taking stock. The blast of fiery heat struck at him, fore and aft, like the scorching incalescence of an opened furnace door, but he ignored it. The heat wouldn’t kill him, not yet, but the Zeros would if they were given any chance at all: but the Zeros were half a mile away, line ahead and port wings dipped as they circled the Viroma, watching and waiting.

Five steps, running, took him to the foot of the wheel-house top ladder. He took the first three steps in a stride, then checked so abruptly that only a swiftly bent arm cushioned the shock as he fell forward against the rungs. Van Effen, face and shirt streaked with blood, was just beginning to descend, half supporting, half carrying Corporal Fraser. The soldier was in a very bad way, a man obviously willing himself to hang on to the last shreds of consciousness. Beneath the dark tan the pain-twisted face was drained of blood, and with his right arm he supported what was left of his left forearm, torn and shredded and horribly maimed—only an exploding cannon shell could have worked that savage injury. He seemed to be losing only a little blood: Van Effen had knotted a tourniquet just above the elbow.

Nicolson met them half-way up the ladder, caught the soldier and took some of the almost dead weight off Van Effen. And then, before he realised what was happening, he had all the weight and Van Effen was on his way back up to the wheelhouse top.

“Where are you going, man?” Nicolson had to shout to make himself heard over the roar of the flames. “Damn all anybody can do up there now. We’re abandoning ship. Come on!”

“Must see if there’s anyone else alive,” Van Effen yelled. He shouted something else and Nicolson thought he heard him mention guns, but couldn’t be sure. His voice didn’t carry too well above the roar of the two great fires and Nicolson’s attention was already elsewhere. The Zeros—there were only three of them—were no longer circling the ship but banking steeply, altering formation to line abreast and heading straight for the midships superstructure. It needed no imagination at all to realise what tempting and completely exposed targets they must be, perched high on top of the ship. Nicolson tightened his hold on Corporal Fraser and pointed urgently out to sea with his free hand.

“You haven’t a chance, you crazy fool!” he shouted. Van Effen was now at the top of the ladder. “Are you blind or mad?”

“Look to yourself, my friend,” Van Effen called, and was gone. Nicolson waited no longer, he would have to look to himself, and with a vengeance. Only a few steps, only a few seconds to the door of the wheelhouse, but Fraser was now only a limp, powerless weight in his arms, and it would take a Zero perhaps six seconds, no more, to cover the intervening distance. Already he could hear the thin, high snarl of the engines, muted but menacing over the steady roar of the flames, but he didn’t dare look, he knew where they were anyway, two hundred yards away and with the gunsights lined up on his unprotected back. The wheelhouse sliding door was jammed, he could get only a minimal purchase on it with his left hand, then it was suddenly jerked open, the bo’sun was dragging Corporal Fraser inside and Nicolson was catapulting himself forward on to the deck, wincing involuntarily as he waited for the numbing shock of cannon shells smashing into his back, And then he had rolled and twisted his way into shelter and safety, there was a brief, crescendoing thunder of sound and the planes had swept by only feet above the wheel-house. Not a gun had been fired.

Nicolson shook his head in dazed incredulity and rose slowly to his feet. Maybe the smoke and the flame had blinded the pilots, perhaps even they had exhausted their ammunition—the number of cannon shells a fighter could carry was limited. Not that it mattered anyway, not any more. Farnholme was on the bridge now, Nicolson saw, helping McKinnon to carry the soldier below. Vannier was gone, but Evans was still there with the captain. Then the chartroom door swung open on its shattered hinges, and once again Nicolson’s face tightened in disbelief.

The man who stood before him was almost naked, clad only in the charred tatters of what had been a pair of blue trousers: they were still smoking, smouldering at the edges. Eyebrows and hair were singed and frizzled and the chest and arms red and scorched: the chest rose and fell very quickly in small shallow breaths, like a man whose lungs have been so long starved of air that he cannot find time to breathe deeply. His face was very pale.

“Jenkins!” Nicolson had advanced, seized the man by the shoulders then dropped his hands quickly as the other winced with pain. “How on earth—I saw the ‘planes——”

“Somebody trapped, sir!” Jenkins interrupted. “For’ard pump-room.” He spoke hurriedly, urgently but jerkily, only a word or two for every breath. “Dived off the catwalk—landed on the hatch. Heard knocking, sir.”

“So you got the hell out of it? Is that it?” Nicolson asked softly.

“No, sir. Clips jammed,” Jenkins shook his head tiredly. “Couldn’t open them, sir.”

“There’s a pipe clipped to the hatch,” Nicolson said savagely. “You know that as well as I do.”

Jenkins said nothing, turned his palms up for inspection. Nicolson winced. There was no skin left, none at all, just red, raw flesh and the gleam of white bone.

“Good God!” Nicolson stared at the hands for a moment, then looked up at the pain-filled eyes. “My apologies, Jenkins. Go below. Wait outside the wireless office.” He turned round quickly as someone touched him on the shoulder. “Van Effen. I suppose you know that apart from being a bloody fool you’re the luckiest man alive?”

The tall Dutchman dropped two rifles, an automatic carbine and ammunition on the deck and straightened up. “You were right,” he said quietly. “I was wasting my time. All dead.” He nodded at Jenkins’ retreating back. “I heard him. That’s the small deckhouse just for’ard of the bridge, isn’t it? I’ll go.”

Nicolson looked at the calm grey eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Come with me if you like. Might need help to get him out, whoever he is.”

In the passage below they bumped into Vannier, staggering under the weight of an armful of blankets. “How are the boats, Fourth?” Nicolson asked quickly.

“Remarkable, sir. They’re hardly scratched. You’d think the Japs had left them alone on purpose.”

“Both of them?” Nicolson asked in astonishment.

“Yes, sir.”

“Gift horses,” Nicolson muttered. “Carry on, Fourth. Don’t forget the stretcher for the captain.”

Down on the main deck the heat was almost suffocating, and both men were gasping for oxygen before ten seconds had passed. The petrol fire in the cargo holds was twice, three times as fierce as it had been five minutes ago, and dimly, through the roar of the flames, they could hear an almost continuous rumble of explosions as the metal fuel barrels ruptured and burst in the intense heat. But Nicolson noticed these things with only a corner of his mind. He was standing by the water-tight steel door of the entrance house to the hatch, rapping on the surface with the end of the two-foot length of pipe that served as clip levers for these doors. As he waited for a reply, bent low over the hatch, he could see the sweat from his forehead dripping on to the hatch in an almost continuous trickle. The air was so dry and parched, the metal so hot—they could feel the heat of the deck even through the soles of their shoes—that the drips of perspiration evaporated and vanished almost as they touched the deck … And then, so suddenly that both men started in spite of their tense expectation, there came an answering rap from inside, very faint but quite unmistakable, and Nicolson waited no longer. The clips were very stiff indeed—some explosive shock must have warped or shifted the metal—and it took a dozen powerful strokes from the sledge he carried to free the two jammed clips: the last retaining clip sheered at the first blow.

A gust of hot, fetid air swept up from the gloomy depths of the pump-room, but Nicolson and Van Effen ignored it and peered into the darkness. Then Van Effen had switched on his torch and they could clearly see the oil-streaked grey hair of a man climbing up towards the top of the ladder. And then two long arms reached down and, a moment later, the man was standing on deck beside him, a forearm flung up in reflex instinct to shield himself from the heat of the flames. He was drenched in oil from head to foot, the whites of his eyes almost comically prominent in the black, smeared face.

Nicolson peered at him for a moment, and then said in astonishment: “Willy!”

“Even so,” Willoughby intoned. “None other. Good old Willy. Golden lads and lasses must, etc., but not superannuated second engineers. No ordinary mortals we.” He wiped some oil from his face. “Sing no sad songs for Willoughby.”

“But what the hell were you doing?—never mind. It can wait. Come on, Willy. No time to lose. We’re leaving.”

Willoughby panted for air as they climbed up to the bridge. “Dived in for shelter, my boy. Almost cut off in my prime. Where are we going?”

“As far away from this ship as possible,” Nicolson said grimly. “She’s due to go up any moment now.”

Willoughby turned round, shielding his eyes with his hand. “Only a petrol fire, Johnny. Always a chance that it’ll burn itself out.”

“Number one cargo tank’s gone up.”

“The boats, and with all speed,” Willoughby said hastily. “Old Willy would live and fight another day.”

Within five minutes both boats had been provisioned and lowered for embarkation. All the survivors, including the wounded, were gathered together, waiting. Nicolson looked at the captain.

“Ready when you give the word, sir.”

Findhorn smiled faintly: even that seemed an effort, for the smile ended in a grimace of pain. “A late hour for this modesty, Mr. Nicolson. You’re in charge, my boy.” He coughed, screwed shut his eyes, then looked up thoughtfully. “The ‘planes, Mr. Nicolson. They could cut us to ribbons when we’re lowering into the water.”

“Why should they bother when they can have a far better go at us once we’re in the water?” Nicolson shrugged his shoulders. “We’ve no option, sir.”

“Of course. Forgive a foolish objection.” Findhorn leaned back and closed his eyes.

“There will be no trouble from the ‘planes.” It was Van Effen speaking, and he seemed oddly sure of himself. He smiled at Nicolson. “You and I could have been dead twice over: they either cannot fire or do not wish to fire. There are other reasons, too, but time is short, Mr. Nicolson.”

“Time is short.” Nicolson nodded, then clenched his fists as a deep, rumbling roar reverberated throughout the ship. A heavy, prolonged shudder ran through the superstructure of the Viroma, a shudder that culminated in a sudden, sickening lurch as the deck dropped away under their feet, towards the stern. Nicolson smiled faintly at Van Effen. “Time is indeed short, Van Effen. Must you illustrate your points quite so thoroughly?” He raised his voice. “Right, everybody, into the boats.”

The need for speed had been urgent before: it was desperate now. The bulkheads of number two tank had ruptured, and one of the tanks, possibly both, were open to the sea: the Viroma was already settling by the stern. But speed was a double-edged weapon and Nicolson only too clearly realised that undue haste and pressure would only drive the untrained passengers into panic, or, at best—and equally delaying—confusion. McKinnon and Van Effen were invaluable, shepherding the passengers to their positions, carrying the wounded and laying them down between the thwarts, talking quietly, encouragingly all the time. Inside, that is—outside they had to shout to make themselves heard above the sound of the flames—a weird, terrifying noise compounded of a thin, high-pitched hissing noise that set teeth and nerves on edge and a deep, continuous tearing sound like the ripping of calico, only magnified a thousand times.

The heat was no longer uncomfortable. It was intense, and the two great curtains of flame were beginning to sweep irresistibly together—the pale-blue transparent gauze, shimmering and unreal, of the petrol fire from the bows, and the blood-red, smoke-shot flames from the stern. Breathing became a rasping, throat-tearing agony, and Jenkins, especially, suffered terribly as the super-heated air laid agonising fingers on his scorched skin and raw, bleeding hands. Of them all, young Peter Tallon suffered the least discomfort: McKinnon had dipped a large, fleecy blanket in the pantry sink and wrapped it round the little boy, covering him from head to toe.

Within three minutes of giving the order both boats were in the water. The port lifeboat, manned only by Siran and his six men, was first away—with fewer men, and none of these injured, it had taken less time to embark them, but, from the glimpse Nicolson had of them before he ran back to the starboard lifeboat, it was going to take them a long time to get clear of the burning ship. They were having difficulty in clearing the falls, although Nicolson had given instructions about the patent release gear, two of them were swinging fear-maddened blows at one another and all of them gesticulating and shouting at the tops of their voices. Nicolson turned away, heedless, indifferent. Let them sort it out themselves and if they failed the world would be the better for their failure. He had given them what they had denied the little boy—a chance to live.

Less than a minute later Nicolson, the last man to leave, was sliding down the knotted lifeline into the waterborne number one lifeboat. He could see the lifeboat beneath him, jammed with passengers and equipment, and realised how difficult it would be to ship the oars and pull away, especially with only three or four people fit or able to use an oar, but even as his feet touched a thwart the engine coughed, sputtered, coughed again, caught and settled down to a gentle murmur he could barely hear above the flames.

Within a minute they were well away from the Viroma’s side, circling anti-clockwise round the bows. Abreast the fo’c’sle, with two hundred feet of intervening sea, the heat from the flames still stung their eyes and caught at their throats but Nicolson still held the lifeboat in, rounding the bows as closely as they dared. And then, all at once, the long length of the port side of the Viroma opened up and they could see number two lifeboat. Three minutes, at least, had passed since she had been launched: she was still less than twenty yards from the side of the ship. Siran had finally succeeded in restoring order with the lash of his tongue and the heavy and indiscriminate use of the boathook, but, with two men lying groaning on the bottom-boards and a third nursing a numbed and, for the moment, useless arm, Siran had only three men left to man the heavy sweeps. On board number one boat Nicolson compressed his lips and looked at Findhorn. The captain interpreted the look correctly and nodded heavily and reluctantly.

Half a minute later McKinnon sent a coil of rope snaking expertly over the water. Siran himself caught it and made it fast to the mast thwart, and almost at once the motorboat took up the slack and started towing Siran and his men clear of the ship’s side. This time Nicolson made no attempt to circle the ship but moved straight out to sea intent on putting the maximum possible distance between themselves and the Viroma in the least possible time.

Five minutes and five hundred yards passed and still nothing happened. The motorboat, with the other lifeboat in tow, was making a top speed of perhaps three and a half knots, but every foot covered was a foot nearer safety. The fighters still cruised overhead, but aimlessly: they had made no move to attack since the embarkation had begun and obviously had no intention of making any now.

Two more minutes passed, and the Viroma was burning more fiercely than ever. The flames from the fo’c’sle were now clearly visible, no longer swallowed up by the brilliance of the sunlight: the dense pall of smoke from the two after cargo tanks now spread over half a square mile of sea and not even the fierce tropical sun could penetrate its black intensity. Under this dark canopy the two great pillars of flame swept more and more closely together, remorseless, majestic in the splendour of their inexorable progress. The tips of the two great fires leaned in towards one another—some curious freak of the superheated atmosphere—and Findhorn, twisted round in his seat and watched his ship die, knew with sudden certainty that when these two flames touched the end would come. And so it was.

After the barbaric magnificence of the dying, the death was strangely subdued and unspectacular. A column of white flame streaked upwards just abaft the bridge, climbing two, three, four hundred feet, then vanishing as suddenly as it had come. Even as it vanished a low, deep, prolonged rumble came at them across the stillness of the sea; by and by the echoes vanished away in the empty distance and there was only then the silence. The end came quietly and without any fuss, even with a certain grace and dignity, the Viroma slipping gently under the surface of the sea on an even steady keel, a tired and dreadfully wounded ship that had taken all it could and was glad to go to rest. The watchers in the lifeboats could hear the gentle hissing, quickly extinguished, of water pouring into red-hot holds, could see the tips of the two slender masts sliding down vertically into the sea, then a few bubbles and then nothing at all, no floating wood or flotsam on the oily waters, just nothing at all. It was as if the Viroma had never been.

Captain Findhorn turned to Nicolson, his face like a stone, his eyes drained and empty of all expression. Almost everybody in the lifeboat was looking at him, openly or covertly, but he seemed completely unaware of it, a man sunk in a vast and heedless indifference.

“Unaltered course, Mr. Nicolson, if you please.” His voice was low and husky, but only from weakness and blood. “200, as I remember. Our objective remains. We should reach the Macclesfield Channel in twelve hours.”

EIGHT

Hours passed, interminable, breathless hours under a blue, windless sky and the fierce glare of the tropical sun and still number one lifeboat chugged steadily south, towing the other boat behind it. Normally a lifeboat carries a fuel supply good only for a hundred miles steaming at about four knots, and is used solely for emergencies, such as towing other boats clear of a sinking ship, cruising around for survivors, going for immediate help or keeping the boat itself hove to in heavy seas. But McKinnon had had the foresight to throw in extra cans of petrol and, even allowing for the possibility of bad weather, they had enough, and more than enough, to carry them to Lepar, an island about the size of the Isle of Sheppey on the starboard hand as they passed through the Macclesfield Channel. Captain Findhorn, with fifteen years in the Archipelago behind him, knew where he could find petrol on Lepar, and plenty of it. The only unknownquantity was the Japanese: they might have already taken over the island, but with their land forces already so widespread and thinly stretched it seemed unlikely that they could yet have had the time or sufficient reason to garrison so small a place. And with plenty of petrol and fresh water there was no saying how far they might go: the Sunda Straits between Sumatra and Java was not impossible, especially when the north-east trades started up again and helped them on their way.

But there were no trades just now, not even the lightest zephyr of a breeze; it was absolutely still and airless and suffocatingly hot and the tiny movement of air from their slow passage through the water was only a mockery of coolness and worse than nothing at all. The blazing sun was falling now, slipping far to the west, but still burning hot: Nicolson had both sails stretched as awnings, the jib for the fore end and the lug-sail, its yard lashed half-way up the mast, stretched aft as far as it would go, but even beneath the shelter, of these the heat was still oppressive, somewhere between eighty and ninety degrees with a relative humidity of over 85 per cent. It was seldom enough in the East Indies, at any time of the year, that the temperature dropped below eighty degrees. Nor was there any relief to be obtained, any chance of cooling off by plunging over the side into the water, the temperature of which lay somewhere between eighty degrees and eighty-five. All the passengers could do was to recline limply and listlessly in the shade of awnings, to sit and suffer and sweat and pray for the sun to go down.

The passengers. Nicolson, sitting in the sternsheets with the tiller in his hand, looked slowly round the people in the boat, took in their condition and lifeless inertia and tightened his lips. If he had to be afloat in an open boat in the tropics, hundreds—thousands—of miles from help and surrounded by the enemy and enemy-held islands, he could hardly have picked a boatload of passengers less well equipped for handling a boat, with a poorer chance of survival. There were exceptions, of course, men like McKinnon and Van Effen would always be exceptions, but as for the remainder …

Excluding himself, there were seventeen people aboard. Of these, as far as sailing and fighting the boat were concerned, only two were definite assets: McKinnon, imperturbable, competent, infinitely resourceful, was worth any two men, and Van Effen, an otherwise unknown quantity, had already proved his courage and value in an emergency. About Vannier it was difficult to say: no more than a boy, he might possibly stand up to prolonged strain and hardship, but time alone would show. Walters, still looking sick and shaken, would be a useful man to have around when he had recovered. And that, on the credit side, was just about all.

Gordon, the second steward, a thin-faced, watery-eyed and incurably furtive individual, a known thief who had been conspicuously and mysteriously absent from his action stations that afternoon, was no seaman, no fighter and could be trusted to do nothing whatsoever that didn’t contribute to the immediate safety and benefit of himself. Neither the Muslim priest nor the baffling, enigmatic Famholme—they were seated together on the same thwart, conversing in low murmurs—had shown up too well that afternoon either. There was no more kindly nor better-meaning man than Willoughby, but, outside his engine room and deprived of his beloved books and for all his rather pathetic eagerness to be of assistance, there was no more ineffectual and helpless person alive than the gentle second engineer. The captain, Evans, the quartermaster, Fraser and Jenkins, the young able seaman, were too badly hurt to give any more than token assistance. Alex, the young soldier—Nicolson had discovered that his name was Sinclair—was as jittery and unstable as ever, his wide, staring eyes darting restlessly, ceaselessly, from one member of the boat’s company to the next, the palms of his hands rubbing constantly up and down the thighs of his trousers, as if desperately seeking to rub off some contamination. That left only the three women and young Peter—and if anyone wanted to stack the odds even higher, Nicolson thought bitterly, there was always Siran and his six cut-throat friends not twenty feet away. The prospects, overall, were not good.

The one happy, carefree person in the two boats was young Peter Tallon. Clad only in a haltered pair of white, very short shorts, he seemed entirely unaffected by the heat or anything else, bouncing incessantly up and down on the sternsheets and having to be rescued from falling overboard a dozen times a minute. Familiarity breeding trust, he had quite lost his earlier fear of the other members of the crew but had not yet given him his unquestioning confidence: whenever Nicolson, whose seat by the tiller was nearest to the youngster, offered him a piece of ship’s biscuit or a mug with some watered down sweet condensed milk, he would smile at him shyly, lean forward, snatch the offering, retreat and eat or drink it, head bent and looking suspiciously at Nicolson under lowered eyelids. But if Nicolson reached out a hand to touch or catch him he would fling himself against Miss Drachmann, who sat on the starboard side of the sternsheets, entwine one chubby hand in the shining black hair, often with a force that brought a wince and an involuntary ‘ouch’ from the girl, twist his head round and regard him gravely through the spread fingers of his left hand. It was a favourite trick of his, this peeping from behind his fingers, one which he seemed to imagine made him invisible. For long moments at a time Nicolson forgot the war, the wounded men and their own near-hopeless situation, absorbed in the antics of the little boy but always he came back to the bitter present, to an even keener despair, to a redoubled fear of what would happen to the child when the Japanese finally caught up with them.

And they would catch up with them. Nicolson had known that, known it beyond any shadow of doubt, known that Captain Findhorn knew it also despite his encouraging talk of sailing for Lepar and the Sunda Straits. The Japanese had their position to within a few miles, could find them and pick them off whenever they wished. The only mystery was why they had not already done so. Nicolson wondered if the others knew that their hours of freedom and safety were limited, that the cat was playing with the mouse. If they did, it was impossible to tell by their behaviour and appearance. A helpless, useless bunch in many ways, a crushing liability to any man who hoped to sail his boat to freedom, but Nicolson had to concede them one saving grace: Gordon and the shocked Sinclair apart, their morale was magnificent.

They had worked hard and uncomplainingly to get all the blankets and provisions stowed away as neatly as possible, had cleared spaces at the expense of their own comfort for the wounded men—who themselves, in spite of obvious agony, had never complained once—and accepted all Nicolson’s orders and their own cramped positions cheerfully and willingly. The two nurses, surprisingly and skilfully assisted by Brigadier Farnholme, had worked for almost two hours over the wounded men and done a splendid job. Never had the Ministry of Transport’s insistence that all lifeboats carry a comprehensive first-aid kit been more fully justified, and seldom could it have been put to better use: collapse revivers, ‘Omnopon,’ sulphanilamide powder, codeine compounds, dressings, bandages, gauze, cotton wool and jelly for burns—they were all there and they were all used. Surgical kit Miss Drachmann carried herself: and with the lifeboat’s hatchet and his own knife McKinnon had perfectly adequate splints improvised from the bottom-boards for Corporal Fraser’s shattered arm within ten minutes of being asked for them.

And Miss Plenderleith was magnificent. There was no other word for it. She had a genius for reducing circumstances and situations to reassuring normality, and might well have spent her entire life in an open boat. She accepted things as they were, made the very best of them, and had more than sufficient authority to induce others to do the same. It was she who wrapped the wounded in blankets and pillowed their heads on lifebelts, scolding them like unruly and recalcitrant little children if they showed any signs of disobeying: Miss Plenderleith never had to scold anyone twice. It was she who had taken over the commissariat and watched over the wounded until they had eaten the last crumb and drunk the last drop of what she had offered them. It was she who had snatched Farnholme’s gladstone bag from him, stowed it beneath her side bench, picked up the hatchet McKinnon had laid down, and informed the seething Brigadier, with the light of battle in her eyes, that his drinking days were over and that the contents of the bag, which he had been on the point of broaching, would be in future reserved for medicinal use only—and thereafter, incredibly, had produced needles and wool from the depths of her own capacious bag and calmly carried on with her knitting. And it was she who was now sitting with a board across her knees, carefully slicing bully beef and bread, doling out biscuits, barley sugar and thinned down condensed milk and ordering around a grave and carefully unsmiling McKinnon, whom she had pressed into service as her waiter, as if he were one of her more reliable but none too bright school children. Magnificent, Nicolson thought, trying hard to match his bo’sun’s deadpan expression, just magnificent: there was no other word for her. Suddenly her voice sharpened, rose almost an octave.

“Mr. McKinnon! What on earth are you doing?” The bo’sun had dropped his latest cargo of bread and corned beef to the bottom-boards and sunk down on his knees beside her, peering out below the awning, ignoring Miss Plenderleith as she repeated her question. She repeated it a third time, received no answer, tightened her lips and jabbed him ferociously in the ribs with the haft of her knife. This time she got a reaction.

“Will you look what you’ve done, you clumsy idiot?” She pointed her knife angrily at McKinnon’s knee: between it and the side bench half a pound of meat was squashed almost flat.

“Sorry, Miss Plenderleith, sorry.” The bo’sun stood up, absently rubbing shreds of beef off his trousers, and turned to Nicolson. “‘Plane approaching, sir. Green ninety, near enough.”

Nicolson glanced at him out of suddenly narrowed eyes, stopped and stared out to the west under the awning. He saw the plane almost at once, not more than two miles away, at about two thousand feet. Walters, the lookout in the bows, had missed it, but not surprisingly: it was coming at them straight out of the eye of the sun. McKinnon’s sensitive ears must have picked up the faraway drone of the engine. How he had managed to detect it above the constant flow of Miss Plenderleith’s talk and the steady putt-putt of their own engine Nicolson couldn’t imagine. Even now he himself could hear nothing.

Nicolson drew back, glanced over at the captain. Findhorn was lying on his side, either asleep or in a coma. There was no time to waste finding out which.

“Get the sail down, Bo’sun,” he said quickly. “Gordon, give him a hand. Quickly, now. Fourth?”

“Sir?” Vannier was pale, but looked eager and steady enough.

“The guns. One each for yourself, the brigadier, the bo’sun, Van Effen, Walters and myself.” He looked at Farnholme. “There’s some sort of automatic carbine there, sir. You know how to handle it?”

“I certainly do!” Pale blue eyes positively gleaming, Farnholme stretched out a hand for the carbine, cocked the bolt with one expert flick of his fingers and cradled the gun in his arms, glaring hopefully at the approaching plane: the old warhorse sniffing the scent of battle and loving it. Even in that moment of haste Nicolson found time to marvel at the complete transformation from the early afternoon: the man who had scuttled thankfully into the safe refuge of the pantry might never have existed. It was incredible, but there it was: far back in his mind Nicolson had a vague suspicion that the brigadier was just too consistent in his inconsistencies, that a purposeful but well-concealed pattern lay at the root of all his odd behaviour. But it was only a suspicion, he couldn’t make sense of it and maybe he was reading into Farnholme’s strange, see-saw conduct something that didn’t exist. Whatever the explanation, now was not the time to seek it.

“Get your gun down,” Nicolson said urgently. “All of you. Keep them hidden. The rest of you flat on the boards, as low down as you can get.” He heard the boy’s outraged wail of protest as he was pulled down beside the nurse and deliberately forced all thought of him out of his mind. The aircraft—a curious looking seaplane of a type he had never seen before—was still heading straight for them, perhaps half a mile distant now. Losing height all the time, it was coming in very slowly: that type of plane was not built for speed.

It was banking now, beginning to circle the lifeboats, and Nicolson watched it through his binoculars. On the fuselage the emblem of the rising sun glinted as the plane swung first to the south and then to the east. A lumbering, clumsy plane, Nicolson thought, good enough for low-speed reconnaissance, but that was about all. And then Nicolson remembered the three Zeros that had circled indifferently overhead as they had abandoned the burning Viroma and all at once he had a conviction that amounted to complete certainty.

“You can put your guns away,” he said quietly. “And you can all sit up. This character isn’t after our lives. The Japs have plenty of bombers and fighters to make a neat, quick job of us. If they wanted to finish us off, they wouldn’t have sent an old carthorse of a seaplane that has more than an even chance of being shot down itself. They’d have sent the fighters and bombers.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Farnholme’s blood was roused, and he was reluctant to abandon the idea of lining the Japanese ‘plane up over the sights of his carbine. “I wouldn’t trust the beggars an inch!”

“Who would?” Nicolson agreed. “But I doubt whether this fellow has more than a machine-gun.” The seaplane was still circling, still at the same circumspect distance. “My guess is they want us, but they want us alive, lord only knows why. This bloke here, as the Americans would say, is just keeping us on ice.” Nicolson had spent too many years in the Far East not to have heard, in grisly detail, of Japanese atrocities and barbaric cruelties during the Chinese war and knew that, for an enemy civilian, death was a pleasant, a desirable end compared to being taken prisoner by them. “Why we should be all that important to them I can’t even begin to guess. Just let’s count our blessings and stay alive a little longer.”

“I agree with the chief officer.” Van Effen had already stowed away his gun. “This plane is just—how do you say—keeping tabs on us. He’ll leave us alone, Brigadier, don’t you worry about that.”

“Maybe he will and maybe he won’t.” Farnholme brought his carbine into plain view. “No reason then why I shouldn’t have a pot at him. Dammit all, he’s an enemy, isn’t he?” Farnholme was breathing hard. “A bullet in his engine——”

“You’ll do no such thing, Foster Farnholme.” Miss Plenderleith’s voice was cold, incisive and imperious. “You’re behaving like an idiot, an irresponsible child. Put that gun down at once.” Farnholme was already wilting under her glare and the lash of her tongue. “Why kick a wasp’s nest? You fire at him and the next thing you know he loses his temper and fires at us and half of us are dead. Unfortunately there’s no way of guaranteeing that you’ll be among that half.”

Nicolson struggled to keep his face straight. Where their journey would end he had no idea, but as long as it lasted the violent antipathy between Farnholme and Miss Plenderleith promised to provide plenty of light entertainment: no one had yet heard them speak a civil word to each other.

“Now, then, Constance.” The brigadier’s voice was half truculent, half placating. “You’ve no right——”

“Don’t you ‘Constance’ me,” she said icily. “Just put that gun away. None of us wishes to be sacrificed on the altar of your belated valour and misplaced martial ardour.” She gave him the benefit of a cold, level stare, then turned ostentatiously away. The subject was closed and Farnholme suitably crushed. “You and the brigadier—you’ve known each other for some time?” Nicolson ventured.

For a moment she transferred her glacial stare to Nicolson, and he thought he had gone too far. Then she pressed her lips together and nodded. “A long time. For me, far too long. He had his own regiment in Singapore, years before the war, but I doubt whether they ever saw him. He practically lived in the Bengal Club. Drunk, of course. All the time.”

“By heaven, madam!” Farnholme shouted. His bristly white eyebrows were twitching furiously. “If you were a man——”

“Oh, do be quiet,” she interrupted wearily. “When you repeat yourself so often, Foster, it becomes downright nauseating.”

Farnholme muttered angrily to himself, but everybody’s attention was suddenly transferred to the plane. The engine note had deepened, and for one brief moment Nicolson thought it was coming in to attack, but realised almost at once that its circle round the boats was widening, if anything. The seaplane had cut its engine booster, but only for extra power for climb. It was still circling, but rising steadily all the time, making a laborious job of it, but nonetheless climbing. At about five thousand feet it levelled off and began to cruise round in great circles four or five miles in diameter.

“Now what do you think he’s done that for?” It was Findhorn talking, his voice stronger and clearer than it had been at any time since he had been wounded. “Very curious, don’t you think, Mr. Nicolson?”

Nicolson smiled at him. “Thought you were still asleep, sir. How do you feel now?”

“Hungry and thirsty. Ah, thank you, Miss Plenderleith.” He stretched out his hand for a cup, winced at the sudden pain the movement caused him, then looked again at Nicolson. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Sorry, sir. Difficult to say. I suspect he’s bringing some of his pals along to see us and he’s giving himself a spot of elevation, probably to act as a marker. Only a guess, of course.”

“Your guesses have an unfortunate habit of being too damned accurate for my liking.” Findhorn lapsed into silence and sank his teeth into a corned beef sandwich.

Half an hour passed, and still the scout seaplane stayed in the same relative position. It was all rather nerve-racking and necks began to ache from staring up so fixedly into the sky. But at least it was obvious now that the ‘plane had no directly hostile intentions towards them.

Another half-hour passed and the blood-red sun was slipping swiftly, vertically down towards the rim of the sea, a mirror-smooth sea that faded darkly towards the blurred horizon to the east, but a great motionless plain of vermilion to the west, stretching far away into the eye of the setting sun. Not quite mirror-smooth on this side—one or two tiny islets dimpled the red sheen of the water, standing out black against the level rays of the sun, and away to the left, just off the starboard bow and maybe four miles to the south-south-west a larger, low-lying island was beginning to climb imperceptibly above the tranquil surface of the sea.

It was soon after sighting this last island that they saw the seaplane begin to lose height and move off to the east in a long shallow dive. Vannier looked hopefully at Nicolson.

“Knocking-off time for the watch-dog, sir? Off home to bed, likely enough.”

“Afraid not, Fourth.” Nicolson nodded in the direction of the retreating plane. “Nothing but hundreds of miles of sea in that direction, and then Borneo—and that’s not where our friend’s home is. He’s spotted a pal, a hundred to one.” He looked at the captain. “What do you think, sir?”

“You’re probably right again, damn you.” Findhorn’s smile robbed the words of any offence, and then the smile slowly vanished and the eyes became bleak as the seaplane levelled off about a thousand feet and began to circle. “You are right, Mr. Nicolson,” he added softly. He twisted painfully in his seat and stared ahead. “How far off would you say that island there is?”

“Two and a half miles, sir. Maybe three.”

“Near enough three.” Findhorn turned to look at Willoughby, then nodded at the engine. “Can you get any more revs out of that sewing machine of yours, Second?”

“Another knot, sir, if I’m lucky.” Willoughby laid a hand on the tow-rope that stretched back to Siran’s boat. “Two, if I cut this.”

“Don’t tempt me, Second. Give her all you can, will you?”

He jerked his head at Nicolson, who handed over the tiller to Vannier and moved over beside the captain. “What’s your guess, Johnny?” Findhorn murmured.

“What do you mean, sir? Kind of ship it is, or what’s going to happen?”

“Both.”

“No idea about the first—destroyer, M.T.B., fishing boat, anything. As to the other—well, it’s clear now that they want us, and not our blood.” Nicolson grimaced. “The blood will come later. Meantime, they take us prisoner —then the old green bamboo torture, the toenails and teeth, the water treatment, the silos and all the usual refinements.” Nicolson’s mouth was only a white gash in his face and his eyes were gazing at the sternsheets where Peter and Miss Drachmann were playing together, laughing at each other, the girl as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Findhorn followed his gaze and nodded slowly.

“Yes, me too, Johnny. It hurts—just to look at them hurts. They go well together.” He rubbed his grey-grizzled chin thoughtfully. “‘Translucent amber’—that was the phrase some writing johnny used once about his heroine’s complexion. Blasted fool—or that was what I thought then. I’d like to apologise to him some day. Really incredible, isn’t it.” He grinned. “Imagine the traffic jam if you brought her back to Piccadilly.”

Nicolson smiled in turn. “It’s just the sunset, sir, and your bloodshot eyes.” He was grateful to the older man for deliberately diverting his train of thought and, remembering, he quickly became serious again. “That bloody awful gash. Our yellow brethren. I think there should be some payment on account.”

Findhorn nodded slowly. “We should—ah—postpone our capture, perhaps? Let the thumbscrews rust a while longer? The idea is not without its attractions, Johnny.” He paused, then went on quietly: “I think I can see something.”

Nicolson had his glasses to his eyes at once. He stared through them for a moment, caught a glimpse of a craft hull-down on the horizon with the golden gleams of the setting sun striking highlights off its superstructure, lowered the glasses, ruhbed his eyes and looked again. Seconds passed, then he lowered the binoculars, his face expressionless, and handed them in silence to the captain. Findhorn took them, held them steady to his eyes, then handed them back to Nicolson. “No signs of our luck turning, is there? Tell them, will you? Trying to raise my voice above that damned engine is like having a set of fish-hooks dragged up my throat.”

Nicolson nodded and turned round.

“Sorry, everybody, but—well, I’m afraid there’s some more trouble coming along. It’s a Jap submarine, and it’s overtaking us as if we were standing still. If he’d appeared fifteen minutes later we might have made that island there.” He nodded forward over the starboard bow. “As it is, he’ll be up on us before we’re much more than half-way there.”

“And what do you think will happen then, Mr. Nicolson?” Miss Plenderleith’s voice was composed almost to the level of indifference.

“Captain Findhorn thinks—and I agree with him—that they will probably try to take us prisoner.” Nicolson smiled wryly. “All I can say just now, Miss Plenderleith, is that we’ll try not to be taken prisoner. It will be difficult.”

“It will be impossible.” Van Effen spoke from his seat in the bows, and his voice was cold. “It’s a submarine, man. What can our little pop-guns do against a pressure hull. Our bullets will just bounce off.”

“You propose that we give ourselves up?” Nicolson could see the logic of Van Effen’s words and knew that the man was without fear: nevertheless he felt vaguely disappointed.

“Why commit outright suicide—which is what you suggest we do.” Van Effen was pounding the heel of his fist gently on the gunwale, emphasising his point. “We can always find a better chance to escape later.”

“You obviously don’t know the Japs,” Nicolson said wearily. “This is not only the best chance we’ll ever have—it’s also the last.”

“And I say you’re talking nonsense!” There was hostility now in every line in Van Effen’s face. “Let us put it to the vote, Mr. Nicolson.” He looked round the boat. “How many of you are in favour of——”

“Shut up and don’t talk like a fool!” Nicolson said roughly. “You’re not attending a political meeting, Van Effen. You’re aboard a vessel of the British Mercantile Marine, and such vessels are not run by committees but by the authority of one man only—the captain. Captain Findhorn says we offer resistance—and that’s that.”

“The captain is absolutely determined on that?”

“He is.”

“My apologies.” Van Effen bowed. “I bow to the authority of the captain.”

“Thank you.” Feeling vaguely uncomfortable, Nicolson transferred his gaze to the submarine. It was clearly visible now, in all its major details, less than a mile distant. The seaplane was still circling overhead. Nicolson looked at it and scowled.

“I wish that damn snoop would go on home,” he muttered.

“He does complicate things rather,” Findhorn agreed. “Time is running out, Johnny. He’ll be up with us in five minutes.”

Nicolson nodded absently. “We’ve seen that type of sub before, sir?”

“I rather think we have,” Findhorn said slowly.

“We have.” Nicolson was certain now. “Light A.A. gun aft, machine-gun on the bridge and a heavy gun for’ard—3.7 or 4-inch, something like that, I’m not sure. If they want to take us aboard we’ll have to go right alongside the hull—beneath the conning-tower, probably. Neither of the two guns can depress that far.” He bit his lip and stared ahead. “It’ll be dark in twenty minutes—and that island won’t be much more than half a mile away by the time he stops us. It’s a chance, a damn poor chance at that, but still …” He raised the glasses again and stared at the submarine, then shook his head slowly. “Yes, I thought I remembered that. That 3.7 or whatever it is has a big armoured shield for its gun-crew. Some sort of hinged, collapsible thing, probably.” His voice trailed off and his fingers beat an urgent tattoo on the rim of the gunwale. He looked absently at the captain. “Complicates things rather, doesn’t it, sir?”

“I’m not with you, Johnny.” Findhorn was beginning to sound tired again. “Afraid my head’s not at its best for this sort of thing. If you’ve got any idea at all——”

“I have. Crazy, but it might work.” Nicolson explained rapidly, then beckoned to Vannier, who handed the tiller to the bo’sun and moved across. “Don’t smoke, do you, Fourth?”

“No, sir.” Vannier looked at Nicolson as if he had gone off his head.

“You’re starting tonight.” Nicolson dug into his pocket, fished out a flat tin of Benson and Hedges and a box of matches. He gave them to him, along with a few quick instructions. “Right up in the bows, past Van Effen. Don’t forget, everything depends on you. Brigadier? A moment, if you please.”

Farnholme looked up in surprise, lumbered over a couple of thwarts and sat down beside them. Nicolson looked at him for a second or two in silence and then said seriously: “You really know how to use that automatic carbine, Brigadier?”

“Good God, man, yes!” the Brigadier snorted. “I practically invented the bloody thing.”

“How accurate are you?” Nicolson persisted quietly.

“Bisley,” Farnholme answered briefly. “Champion. As good as that, Mr. Nicolson.”

“Bisley?” Nicolson’s eyebrows reflected his astonishment.

“King’s marksman.” Farnholme’s voice was completely out of character now, as quiet as Nicolson’s own. “Chuck a tin over the side, let it go a hundred feet and I’ll give you a demonstration. Riddle it with this carbine in two seconds.” The tone was matter-of-fact; more, it was convincing.

“No demonstration,” Nicolson said hastily. “That’s the last thing we want. As far as brother Jap is concerned, we haven’t even a fire-cracker between us. This is what I want you to do.” His instructions to Farnholme were rapid and concise, as were those given immediately afterwards to the rest of the boat’s company. There was no time to waste on lengthier explanations, to make sure he was fully understood: the enemy was almost on them.

The sky to the west was still alive and glowing, a kaleidoscopic radiance of red and orange and gold, the barred clouds on the horizon ablaze with fire, but the sun was gone, the east was grey and the sudden darkness of the tropical night was rushing across the sea. The submarine was angling in on their starboard quarter, grim and black and menacing in the gathering twilight, the glassy sea piling up in phosphorescent whiteness on either side of its bows, the diesels dying away to a muted murmur, the dark, evil mouth of the big for’ard gun dipping and moving slowly aft as it matched the relative movement of the little lifeboat, foot by remorseless foot. And then there had come some sharp, unintelligible command from the conning-tower of the submarine; McKinnon cut the engine at a gesture from Nicolson and the iron hull of the submarine scraped harshly along the rubbing piece of the lifeboat.

Nicolson craned his neck and looked swiftly along the deck and conning-tower of the submarine. The big gun for’ard was pointing in their direction, but over their heads, as he had guessed it would: it had already reached maximum depression. The light A.A. gun aft was also lined up at them—lined up into the heart of their boat: he had miscalculated about that one, but it was a chance they had to take. There were three men in the conning-tower, two of them armed—an officer with a pistol and a sailor with what looked like a submachine gun—and five or six sailors at the foot of the conning-tower, only one of them armed. As a reception committee it was dismaying enough, but less than what he had expected. He had thought that the lifeboat’s abrupt, last-minute alteration off course to port—a movement calculated to bring them alongside the port side of the submarine, leaving them half-shadowed in the gloom to the east while the Japanese were silhouetted against the after-glow of sunset—might have aroused lively suspicion: but it must have been almost inevitably interpreted as a panic-stricken attempt to escape, an attempt no sooner made than its futility realised. A lifeboat offered no threat to anyone and the submarine commander must have thought that he had already taken far more than ample precautions against such puny resistance as they could possibly offer.

The three craft—the submarine and the two lifeboats—were still moving ahead at about two knots when a rope came spinning down from the deck of the submarine and fell across the bows of number one lifeboat. Automatically Vannier caught it and looked back at Nicolson.

“Might as well make fast, Fourth.” Nicolson’s tone was resigned, bitter. “What good’s fists and a couple of jack-knives against this lot?”

“Sensible, so sensible.” The officer leaned over the conning-tower, his arms folded, the barrel of the gun lying along his upper left arm: the English was good, the tone self-satisfied, and the teeth a white gleaming smirk in the dark smudge of the face. “Resistance would be so unpleasant for all of us, would it not?”

“Go to hell!” Nicolson muttered.

“Such incivility! Such lack of courtesy—the true Anglo-Saxon.” The officer shook his head sadly, vastly enjoying himself. Then he suddenly straightened, looked sharply at Nicolson over the barrel of his gun. “Be very careful!” His voice was like the crack of a whip.

Slowly, unhurriedly, Nicolson completed his movement of extracting a cigarette from the packet Willoughby had offered him, as slowly struck a match, lit his own and Willoughby’s cigarettes and sent the match spinning over the side.

“So! Of course!” The officer’s laugh was brief, contemptuous. “The phlegmatic Englishman! Even though his teeth chatter with fear, he must maintain his reputation—especially in front of his crew. And another of them!” Up in the bows of the lifeboat Vannier’s bent head, a cigarette clipped between his lips, was highlit by the flaring match in his hand. “By all the gods, it’s pathetic, really pathetic.” The tone of his voice changed abruptly. “But enough of this—this foolery. Aboard at once—all of you.” He jabbed his gun at Nicolson. “You first.”

Nicolson stood up, one arm propping himself against the hull of the submarine, the other pressed close by his side.

“What do you intend to do with us, damn you?” His voice was loud, almost a shout, with a nicely-induced tremor in it. “Kill us all? Torture us? Drag us to those damned prison camps in Japan?” He was shouting in earnest now, fear and anger in the voice: Vannier’s match hadn’t gone over the side, and the hissing from the bows was even louder than he had expected. “Why in the name of God don’t you shoot us all now instead of——”

With breath-taking suddenness there came a hissing roar from the bows of the lifeboat, twin streaks of sparks and smoke and flame lancing upwards into the darkening sky across the submarine’s deck and at an angle of about thirty degrees off the vertical and then two incandescent balls of flame burst into life hundreds of feet above the water as both the lifeboat’s rocket parachute flares ignited almost at the same instant. A man would have had to be far less than human to check the involuntary, quite irresistible, impulse to look at the two rockets exploding into flame far up in the skies, and the Japanese crew of the submarine were only human. To a man, like dolls in the hands of a puppet master, they twisted round to look, and to a man they died that way, their backs half-turned to the lifeboat and their necks craned back as they stared up into the sky.

The crash of automatic carbines, rifles and pistols died away, the echoes rolled off into distant silence across the glassy sea and Nicolson was shouting at everyone to lie flat in the boat. Even as he was shouting, two dead sailors rolled off the sloping deck of the submarine and crashed into the stern of the lifeboat, one of them almost pinning him against the gunwale. The other, lifeless arms and legs flailing, was heading straight for little Peter and the two nurses, but McKinnon got there first. The two heavy splashes sounded almost like one.

One second passed, two, then three. Nicolson was on his knees, staring upwards, fists clenched as he waited in tense expectation. At first he could hear the shuffle of feet and the fast, low-pitched murmur of voices behind the shield of the big gun. Another second passed, and then another. His eyes moved along the submarine deck, perhaps there was someone still alive, still seeking a glorious death for his Emperor—Nicolson had no illusions about the fanatical courage of the Japanese. But now everything was still, still as death. The officer hanging tiredly over the conning-tower, gun still locked in a dangling hand—Nicolson’s pistol had got him, and the other two had fallen inside. Four shapeless forms lay in a grotesque huddle about the foot of the conning-tower. Of the two men who had manned the light A.A. gun there was no sign: Farnholme’s automatic carbine had blasted them over the side.

The tension was becoming intolerable. The big gun, Nicolson knew, couldn’t depress far enough to reach the boat, but he had vague memories of stories told him by naval officers of the almost decapitating effects of a naval gun fired just above one’s head. Perhaps the blast of the concussion would be fatal to those directly beneath, there was no way of knowing. Suddenly, silently, he began to curse his own stupidity and turned quickly to Willoughby.

“Start the engine up, Bo’sun. Then reverse—fast as you can. The conning-tower can block off that gun if we——”

The words were lost, obliterated in the roar of the firing gun. It wasn’t a roar, really, but a flat, violent whip-lash crack that stabbed savagely at the eardrums and almost stunned in its intensity. A long red tongue of flame flickered evilly out of the mouth of the barrel, reaching down almost to the boat itself. The shell smashed into the sea, throwing up a fine curtain of spray and a spout of water that reached fifty feet up into the sky, and then the sound had died, the smoke had cleared, and Nicolson, desperately shaking a dazed head, knew that they were alive, that the Japanese were frantically trying to load again, knew that the time had come.

“Right, Brigadier.” He could see Farnholme heaving himself to his feet. “Wait till I give the word.” He looked up swiftly towards the bows as a rifle boomed.

“Missed him.” Van Effen was disgusted. “An officer looked over the edge of the conning-tower just now.”

“Keep your gun lined up,” Nicolson ordered. He could hear the boy wailing with fear and knew that the blast of the big gun must have terrified him: his face twisted savagely as he shouted to Vannier. “Fourth! The signal set. A couple of red hand flares and heave them into the conning-tower. That’ll keep ‘em busy.” He was listening all the time to the movements of the gun crew. “All of you—watch the tower and the fore and aft hatches.”

Perhaps another five seconds passed and then Nicolson heard the sound he had been waiting for—the scrape of a shell in the breech and the block swinging solidly home. “Now!” he called sharply.

Farnhome didn’t even bother to raise the gun to his shoulder but fired with the stock under his arm, seemingly without taking any aim whatsoever. He didn’t need to, he was even better than he had claimed to be. He ripped off perhaps five shots, no more, deflected them all down the barrel of the big gun then dropped to the bottom of the lifeboat like a stone as the last bullet found the percussion nose of the shell and triggered off the detonation. Severe enough in sound and shock at such close range, the explosion of the bursting shell inside the breech was curiously muffled, although the effects were spectacular enough. The whole big gun lifted off its mounting and flying pieces of the shattered metal clanged viciously against the conning-tower and went whistling over the sea, ringing the submarine in an erratic circle of splashes. The gun-crew must have died unknowing: enough T.N.T. to blow up a bridge had exploded within arm’s length of their faces.

“Thank you, Brigadier.” Nicolson was on his feet again, forcing his voice to steadiness. “My apologies for all I ever said about you. Full ahead, Bo’sun.” A couple of sputtering crimson hand flares went arching through the air and landed safely inside the conning-tower, silhouetting the coaming against a fierce red glow. “Well done, Fourth. You’ve saved the day today.”

“Mr. Nicolson?”

“Sir?” Nicolson glanced down at the captain.

“Wouldn’t it be better, perhaps, if we stayed here a little longer? No one dare show his head through the hatches or over the tower. In ten or fifteen minutes it’ll be dark enough for us to reach that island there without the beggars taking potshots at us all the time.”

“Afraid that wouldn’t do, sir.” Nicolson was apologetic. “Right now the lads inside there are shocked and stunned, but pretty soon someone’s going to start thinking, and as soon as he does we can look for a shower of hand grenades. They can shuck them into the boat without having to show a finger—and even one would finish us.”

“Of course, of course.” Findhorn sank back wearily on his bench. “Carry on, Mr. Nicolson.”

Nicolson took the tiller, came hard round with both lifeboats through a hundred and eighty degrees, circled round the slender, fish-tail stern of the submarine while four men with guns in their hands watched the decks unblinkingly, and slowed down just abaft the submarine’s bridge to allow Farnholme to smash the A.A. gun’s delicate firing mechanism with a long, accurate burst from his automatic carbine. Captain Findhorn nodded in slow realisation.

“Exit their siege gun. You think of everything, Mr. Nicolson.”

“I hope so, sir.” Nicolson shook his head. “I hope to God I do.”

The island was perhaps half-a-mile distant from the submarine. A quarter of the way there Nicolson stooped, brought up one of the lifeboat’s two standard Wessex distress signal floats, ripped away the top disc seal, ignited it by tearing off the release fork and immediately threw it over the stern, just wide enough to clear Siran’s boat. As soon as it hit the water it began to give off a dense cloud of orange-coloured smoke, smoke that hung almost without moving in the windless twilight, an impenetrable screen against the enemy. A minute or two later bullets from the submarine began to cut through the orange smoke, whistling overhead or splashing into the water around them, but none came near enough to do any damage; the Japanese were firing at random and in blind anger. Four minutes after the first smoke float, now fizzling to extinction, had been thrown overboard the second one followed it, and long before it, too, had burnt out they had beached their boats and landed safely on the island.

NINE

It hardly deserved the name of island. An islet, perhaps, but no more. Oval in shape, lying almost due east and west, it was no more than three hundred yards long, and about a hundred and fifty from north to south. It wasn’t a perfect oval, however: about a hundred yards along from the apex the sea had cut deep notches on both sides, at points practically opposite one another, so that the islet was all but bisected. It was in the southerly bight—Nicolson had taken the precaution of rounding the island before landing—that they had beached their boats and moored them to a couple of heavy stones.

The narrow end of the island, east beyond the bights, was low and rocky and bare, but the west had some vegetation—scrub bushes and stunted lalang grass—and rose to a height of perhaps fifty feet in the middle. On the southern side of this hill there was a little hollow, hardly more than a shelf, about half-way up the slope, and it was towards this that Nicolson urged the passengers as soon as the boat had grounded. The Captain and Corporal Fraser had to be carried, but it was only a short trip and within ten minutes of the boats’ grounding the entire party had taken refuge in the hollow, surrounded by all the food, water supplies and portable equipment, even the oars and the crutches.

A light breeze had sprung up with the going down of the sun, and clouds were slowly filling up the sky from the north-east, blanketing the early evening stars, but it was still light enough for Nicolson to use his glasses. He stared through them for almost two minutes, then laid them down, rubbing his eyes. He was aware, without being able to see, that everybody in the hollow was watching him anxiously—all except the boy who was bundled up in a blanket and already drowsing off to sleep.

“Well?” Findhorn broke the silence.

“They’re moving round the western tip of the island, sir, Pretty close inshore, too.”

“I can’t hear them.”

“Must be using their batteries. Why, I don’t know. Just because they can’t see us it doesn’t mean that we can’t see them. It’s not all that dark.”

Van Effen cleared his throat. And what do you think the next move is going to be, Mr. Nicolson?”

“No idea. It’s up to them, I’m afraid. If they had either their big gun or A.A. gun left they could blast us out of here in two minutes.” Nicolson gestured at the low ridge that bounded the hollow to the south, barely visible in the gloom even six feet away. “But with a little luck I think that’ll stop rifle bullets.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Time enough to worry about that when it happens,” Nicolson answered shortly. “Maybe they’ll try to land men at various points and surround us. Maybe they’ll try a frontal attack.” He had the glasses to his eyes again. “Whatever happens they can’t just go home and say they left us here—they’d get their heads in their hands, perhaps literally. Either that or hara-kiri all over the shop.”

“They won’t go home.” Captain Findhorn’s voice was heavy with certainty. “Too many of their shipmates have died.”

For some time there had been a murmur of voices behind them, and now the murmur died away and Siran spoke.

“Mr. Nicolson?”

Nicolson lowered his binoculars and looked over his shoulder.

“What do you want?”

“My men and I have been having a discussion. We have a proposition to make to you.”

“Make it to the captain. He’s in charge.” Nicolson turned away abruptly and raised the binoculars again.

“Very well. It is this, Captain Findhorn. It is obvious —painfully obvious, if I may say so—that you do not trust us. You force us to occupy a separate lifeboat—and not, I think, because we don’t bathe twice a day. You feel—wrongly, I assure you—that you must watch us all the time. We are a heavy—ah—responsibility, a liability, I should say. We propose, with your permission, to relieve you of this liability.”

“For heaven’s sake get to the point,” Findhorn snapped irritably.

“Very well. I suggest you let us go, have no more worry about us. We prefer to be the prisoners of the Japanese.”

“What!” The angry interjection came from Van Effen. “God in heaven, sir, I’d shoot the lot of them first!”

“Please!” Findhorn waved a hand in the darkness, looking curiously at Siran, but it was too dark to see his expression.

“As a matter of interest, how would you propose to surrender yourselves. Just walk off down the hill towards the beach?”

“More or less.”

“And what guarantee would you have that they wouldn’t shoot you before you surrendered? Or, if you did succeed in surrendering, that they wouldn’t torture or kill you afterwards?”

“Don’t let them go, sir.” Van Effen’s voice was urgent.

“Do not distress yourself,” Findhorn said dryly. “I’ve no intention of complying with his ridiculous request. You stay, Siran, although heaven knows we don’t want you. Please don’t insult our intelligence.”

“Mr. Nicolson!” Siran appealed. “Surely you can——”

“Shut up!” Nicolson said curtly. “You heard what Captain Findhorn said. How naïve and dim-witted do you think we are? Not one of you would risk his precious neck if there was the slightest chance of being shot or ill-treated by the Japs. It’s a hundred to one——”

“I assure you——” Siran made to interrupt but Nicolson stopped him.

“Save your breath,” he said contemptuously. “Do you think anyone would believe you? You’re obviously in cahoots with the Japs, one way or another—and we have enough on our plates without making ourselves the present of another seven enemies.” There was a pause, then Nicolson went on thoughtfully, “A pity you promised this man to the gallows, Captain Findhorn. I think Van Effen went to the heart of the matter at once—it would simplify things all round if we shot the lot of them now. We’ll probably have to do it later on anyway.”

There was a long pause, then Findhorn said quietly: “You are very silent, Siran. You miscalculated, perhaps? Almost your last blunder? You can be very grateful, Captain Siran, for the fact that we are not callous murderers of your own stamp. But please bear in mind that it will require very little provocation indeed for us to carry out the suggestion just made.”

“And just move back a bit, will you?” Nicolson asked. “Right to the edge, there. And maybe a quick search of your pockets wouldn’t do any harm, either.”

“Already done, Mr. Nicolson,” the captain assured him. “We took a whole arsenal off them after you left the saloon last night … Still see that sub?”

“Almost due south of us now, sir. About two hundred yards offshore.”

He suddenly dropped the binoculars and pushed himself back down into the hollow. A searchlight had just been switched on in the conning-tower of the submarine, its dazzling white beam swinging rapidly along the rocky shore of the island. Almost at once it found the little notch in the shoreline where the lifeboats lay, steadied there for a couple of seconds, then started moving slowly up the hill, almost in a line with the hollow where they lay hidden.

“Brigadier!” Nicolson’s voice was sharp, urgent.

“It’ll be a pleasure,” Farnholme grunted. He slid the carbine forward along the ground, cradled it to his shoulder, sighted and fired, all in one swift movement. It was set for single shot firing, but the single shot was enough: through the fading echoes of the crash of the carbine they caught the distant tinkle of glass, and the white glare of the light faded quickly to a dull red glow, then died away altogether.

“Stay with us a few more days, will you, Brigadier?” Findhorn said dryly. “I can see that we’re going to need you around … Hardly a very bright move on their part, was it, Mr. Nicolson? I mean, they’ve already had a sample from the Brigadier here.”

“Bright enough,” Nicolson differed. “A calculated risk, and it paid off. They’ve found out where the boats are and they know now, from the flash of the brigadier’s rifle, where we are—two facts it might have cost a landing party a long time and a good few lives to find out. But it was really the boats they were worried about, not us. If they can stop us from leaving the island, they can get us at their leisure, preferably in daylight.”

“I’m afraid I agree with you,” Findhorn said slowly. “The boats come next. Sink them from the sub, you reckon? We can’t stop them if they do.”

“Not from the sub.” Nicolson shook his head. “They can’t see the boats and it would take them all night to sink them with random fire: a hundred lucky shots at least. A landing party to knock the bottom out of the boats and spike the air tanks is more likely—or tow them or row them out to sea.”

“But—but how do they get ashore?” Vannier asked.

“Swim if they have to, but they don’t have to. Most subs carry collapsible or inflatable dinghies of some kind. For a sub operating in close waters, almost certainly in contact with their own troops on a score of different islands, it would be essential.”

No one spoke for several minutes. The little boy was muttering to himself in his sleep, and Siran and his men were whispering in the far corner of the hollow, their words indistinguishable. Then Willoughby coughed to catch their attention.

“The flood of time is rolling on, etc., etc.,” he quoted. “I have an idea.”

Nicolson smiled in the darkness. “Careful, Willy.”

“Base envy hates that excellence it cannot reach,” Willoughby said loftily. “My plan has the simplicity of true genius. Let us sail away.”

“Brilliant.” Nicolson was heavily sarcastic. “Muffled oars in the moonlight. How far do you reckon we get?”

“Tush! You underrate me. Willoughby soaring in the realms of pure thought and our worthy chief officer still trudging in the mire. We use the engine, of course!”

“Oh, of course! And how do you propose to persuade our pals out there to wear ear-plugs?”

“I don’t. Give me an hour on that exhaust-pipe and baffle plates and I guarantee you won’t hear that engine a hundred yards away. Lose some speed of course, but not much. And even if they do hear it, you know yourself how difficult it is to get a bearing on a faint sound over the sea at night. Freedom beckons, gentlemen. Let us no longer delay.”

“Willy,” Nicolson said gently, “I have news for you. The human ear is not to be depended on for finding bearings at night, but then the Japs don’t have to depend on it. They use hydrophones, which are very accurate indeed—and which couldn’t care less whether you muffle the exhaust or not as the propeller thrash in the water will serve them excellently.”

“Damn them,” Willoughby said with feeling. He lapsed into silence, then spoke again. “Let no one despair. Willoughby shall think of something else.”

“I’ve no doubt you will,” Nicolson said kindly. “Don’t forget that the north-west monsoon only lasts for another couple of months or so and it would be handy if—down, everybody, down!”

The first bullets were thudding soggily into the earth around them, ricocheting with a vicious whine off the rocks and whistling evilly overhead as they heard the barrage opening up from the deck of the submarine. It had moved a good deal closer inshore and it sounded as if at least a dozen different guns, machine-guns, two at least, included, were all firing at once. And someone aboard the ship had been fast enough to take a bearing on the flash of Farnholme’s carbine: the fire was as accurate as it was heavy.

“Anybody hurt? Anybody hurt at all?” It was difficult to hear the captain’s low, hoarse voice above the crackle of gunfire.

There was no immediate reply, and Nicolson answered for the others. “I don’t think so, sir. I was the only one exposed at the time.”

“Good enough—and no retaliation just now,” Findhorn warned. “No reason for anybody to get his head blown off.” He lowered his voice with evident relief. “Mr. Nicolson, this baffles me completely. The Zeros didn’t touch us when we left the Viroma: the sub didn’t try to sink us: and the seaplane left us alone even after we’d thumped their pals. And now they’re trying their best to massacre us. It doesn’t make any kind of sense at all to me.”

“Still less to me,” Nicolson admitted. He winced involuntarily as a bullet thudded into the earth a couple of feet above his head. “And we can’t stay here and do an ostrich act, sir. This is a cover for an attack on the boats. Pointless otherwise.”

Findhorn nodded heavily in the darkness. “What do you want to do? I’m afraid I’m a dead loss, Johnny.”

“As long as you’re not just dead,” Nicolson said grimly. “Permission to take some men down to the shore, sir. We must stop them.”

“I know, I know … Good luck, boy.”

Seconds later, in a brief lull in the firing, Nicolson and six men slithered over the edge of the bank and started downhill. They hadn’t gone five paces when Nicolson whispered in Vannier’s ear, caught the Brigadier by the arm and retraced his steps with him to the eastern edge of the hollow. They lay down on the edge, peering into the darkness. Nicolson put his mouth to the Brigadier’s ear. “Remember, we play for keeps.”

He could just sense Farnholme nodding in the darkness.

They didn’t have to wait long. Within fifteen seconds they heard the first faint, cautious slither, followed at once by Findhorn’s voice, sharp and hoarse, jerking out a question. There was no reply, just another ominous movement, a swift rush of feet, the sudden click as Nicolson’s torch switched on, the brief glimpse of two running stooping figures with upraised arms, the stuttering crash of Farnholme’s automatic carbine, the heavy thud of falling bodies and then the silence and the darkness together.

“Bloody fool that I am! I’d forgotten all about these.” Nicolson was crawling about the hollow, torch hooded in his hand, tearing away weapons still clenched in dead hands. He let the light play on them for a moment. “The two hatchets from number two lifeboat, sir. They’d have made a pretty mess at close quarters.” He shone his torch at the other end of the hollow. Siran was still sitting there, his face smooth and expressionless. Nicolson knew that he was guilty, guilty as hell, that he had sent his three men to do the hatchet-work—literally—while he remained safely behind. He also knew that the bland, inscrutable face would remain that way as Siran denied all knowledge of the attack: dead men couldn’t talk, and the three men were quite dead. There was no time to waste.

“Come here, Siran.” Nicolson’s voice was as expressionless as Siran’s face. “The rest won’t give any trouble, sir.” Siran rose to his feet, walked the few paces forward and toppled to the ground like a falling tree trunk as Nicolson struck him viciously behind the ear with the butt of his Navy Colt. The blow had carried sufficient weight to crush the skull, and it had sounded like it, but Nicolson was on his way even before Siran had fallen, Farnholme at his heels. The whole episode hadn’t taken thirty seconds from start to finish.

They ran at full speed, uncaringly, down the slope, stumbling, slipping, recovering and racing on again. Thirty yards from the beach they heard a sudden flurry of shots, screams of pain, oaths, high-pitched voices shouting some insane gibberish, another volley of shots then the sounds of more blows, of struggling and violent splashing as men fought hand to hand in the water. Ten yards from the water’s edge, well ahead of Farnholme by this time, and still pounding along at the full stretch of his legs, Nicolson switched on his torch. He had a confused impression of men struggling furiously in the shallow water round the boats, caught a brief glimpse of an officer poised above a fallen McKinnon with a sword or bayonet swung back for a decapitation stroke and then leapt, one arm round the officer’s throat and the gun exploding in his back, before he landed cat-like on his feet. Again his torch swung up, steadied for a moment on Walters and a Japanese sailor thrashing and splashing as they rolled over and over in the mud-stained water: nothing to be done there—as easy to kill the one as the other. The beam lifted, and stopped again.

One of the lifeboats, well aground, was lying almost parallel to the shore. Two Japanese sailors, knee-deep in the water and sharply profiled in the harsh glare of the torch, were standing close by the stern, one of them stooping with bent head, the other upright, arm upraised, his right hand far behind his head. For a long second of time, all volition inhibited by the light that bunded their shrinking eyes, the two men held their respective positions, a frozen sequence from some nightmare ballet: and then, in perfect unison, petrified stillness yielded to convulsive action, the stooped man straightening with his right hand clutching something snatched from the net bag tied to his belt, the other dropping his left shoulder and lunging forward as his throwing arm came flashing over, and Nicolson, even as he brought his Colt up, his finger tightening on the trigger, knew that he was already too late.

Too late for Nicolson, too late for the Japanese sailors. For a second time they stiffened into immobility, brought up short by the savage jerk of some invisible hand, then they began to move again, slowly, this time, very slowly, pivoting forward with an almost ponderous deliberation on rooted, lifeless legs: Nicolson’s torch had switched off and the crash of Farnholme’s carbine was only an echoing memory as they fell on their faces, one full length into the water, the other jack-knifing heavily over the gunwale of the lifeboat and crashing on to the sternsheets, the sound of his falling lost in a flat explosive crack and sheet of blinding white as the grenade exploded in his hand.

After the bright light of the bursting grenade the darkness was doubly dark. Darkness everywhere, on land, over the sea and in the sky, complete and, for the moment, impenetrable. Away to the southwest a last few stars winked faintly in an indigo sky, but they too were going, extinguished one by one as the unseen blanket of cloud closed with the horizon. Dark, and very silent; there was no sound, no movement at all.

Nicolson risked one quick sweep with his lighted torch, then clicked off the switch. His men were all there, all on their feet, and the enemy were the enemy no longer, just little dead men lying still in the shadows. They had had next to no chance at all: they had expected no attack, deeming the Viroma’s crew safely pinned in the hollow by the submarine’s covering fire: they had been silhouetted against the sea, always lighter by night than the land: and they had been caught at a crippling disadvantage in the moment of stepping from their rubber boats into the sea.

“Anybody hurt?” Nicolson kept his voice low.

“Walters is, sir.” Vannier matched his tone with Nicolson’s. “Pretty badly, I think.”

“Let me see.” Nicolson moved across to the source of the voice, hooded the torch with his fingers and clicked the switch. Vannier was cradling Walters’s left wrist in his hand: it was a gaping, gory wound just below the ball of the thumb, and half the wrist was severed. Vannier already had a handkerchief twisted as a tourniquet, and the bright red blood was pulsing only very slowly from the wound. Nicolson switched off the light.

“Knife?”

“Bayonet.” Walters’s voice was a good deal steadier than Vannier’s had been. He prodded something lying still and shapeless at his feet in the water. “I took it from him.”

“So I gathered,” Nicolson said dryly. “Your wrist’s a mess. Get Miss Drachmann to fix it for you. It’ll be some time before you can use that hand, I’m afraid.” Which was one way of saying ‘never,’ Nicolson thought bitterly to himself. The clenching tendons had been severed clean through, and it was a certainty that the radial nerve had gone also. Paralysis, in any event.

“Better than the heart,” Walters said cheerfully. “I really need that.”

“Get up there as fast as you can. The rest of you go with him—and don’t forget to announce yourselves. For all the captain knows we lost—and he’s got a gun lying handy. Bo’sun, you stay with me.” He broke off suddenly as he heard splashing in the vicinity of the nearest lifeboat. “Who’s there?”

“Me, Farnholme. Just investigatin’, old boy. Dozens of them, actually dozens of them.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Nicolson asked irritably.

“Grenades. Bags full of ‘em. Fellow here like a walkin’ arsenal.”

“Take them away, will you? We may need them. Get someone to help you.” Nicolson and McKinnon waited till the last of the men had gone, then waded out towards the nearest lifeboat. Just as they reached it, two machine-guns opened up from the darkness to the south, tracer bullets burning white then extinguishing in vicious plops and gouts of water. Now and then a freak ricocheted off the water and whined thinly into the darkness: more rarely still a bullet thudded solidly into one or other of the lifeboats.

Stretched full length behind a boat, only his head above water, McKinnon touched Nicolson on the arm. “What’s all this in aid of, sir?” The soft Highland voice was puzzled, but completely unworried. Nicolson grinned to himself in the darkness.

“Anybody’s guess, Bo’sun. Chances are that their landing party was supposed to signal—torch or something—if they landed safely. Alarums and excursions ashore and our pals on the sub climbing the walls with uncertainty. Finally, they open up—no signal.”

“And if that’s all they’re wanting, why shouldn’t we be sending them one?”

Nicolson stared at him for a moment in the darkness, then laughed softly. “Genius, McKinnon, pure genius. If they’re all confused, and if they imagine their pals ashore are as confused as they are themselves, any old signal has a chance of getting by.”

And so it proved. Nicolson raised his hand above the lifeboat gunwale, flashed the torch irregularly on and off, then hurriedly withdraw his arm. To any trigger-happy machine-gunner that pinpoint of light must have been the answer to a prayer, but no line of tracers came lancing at them out of the darkness. Instead, both machine-guns abruptly ceased fire and all at once the night was silent and still. Land and sea alike might have been deserted; empty of all life: even the blurred silhouette of the submarine lying quietly out to sea was only a shadow, insubstantial and quite unreal, more imagined than seen.

Furtive attempts at concealment seemed not only unnecessary but dangerous. Unhurriedly both men rose to their feet and inspected the lifeboats in the light of the torch. Number two, Siran’s boat, had been holed in several places, but all above the water-line, and she appeared to be making little or no water: several of her airtight tanks had been punctured, but sufficient were undamaged to provide a still reasonable margin of safety.

It was a different story altogether with number one, the motor lifeboat. If anything, even fewer random shots had pierced her hull, but she was already settled deeply, heavily in the shallow water, her floorboards covered. The water inside the boat was stained and streaked with red blood from the shockingly mutilated Japanese sailor who lay draped over the gunwale, and it was below this barely recognisable remains of a human being that Nicolson found the cause of the trouble. The same grenade that had blown off a hand and most of a face had also blown a hole clear through the bottom of the boat, shattering the garboard strake for eighteen inches of its length and the adjacent planks right up to the bilge stringer on the starboard side. Nicolson straightened slowly and looked at McKinnon in the backwash of reflected light.

“Holed,” he murmured briefly. “I could stick my head and shoulders through that gap in the bottom. Take us days to patch the damn thing.”

But McKinnon wasn’t listening. The beam of the torch had shifted and he was staring down into the boat. When he spoke, he sounded remote, indifferent.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, sir. The engine’s finished.” He paused, then went on quietly: “The magneto, sir: the grenade must have gone off just beneath it.”

“Oh, lord, no! The magneto? Perhaps the second engineer——”

“No one could repair it, sir,” McKinnon interrupted patiently. “There’s damn all left to repair.”

“I see.” Nicolson nodded heavily and gazed down at the shattered magneto, his mind dull and heavy with all the appalling implications that smashed magneto carried with it. “There isn’t very much left of it, is there?”

McKinnon shivered. “Somebody’s walking over my grave,” he complained. He shook his head slowly, stared down into the boat even after Nicolson had switched the light off, then touched Nicolson lightly on the arm. “You know something, sir? It’s a long, long row to Darwin.”

Gudrun was her name, she told him, Gudrun Jörgensen Drachmann, the Jörgensen being for her maternal grandfather. She was three parts Danish, twenty-three years old and had been born in Odense on Armistice Day, 1918. Apart from two short stays in Malaya, she had lived in Odense all her life until she had qualified as a nurse and come out to her father’s plantations near Penang. That had been in August, 1939.

Nicolson, lying on his back against the bank of the hollow, clasped hands beneath his head and staring up unseeingly at the dark canopy of clouds, waited for her to go on, waited till she would begin again and hoped she would begin again. What was that quotation that old Willoughby, a hopeless, inveterate bachelor if ever there had lived one, had thrown at him so often in the past? “Her voice was ever soft”—that was it. King Lear. “Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low.” Willoughby’s stock excuse for avoiding the accursed snares—his own words—of holy matrimony: a female—Willoughby could invest that word with a wealth of scorn—with a voice ever soft, gentle and low—he had never found one. But maybe if Willoughby had been sitting where he’d been in the twenty minutes that had elapsed since he’d reported back to Findhorn and then come to see how the young boy was, he might have changed his mind.

Two minutes passed, three and she had said no more. By and by Nicolson stirred and turned towards her.

“You’re a long way from home, Miss Drachmann. Denmark—you liked it?” It was just something to say, but the vehemence of her answer surprised him.

“I loved it.” There was finality in her voice, the tone of someone speaking of something lost beyond recall. Damn the Japanese, damn that waiting submarine, Nicolson thought viciously. He changed the subject abruptly.

“And Malaya? Hardly the same high regard for that, eh?”

“Malaya?” The tone changed, was the vocal accompaniment of an indifferent shrug. “Penang was all right, I suppose. But not Singapore. I—I hated Singapore.” She was suddenly vehement, all indifference gone, and had no sooner shown the depths of her feelings than she had realised what she had done, for voice and subject changed again. She reached out and touched him on the arm. “I would love a cigarette too. Or does Mr. Nicolson disapprove.”

“Mr. Nicolson is sadly lacking in old world courtesy, I’m afraid.” He passed over a packet of cigarettes, struck a match and as she bent to dip her cigarette in the pool of flame he could smell the elusive sandalwood again and the faint fragrance of her hair before she straightened and withdrew into the darkness. He ground out his match into the soil and asked her gently: “Why do you hate Singapore?”

Almost half a minute passed before she replied. “Don’t you think that that might be a very personal question?”

“Very possibly.” He paused a moment, then went on quietly, “What does it matter now?”

She took his meaning at once. “You’re right, of course. Even if it’s only idle curiosity on your part, what does it matter now? It’s funny, but I don’t mind telling you —probably because I can be sure that you wouldn’t waste false sympathy on anyone, and I couldn’t stand that.” She was silent for a few seconds, and the tip of her cigarette burnt brightly in the gloom. “It’s true what I say. I do hate Singapore. I hate it because I have pride, personal pride, because I have selfpity and because I hate not to belong. You wouldn’t know about any of these things, Mr. Nicolson.”

“You know an awful lot about me,” Nicolson murmured mildly. “Please go on.”

“I think you know what I mean,” she said slowly. “I am European, was born in Europe, brought up and educated in Europe, and thought of myself only as a Dane—as did all the Danish people. I was welcome in any house in Odense. I have never been asked to any European’s house in Singapore, Mr. Nicolson.” She tried to keep her voice light. “A drug on the social market, you might say. I wasn’t a nice person to be seen with. It’s not funny when you hear someone say,’ A touch of the tarbrush, old man.’” And say it without bothering to lower their voice, and then everybody looks at you and you never go back there again. I know my mother’s mother was Malay, but she is a wonderful, kind old lady and——”

“Easy, take it easy. I know it must have been rotten. And the British were the worst, weren’t they?”

“Yes, yes they were.” She was hesitant. “Why do you say that?”

“When it comes to empire-building and colonialism we are the world’s best—and the world’s worst. Singapore is the happy hunting ground of the worst, and our worst is something to wonder at. God’s chosen people and with a dual mission in life—to pickle their livers in an impossibly short time and to see to it that those who are not of the chosen remain continually aware of the fact—the sons of Ham to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the end of their days. Good Christians all, of course, and staunch pillars and attenders of the church—if they can sober up in time on the Sunday morning. They’re not all like that, not even in Singapore: but you just didn’t have the luck to run into any of the others.”

“I didn’t expect to hear you say that.” Her voice was slow, surprised.

“Why not? It’s true.”

“That’s not what I mean. It’s just that I didn’t expect to hear you talking like—oh, well, never mind.” She laughed, self-consciously. “The colour of my skin is not all that important.”

“That’s right. Go on. Give the knife a good twist.” Nicolson ground out his cigarette beneath his heel. His voice was deliberately rough, almost brutal. “It’s damned important to you, but it shouldn’t be. Singapore’s not the world. We like you, and we don’t give two hoots if you’re heliotrope.”

“Your young officer—Mr. Vannier—he gives two hoots,” she murmured.

“Don’t be silly—and try to be fair. He saw that gash and he was shocked—and ever since he’s been ashamed of showing that shock. He’s just very young, that’s all. And the captain thinks you’re the cat’s pyjamas. ‘Translucent amber,’ that’s what he says your skin’s like.” Nicolson tuttutted softly. “Just an elderly Lothario.”

“He is not. He’s just very, very nice and I like him very much.” She added, inconsequentially: “You make him feel old.”

“Nuts!” Nicolson said rudely. “A bullet in the lungs would make anyone feel old.” He shook his head. “Oh, lord, there I go again. Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to snap at you. Daggers away, shall we, Miss Drachmann?”

“Gudrun.” The one word was both his answer and a request, and completely innocent of any hint of coquetry.

“Gudrun? I like it, and it suits you.”

“But you don’t—what is the word—reciprocate?” There was mischief now in the husky voice. “I have heard the captain call you ‘Johnny.’ Nice,” she said consideringly. “In Denmark it is the kind of name we would give to a very little boy. But I think I might manage to become used to it.”

“No doubt,” Nicolson said uncomfortably. “But you see——”

“Oh, but of course!” She was laughing at him, he knew, and he felt still more uncomfortable. “‘Johnny’ in front of the members of your crew—unthinkable! But then, of course, it would be Mr. Nicolson,” she added demurely. “Or perhaps you think ‘sir’ would be better?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Nicolson began, then stopped short and found himself echoing the girl’s barely audible laughter. “Call me anything you like. I’ll probably deserve it.”

He rose to his feet, crossed to the front of the hollow where the Muslim priest was keeping watch, spoke briefly to him then moved down the hill to where Van Effen was keeping watch over the one serviceable lifeboat. He sat there with him for a few minutes, wondering what point there was anyway in guarding the boat, then made his way back up to the hollow. Gudrun Drachmann was still awake, sitting close by the little boy. He sat down quietly beside her.

“There’s no point in sitting up all night,” he said gently. “Peter will be all right. Why don’t you go to sleep?”

“Tell me straight.” Her voice was very low. “How much chance have we got?”

“None.”

“Honest and blunt enough,” she acknowledged. “How long?”

“Noon tomorrow—and that’s a very late estimate. The submarine will almost certainly send a landing party ashore first—or try to. Then they’ll call up help—but probably the planes will be here at first light anyway.”

“Perhaps the men from the submarine will be enough. Perhaps they won’t require to call up help. How many——”

“We’ll cut them to ribbons,” Nicolson said matter-of-factly. “They’ll need help, all right. They’ll get it. Then they’ll get us. If they don’t kill us all by bombing or shelling, they may take you and Lena and Miss Plenderleith prisoner. I hope not.”

“I saw them at Kota Bharu.” She shivered at the memory. “I hope not too. And little Peter?”

“I know. Peter. Just another casualty,” Nicolson said bitterly. “Who cares about a two-year-old kid?” He did, he knew; he was becoming more attached to the youngster than he would ever have admitted to anybody, and one day, had Caroline lived——

“Is there nothing we can do?” The girl’s voice cut through his wandering thoughts.

“I’m afraid not. Just wait, that’s all.”

“But—but couldn’t you go out to the submarine and—and do something?”

“Yes, I know. Cutlasses in teeth, capture it and sail it home in triumph. You’ve been reading the wrong comic books, lady.” Before she could speak, he stretched out and caught her arm. “Cheap and nasty. I’m sorry. But they’ll be just begging for us to do something like that.”

“Couldn’t we sail the boat away without being heard or seen?”

“My dear girl, that was the first thing we thought of. Hopeless. We might get away, but not far. They or the planes would get us at dawn—and then those who weren’t killed would be drowned. Funny, Van Effen was very keen on the idea too. It’s a fast way of committing suicide,” he ended abruptly.

She thought for a few more moments. “But you think it’s possible to leave here without being heard?”

Nicolson smiled. “Persistent young so-and-so, aren’t you? Yes, it’s possible, especially if someone were creating some sort of diversion elsewhere on the island to distract their attention. Why?”

“The only way out is to make the submarine think we’re gone. Couldn’t two or three of you take the boat away—maybe to one of these little islands we saw yesterday—while the rest of us make some kind of diversion.” She was speaking quickly, eagerly now. “When the submarine saw you were gone, it would go away and——”

“And go straight to these little islands—the obvious place to go—see that there was only a few of us, kill us, sink the boat, come back here and finish the rest of you off.”

“Oh!” Her voice was subdued. “I never thought of that.”

“No, but brother Jap would. Look, Miss Drachmann——”

“Gudrun. We’ve stopped fighting, remember?”

“Sorry. Gudrun. Will you stop trying to beat your head against a brick wall? You’ll just give yourself a headache. We’ve thought of everything ourselves, and it’s no good. And if you don’t mind now I’ll try to get some sleep. I have to relieve Van Effen in a little while.”

He was just dropping off when her voice came again. “Johnny?”

“Oh lord,” Nicolson moaned. “Not another flash of inspiration.”

“Well, I’ve just been thinking again and——”

“You’re certainly a trier.” Nicolson heaved a sigh of resignation and sat up. “What is it?”

“It wouldn’t matter if we stayed here as long as the submarine went away, would it?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Answer me please, Johnny.”

“It wouldn’t matter, no. It would be a good thing—and if we could hole up here, unsuspected, for a day or so they’d probably call off the search. From this area, at least. How do you propose to make them sail away, thinking we’re gone? Going to go out there and hypnotise them?”

“That’s not even a little bit funny,” she said calmly. “If dawn came and they saw that our boat was gone—the good one, I mean—they’d think we were gone too, wouldn’t they.”

“Sure they would. Any normal person would.”

“No chance of them being suspicious and searching the island?”

“What the devil are you getting at?”

“Please, Johnny.”

“All right,” he growled. “Sorry again and again and again. No, I don’t think they’d bother to search. What are you after, Gudrun?”

“Make them think we’ve gone,” she said impatiently. “Hide the boat.”

“‘Hide the boat,’ she says! There’s not a place on the shores of this island where we could put it that the Japs wouldn’t find in half-an-hour. And we can’t hide it on the island—it’s too heavy to drag up and we’d make such a racket trying that they’d shoot the lot of us, even in the darkness, before we’d moved ten feet. And even if we could, there isn’t a big enough clump of bushes on this blasted rock to hide a decent-sized dinghy, far less a twenty-four foot lifeboat. Sorry and all that, but it’s no go. There’s nowhere you could hide it, either on sea or land, that the Japs couldn’t find it with their eyes shut.”

“These were your suggestions, not mine,” she said tranquilly. “Impossible to hide it on or around the island, and I agree. My suggestion is that you should hide it under the water.”

“What!” Nicolson half sat up, stared at her in the darkness.

“Make some sort of diversion at one end of the island,” she said quickly. “Sail the boat round the other end to that little bay in the north, fill it with stones, pull out the plug or whatever you call it, sink it in pretty deep water and then after the Japs have gone——”

“Of course!” Nicolson’s voice was a slow, considering whisper. “Of course it would work! My God, Gudrun, you’ve got it, you’ve got it!” His voice almost a shout now, he sat up with a jerk, caught the protesting, laughing girl in a bear hug of sheer joy and splendidly renewed hope, scrambled to his feet and ran across to the other side of the hollow. “Captain! Fourth! Bo’sun! Wake up, wake up all of you!”

Luck was with them at last, and it went off without a hitch. There had been some argument about the nature of the diversion—some held that the captain of the submarine, or the man who had taken over since the captain’s death, would be suspicious of a straightforward diversion, but Nicolson insisted that any man stupid enough to send a landing party straight ashore to where the boats had been instead of making a flank attack, was unlikely to be acute enough not to fall for the deception, and his insistence carried the day. Moreover, the wind, which had backed to the north, lent strength to his arguments, and the events proved him right.

Vannier acted as decoy and carried out his part intelligently and with perfect timing. For about ten minutes he moved around the shore of the south-west tip of the island, flashing his hooded torch furtively and at infrequent intervals. He had Nicolson’s night glasses with him, and as soon as he saw the dark shadow of the submarine begin to creep silently forward on her batteries he laid aside the torch altogether and took shelter behind a boulder. Two minutes later, with the submarine directly abreast of him and not more than a hundred yards off-shore, he stood up, twisted off the release fork of one of number two lifeboat’s smoke floats and hurled it as far out to sea as he could: within thirty seconds the light northerly breeze had carried the dense orange smoke out to the submarine, smoke that swirled chokingly round the men in the conning-tower and made them blind.

Four to five minutes is the normal burning time for a smoke-float, but it was more than enough. Four men and muffled oars had number two lifeboat well round to the northern side of the island a full minute before the canister hissed softly to extinction. The submarine remained where it was, motionless. Nicolson eased the lifeboat quietly alongside a steep shelf in the deep bight to the north, and found Farnholme, Ahmed the priest, Willoughby and Gordon waiting for them, a huge pile of smooth round stones lying ready at their feet.

Willoughby had insisted on removing the aircases—the idea of driving holes into them had wounded his engineer’s soul. It would take time with the limited tools at their disposal, require light for working by, would inevitably cause too much noise—and the submarine commander might at any moment take it into his head to make a quick cruise round the island, lighting his way with flares. But the risk had to be taken.

Quickly the plugs were pulled out of the garboard strake, the men working at breakneck speed, and in almost complete silence, loading the bottom-boards with the stones passed down from the shelf, carefully avoiding blocking the gushing plug holes. After two minutes Nicolson spoke softly to Farnholme, and the Brigadier went running off up the hill: only seconds later he was firing spaced shots in the direction of the submarine, the flat, explosive crack of the carbine roughly synchronising with and covering the metallic rings from the north side of the island as Nicolson and the others removed the shuttering of the buoyancy tanks and withdrew the yellow metal aircases, but leaving enough of the tanks in place to give the boat a strong positive buoyancy.

More stones into the boat, more water through the plug holes, and the level inside and out was just the same, lipping the lowest part of the gunwale, and then a few last stones and she was gone, slipping gently below the surface of the sea, steadied by fore and aft painters, settling in fifteen feet of water, on an even keel and a fine, shingly bottom. As they returned to the hollow on the hill, they saw a rocket parachute flare soaring up from the eastern tip of the island, curving away to the north-east. Vannier had timed it well, and if the submarine investigated there it would find it as quiet and empty of life as was now the other end. It would also have the effect of confusing them utterly, filling their minds with half a dozen conflicting suspicions, and, when morning came, would lend colour to the obvious conclusion that the survivors on the island had outwitted them and made off during the night.

And that was the conclusion to which they unmistakably came in the morning—a grey, overcast dawn with a strengthening wind and no sign of the sun. As soon as it was light, the carefully hidden watchers on the island, securely screened behind thick bushes, could see the figures manning the conning-tower raising binoculars to their eyes—the submarine had moved much farther out during the night—and gesticulating at each other. Shortly afterwards the sound of the diesel motors could be heard, and the submarine moved off, circling quickly round the island. Abreast the remaining lifeboat once more it came to a stop and the A.A. gun lined up on the boat and started firing—artificers must have repaired the damaged firing mechanism during the night. Only six shots in all were fired, but they were enough to reduce the boat to a holed and splintered wreck, and immediately after the last shell had exploded in the shallows the heavy diesels throbbed again and the submarine moved off due west, travelling at high speed, and investigated the two little islands there. Half an hour later it was lost to sight over the southern horizon.

TEN

The lifeboat lay motionless and dead on the motionless mirror of the sea. Nothing moved, nothing stirred, not the faintest ghost of a catspaw to ruffle the shining, steel-blue metal of the ocean that reflected every tiniest detail of the clincher sides with faithful and merciless accuracy. A dead boat on a dead sea, in a dead and empty world. An empty sea, a vast, shimmering plain of nothingness that stretched away endlessly on every side until it blurred in the far distance into the hazed rim of a vast and empty sky. No cloud in sight, and none for three days past. An empty and a terrible sky, majestic in its cruel indifference, and all the emptier for the blinding sun that beat down like an open furnace on the sweltering sea beneath.

A dead boat, too, it seemed, but not empty. It seemed full, rather, packed to capacity, but the impression was misleading. Under such pitiful shade as the remaining tatters of sail provided, men and women lay sprawled or stretched their full length on the benches, thwarts and bottom-boards, spent beyond words and prostrate with the heat, some in coma, some in nightmare sleep, others half-asleep, half-waking, making no movement at all, carefully hoarding what little spark of life was left them and the will to keep it burning. They were waiting for the sun to go down.

Of all that emaciated, sun-blackened shipload of survivors, only two could be seen to be alive. They were in as bad case as the others, gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyes, with cracked and purpled lips and ugly red suppurating blisters where their saltwater and heat-rotted clothes had laid open patches of untanned skin to the burning sun. Both men were right aft in the boat, and they could be seen to be alive only because they were sitting upright in the sternsheets. But for all the movement they made they too might have been dead, or carved from stone. One man sat with his arm leaning on the tiller, though there had been neither wind to fill the torn sails nor men with strength to man the oars for almost four days: the other had a gun in his hand, unwavering, rocklike, and only his eyes showed that he was alive.

There were twenty people in the boat. There had been twenty-two when they had set sail from that little island in the South China Sea six days ago, but only twenty now. Two had died. There never had been any hope for Corporal Fraser, he had already been weakened and ravaged with fever long before the cannon shell from the Zero had all but blown his left arm off as he had fought back at it with his puny rifle from the wheelhouse top of the Viroma. There had been no medical supplies, no anæsthetics at all left, but he had hung on for a lifetime of four days and had died only forty-eight hours ago, cheerfully and in great agony, his arm blackened right to the shoulder. Captain Findhorn had said as much of the burial service as he could remember, almost his last conscious act before he had fallen into the restless, muttering coma from which it seemed unlikely that he would ever emerge.

The other man, one of Siran’s three remaining crew members, had died the previous afternoon. He had died violently and because he had completely misinterpreted McKinnon’s slow smile and soft Highland voice. Shortly after Fraser’s death, McKinnon, whom Nicolson had made responsible for the water supplies, had discovered that one of the tanks had been damaged during the previous night, probably broached, but it was impossible to say: in any event it was empty, and they were left with less than three gallons in the remaining tank. Nicolson had at once suggested that each person in the boat should be limited to one and a half ounces of water twice a day, taken from the graduated drinking cup—part of every lifeboat’s standard equipment: all except the little boy—he was to have as much as he wanted. There had been only one or two murmurs of dissent, but Nicolson had ignored them completely. The following day when McKinnon had handed Miss Drachmann the child’s third drink of the afternoon, two of Siran’s men had made their way down the boat from their place, in the bows, armed with a heavy metal crutch apiece. McKinnon had glanced quickly at Nicolson, seen that he was asleep—he had kept guard almost all the previous night—and quietly asked them to get back, the revolver in his hand backing up his suggestion. One man had hesitated, but the other had flung himself forward, snarling like an animal, the crutch sweeping down in a vicious arc that would have crushed the bo’sun’s skull like a rotten melon if it had landed, but McKinnon had flung himself to one side even as his finger had squeezed down on the trigger and the man’s own impetus carried him headlong over the stern. He was dead before he hit the water. Then McKinnon had wordlessly lined up the Colt on the other man, but the gesture was unnecessary; the man was staring down at the thin blue smoke still wisping from the barrel of the gun, and his face was contorted with fear. He turned quickly and stumbled back to his seat in the bows. After that there had been no more trouble about the water.

At the beginning, six days ago, there had been no trouble at all. Morale had been high, hopes higher, and even Siran, still suffering from the after-effects of concussion, had been as co-operative as possible and seen to it that his men were the same: Siran was nobody’s fool and realised as clearly as any that their survival depended upon common and combined effort: an alliance of expediency, it would last just as long as it suited him.

They had left thirty-six hours after the submarine, twenty-four hours after the last reconnaissance ‘plane had passed over the tiny island and failed to find any sign of life. They had sailed at sunset, in a light following swell and the monsoon blowing steadily from the north. All night long and nearly all of the following day they had run free before the wind, and all this time the skies had remained empty and the only boat they had seen had been a prahu, lying far to the east. In the evening, with the eastern tip of Banka Island just lifting over the red and gold horizon to the west, they had seen a submarine surface not two miles away, then move away steadily to the north. Perhaps it had seen them, perhaps not—the lifeboat might have been lost against the darkening sea and sky to the east and Nicolson had dropped the tell-tale orange sails—the lug stamped with the even more damning “VA”—as soon as the submarine had broken water: either way it showed no suspicion, and was lost to sight before the sun had gone down.

That night they had gone through the Macclesfield Channel. This, they had thought, would be the most dangerous and difficult part of all, and had the wind dropped or backed or veered a few points either way they would have been lost, and found in clear sight of land when morning came. But the trades had held steadily from the north, they had left Liat on the port hand shortly after midnight and cleared the island of Lepar long before sunrise. It was just on noon of that same day that their luck finally ran out.

The wind had dropped then, suddenly and completely, and all day long they lay becalmed, not more than twenty-five miles from Lepar Island. Late in the afternoon a slow, lumbering seaplane—it might have been the same one as they had seen previously—appeared out of the west, circled overhead for almost an hour, then moved off without making any attempt to molest them. The sun was just sinking and a faint breeze beginning to spring up, again from the north, when another aeroplane appeared, again out of the west, flying about three thousand feet and straight at them. No seaplane this, but a Zero, and in no mood for either preliminaries or time-wasting. Less than a mile away it had dropped its nose and come screaming down out of the sky, twin cannon at its wing roots stabbing daggers of red in the gathering dusk, cannon-shells stitching parallel patterns of splashes and spouting spray across the placid surface of the sea right up to the centre of the helplessly waiting lifeboat, through it and away beyond. Or perhaps not so helpless—not while the Brigadier held the machine-carbine in his hands, for the Zero swung round in a tight turn and headed off back again towards the west in the direction of Sumatra, its sleek fuselage black-streaked with pouring engine oil: less than two miles away it met the seaplane returning, and the two planes disappeared together into the pale golden afterwash of sunset. The boat had been holed, severely, in two places but, remarkably, only one person hurt—Van Effen’s thigh had been badly gashed by a jagged splinter of shrapnel.

Not an hour afterwards the wind had started gusting up to force six or seven, and the sudden tropical storm was upon them almost before they had realised what was coming. It lasted for ten hours, ten interminable hours of wind and darkness and rain strangely cold, then interminable hours of yawing and pitching while the exhausted boat’s company baled for their lives all night long as pooping seas swept over the sternsheets and swirled over the sides and water gushed continuously through the jury patches in the bottom of the lifeboat—the supply of wooden plugs in the repair outfit hadn’t gone very far. Nicolson sailed south before the storm with the jib down and the lug sail reefed until he had steerage way and just no more. Every mile south was a mile nearer the Sunda Strait, but he could have done nothing else than let the storm drive him along even if he had wished to: holed by the stern and deep down by the stern, a sea anchor streamed aft would have pulled them under, and it was quite impossible to heave to with a bow anchor out: enough speed, enough steerage way to get them round would have meant enough sail to dismast the boat or capsize her on the turn, and without that steerage way the sluggish, waterlogged boat would have broached to and been driven under in the troughs. The long agony of the night had ended as abruptly as it had begun, and it was then that the real agony had started.

And now, leaning on the useless tiller, McKinnon sitting armed and still watchful by his side, Nicolson tried to thrust aside the nagging, dominating pains of thirst and swollen tongue and cracked lips and sunblistered back and to assess the damage caused, the complete change brought about by those terrible days that had elapsed since the storm had ended, endless, torturing hours under the pitiless lash of the sun, a sun at once dreadfully impersonal and malignant beyond belief, a sun that steadily grew more and more intolerable until it drove helpless, uncaring men over the edge of breakdown and collapse, physical, moral and mental.

The old spirit of comradeship had gone, vanished completely as if it had never been. Where earlier every man had sought only to help his neighbour, now most sought only to help themselves, and their indifference to their neighbour’s welfare was absolute. As each man received his pitiful portion of water or condensed milk or barley sugar—the biscuits had come to an end two days ago—a dozen greedy, hostile eyes followed every movement of thin clawed hands and thirst-cracked lips, intent on making sure that he received his exact ration and not a drop or nibble more. The greed, the starvation lust in bloodshot eyes, the ivory-knuckled clenching of sun-dark wasting hands, became especially terrible to see whenever young Peter was given an extra drink and some of the water dribbled down his chin and dripped on to the hot bench, evaporating almost as it touched. They were at the stage now when even death appeared an almost attractive alternative to the excruciating torture of their thirst. McKinnon had need of the gun in his hand.

The physical change for the worse was, if anything, even more serious than the moral collapse. Captain Findhorn was deep sunk in coma, but a restless pain-filled coma, and Nicolson had taken the precaution of tying him loosely to the gunwale and one of the thwarts. Jenkins, too, was tied down, although still conscious. Conscious, but in a private hell of indescribable agony: there were no bandages, no protection left for the terrible burns he had received just before they had abandoned the Viroma, and the blazing sun had lacerated every inch of exposed flesh until he had gone crazy with the pain. His finger-nails were blood-stained from his insane clawing of raw burning flesh. His wrists were now lashed together, the rope tied to a thwart, not to prevent further pain-maddened scratching but to prevent him from throwing himself overboard, as he had twice tried to do. For long minutes he would sit without moving, then he would fling all his strength against the rope that held his bleeding wrists, his breathing hoarse and quick with agony. Already Nicolson was wondering whether he should just cut him loose, wondering what moral justification he had for condemning the seaman to die a slow lingering death on the rack instead of letting him finish it all, finish it quickly and cleanly, in the waiting waters over the side. For he was going to die anyway: he had the look of death about him.

Evans’ gashed arm and Walters’ savagely mutilated wrist were becoming steadily worse. All medical supplies were gone, their recuperative powers were gone and salt-water drying in tattered bandages had inflamed the open wounds. Van Effen was in little better case, but his wound had been more recent and he had innate toughness and reserves of stamina far beyond the ordinary: he lay still for hours at a time, reclining on the bottomboards, shoulders braced against a thwart and staring for’ard. He seemed to have passed beyond the need for sleep.

And the mental breakdown had gone furthest of all. Vannier and the old second engineer had not yet slid over the edge of sanity, but both showed the same symptoms of increasing lack of contact with reality, the same long periods of withdrawn melancholy silence, the same occasional aimless mutterings to themselves, the brief, apologetic half-smiles if they realised they were being overheard, then the relapse once more into melancholy and silence. Lena, the young Malayan nurse, showed only the melancholy, the utter disinterest, but never talked, to herself or anyone, at any time. The Muslim priest, on the contrary, showed no melancholy, no emotion whatsoever, but was silent all the time: but then he was always silent, so it was impossible to be sure of him one way or the other. It was impossible, too, to be sure about Gordon, one moment widely smiling with staring, unfocused eyes, the next head sunk in unmoving despair. Nicolson, who had the profoundest distrust for Gordon’s calculated cunning and who had tried more than once, without success, to persuade Findhorn to get rid of him, watched him with expressionless face: the symptoms might be real enough, but they might equally well be the symptoms of a man who had read some quasi-medical article on manic-depressives and hadn’t quite got the hang of it. But there was, tragically, no doubt about the young soldier, Sinclair: all contact with reality lost, he was quite insane and had all the classic symptoms of acute schizophrenia.

But the collapse, the physical and mental breakdown, was not complete. Not quite. Apart from Nicolson, there were two men who remained quite untouched by weakness and doubt and despair—the bo’sun and the brigadier. McKinnon was the McKinnon of old, unchangeable, apparently indestructible, still with the slow smile and the soft voice and the gun always in his hand. And the brigadier—Nicolson looked at him for the hundredth time and shook his head in unconscious wonder. Farnholme was magnificent. The more their circumstances deteriorated into hopelessness, the better the brigadier became. When there was pain to be eased, sick men to be made more comfortable or shielded from the sun, or water to be baled—it was seldom enough, now, that the floorboards weren’t covered, and a random bullet on the island had smashed the manual pump—the brigadier was there, helping, encouraging, smiling and working without complaint or hope of thanks or reward. For a man of his age —Farnholme would never see sixty again—it was a quite incredible performance. Nicolson watched him in a kind of bewildered fascination. The fiery and fatuous Colonel Blimp of the up-and-at-’em-sir school he had met aboard the sinking Kerry Dancer might never have existed. Strangely enough, too, the affected Sandhurst drawl had vanished so completely that Nicolson found himself wondering whether he had imagined it in the first place: but there was no questioning the fact that the military expressions and Victorian oaths that had so heavily larded his conversation only a week ago were now so rare as to occasion comment whenever he used them. Perhaps the most convincing proof of his conversion—if that was the word—was the fact that he had not only buried the hatchet with Miss Plenderleith but spent most of his time sitting beside her and talking softly in her ear. She was now very weak, though her tongue had lost none of its power for pungent and acid comment, and she graciously accepted the innumerable small services Farnholme performed for her. They were together now, and Nicolson looked at them, his face expressionless, but smiling to himself. Had they been thirty years younger, he’d have laid odds on the brigadier having designs on Miss Plenderleith. Honourable designs, of course.

Something stirred against his knee, and Nicolson glanced down. Gudrun Drachmann had been sitting there for almost three days now, on the lower cross seat, holding on to the little boy when he jumped about the thwart in front of her—thanks to the unstinted supplies of food and water he received from Miss Plenderleith and McKinnon, Peter Tallon was the only person on the boat with excess energy to dispose of—and cradling him in her arms for hours at a time as he slept. She must have suffered severely from cramp, but never complained. Her face was thinned down now, the cheekbones very prominent, and the great scar on her left cheek more livid and uglier every hour as her skin darkened under the burning sun. She was smiling at him now, a small painful smile through sun-cracked lips, then looked away and nodded at Peter. But it was McKinnon who caught the look, interpreted it correctly, smiled in return and lowered the dipper into the little warm, brackish water that was left in the tank. Almost as if by a pre-arranged signal, a dozen heads lifted and followed every movement of the dipper, McKinnon’s careful transfer of the water from the dipper to a cup, the eagerness with which the little boy clasped the cup in his pudgy hands and gulped the water down. Then they looked away from the child and the empty cup and looked at McKinnon instead, bloodshot eyes dulled with suffering and hate, but McKinnon just smiled his slow, patient smile and the gun in his hand never moved.

Night, when it came at last, brought relief, but relief only of a very limited nature. The burning heat of the sun was gone, but the air was still very hot and stifling and oppressive, and the pitiful ration of water each had received just as the sun had gone down had only whetted their appetite for more, made their raging thirsts all the more painful and intolerable. For two or three hours after sunset people shifted restlessly in their seats in the lifeboat, and some even tried to talk with others, but the talk didn’t last very long: their throats were too parched, their blistered mouths too sore, and always, at the back of everybody’s mind must have been the hopeless thought that, unless some miracle occurred, for some of them tonight’s would have been the last sunset they would ever see. But nature was merciful, their minds and bodies were exhausted by hunger and thirst and by the day-long energy-sapping power of the sun, and by and by nearly all of them dropped off into a restless muttering sleep.

Nicolson and McKinnon went to sleep too. They hadn’t intended to, it had been their purpose to share the night watches, but exhaustion had dug its fingers as deeply into them as any, and they dozed off from time to time, heads nodding on their chests, then waking with a start. Once, waking out of a short sleep, Nicolson thought he heard someone moving around the boat, and called out softly. There was no reply, and when he called out again and was again answered with silence, he reached under his seat and brought out his torch. The battery was almost gone now, but the feeble yellow beam was enough to show him that all was quiet, that nobody was out of his or her place, every black and shapeless shadow lying sprawled lifelessly across thwarts and bottomboards almost exactly where it had been when the sun had gone down. Not long afterwards, just as he was dozing off again, he could have sworn he heard a splash reaching down through his deep-drugged mists of sleep, and again he reached for his torch. But again there was no one there, no one moving around, no one even moving at all. He counted all the huddled shadows, and the number was right: nineteen, excluding himself.

He stayed awake for the remainder of the night, consciously fighting against an almost overpowering tiredness, against leaden eyelids and a woolly, fuzzy mind, ignoring the demands of a parched throat and dry, swollen tongue that seemed to fill all his mouth that he should let go, let his quivering eyelids fall and bring a few hours’ blessed oblivion. But something far back in his mind kept telling him that he mustn’t let go, that the lifeboat and the lives of twenty people were in his hands, and when these urgings were not enough he thought of the little boy asleep less than two feet away, and then he was wide awake again. And so a night that was the epitome of all the sleepless nights he had ever known dragged endlessly by, and after a long, long time the first faint streaks of grey began to lighten the eastern horizon.

Minutes passed, and he was beginning to see the mast clearly silhouetted against the greying sky, then the line of the gunwale of the boat, then the separate and distinct forms of the people lying about the boat. He looked first at the boy. He was still sleeping peacefully in the sternsheets beside him, wrapped in a blanket, his face only a white blur in the darkness, his head lying pillowed in the crook of Gudrun Drachmann’s arm. She herself was still sitting on the lower cross seat, twisted round at an uncomfortable angle, her head on the sternsheets. Bending down more closely, Nicolson could see that her head wasn’t resting squarely on the seat but against it, the edge of the wood cutting cruelly into her right cheek. Carefully he raised her head, eased a doubled corner of the blanket over the edge of the seat and then, moved by some strange impulse, gently moved back the wave of blue-black hair that had fallen forward over her face, concealing the long, ragged scar. For a moment he let his hand rest there, lightly, then he saw the sheen of her eyes in the gloom and knew that she had not been asleep. He felt no embarrassment, no guilt, just smiled down at her without speaking: she must have seen the gleam of his teeth against his darkly-tanned face, for she smiled in return, rubbed the scarred cheek softly, twice, against his hand then slowly straightened, careful not to disturb the sleeping boy.

The boat was settling deeper in the water, the level inside already two or three inches above the floorboards, and Nicolson knew it was time and past time to bale it out. But baling was a noisy business, and it seemed pointless to wake people from the forgetfulness of sleep to the iron realities of another day when the boat could go at least another hour without being emptied: true, many people were up to their ankles in water, and one of two actually sitting in it, but these were only tiny discomforts compared to what they would have to suffer before the sun went down again.

And then, suddenly, he saw something that drove away all thought of inaction, all thought of sleep. Quickly he shook McKinnon awake—he had to, for McKinnon had been leaning against him and would have fallen had Nicolson risen without warning—rose, stepped over the after thwart and dropped down on his knees on the next lower cross seat. Jenkins, the seaman who had been so dreadfully burnt, was lying in a most peculiar position, half-crouched, half-kneeling, his bloodied wrists still tied to the thwart, his head jammed against the tank leading. Nicolson stooped and shook him by the shoulder: the seaman fell further over on his side, but made no other movement. Again Nicolson shook him, more urgently this time, calling his name, but Jenkins would never be shaken awake nor hear his name again. By accident or design—probably by design, and in spite of the ropes that bound him—he had slipped off the thwart some time during the night and drowned in a few inches of bilge-water.

Nicolson straightened his back and looked at McKinnon, and the bo’sun nodded, understanding at once. It wouldn’t do the lifeboat’s morale any good at all if the survivors woke and found a dead man in their midst, and that they should slip him quietly over the side without even a shred of a burial service seemed a small price to pay for preserving the already fading reason of more than one who might lose it entirely if he opened his eyes only to find already in their midst what he knew must eventually come to all.

But Jenkins was heavier than he looked, and his body was awkwardly jammed between the thwarts. By the time McKinnon had cut free the securing ropes with his jack-knife and helped Nicolson drag him to a side bench, at least half the people in the lifeboat were awake, watching them struggle with the body, knowing that Jenkins was dead, yet looking on with eyes lack-lustre and strangely uncomprehending. But no one spoke; it seemed as if they might get Jenkins over the side without any hysterical outbursts or demonstrations, when a sudden high-pitched cry from for’ard, a cry that was almost a scream, made even the most tired and lethargic jerk their heads round and stare up towards the bows of the boat. Both Nicolson and McKinnon, startled, dropped the body and swung round: in the hushed stillness of the tropical dawn, the cry had seemed unnaturally loud.

The cry had come from the young soldier, Sinclair, but he wasn’t looking at Jenkins, or anywhere in that direction. He was on his knees on the floorboards, rocking gently to and fro, staring down at somebody lying stretched on his back. Even as Nicolson watched, he flung himself to one side and pillowed his head on his forearms and the gunwale, moaning softly to himself.

In three seconds Nicolson was by his side, gazing down at the man in the bottom of the boat. Not all of his body was lying on the boards—the backs of his knees were hooked over a thwart, the legs pointing incongruously skywards, as if he had fallen backwards from the seat on which he had been sitting: the back of his head rested in a couple of inches of water. It was Ahmed the priest, Farnholme’s strange and taciturn friend, and he was quite dead.

Nicolson stooped over the priest, quickly thrust his hand inside the man’s black robe to feel for the heart and as quickly withdrew. The flesh was cold and clammy: the man had been dead for hours.

Unconsciously, almost, Nicolson shook his head in bewilderment, glanced up at McKinnon and saw his own expression reflected there. He looked down again, bent over the body to lift up the head and the shoulders, and it was then that the shock came. He couldn’t shift the body more than a couple of inches. Again he tried and again he failed. At his signal, McKinnon lifted one side of the body while Nicolson knelt down till his face was almost in the water, and then he saw why he had failed. The jack-knife between the shoulder-blades was buried clear up to the hilt, and the handle was caught between the planks of the bottom-boards.

ELEVEN

Nicolson rose slowly to his feet and drew his forearm across his forehead. It was already hot for the time of the day, but not that hot. His right arm hung loosely by his side, the butt of the Colt gripped tightly in his hand. He had no recollection of pulling it out of his belt. He gestured at the fallen priest.

“This man is dead.” His quiet voice carried easily in the hushed silence. “He has a knife in his back. Someone in this boat murdered him.”

“Dead! You said he was dead? A knife in his back?” Farnholme’s face wasn’t pleasant as he pushed for’ard and knelt at the priest’s side. He was on his feet in a moment, his mouth a thin white line in the darkness of his face. “He’s dead all right. Give me that gun, Nicolson. I know who did it.”

“Leave that gun alone!” Nicolson held him off with a stiff arm, then went on: “Sorry, Brigadier. As long as the captain’s unwell I am in charge of this boat. I can’t let you take the law into your own hands. Who did it?”

“Siran, of course!” Farnholme was back on balance again, but there was no masking the cold rage in his eyes. “Look at the damn murdering hound, sitting there smirking.”

“‘The smiler with the knife beneath the cloak’.” It was Willoughby who spoke. His voice was weak and husky, but he was quiet and composed enough: the night’s sleep seemed to have done him some good.

“It’s not under anyone’s cloak,” Nicolson said matter-of-factly. “It’s sticking in Ahmed’s back—and it’s because of my damn criminal carelessness that it is,” he added in the bitterness of sudden recollection and understanding. “I forgot that there was a boat jack-knife as well as two hatchets in number two lifeboat … Why Siran, Brigadier?”

“Good God, man, of course it’s Siran!” Farnholme pointed down at the priest.” We’re looking for a cold-blooded murderer, aren’t we? Who else, but Siran?”

Nicolson looked at him. “And what else, Brigadier?”

“What do you mean, ‘what else’?”

“You know very well. I wouldn’t shed any more tears than you if we had to shoot him, but let’s have some little shred of evidence first.”

“What more evidence do you want? Ahmed was facing aft, wasn’t he? And he was stabbed in the back. So somebody in the front of the boat did it—and there were only three people farther for’ard than Ahmed. Siran and his two killers.”

“Our friend is overwrought.” It was Siran who spoke, his voice as smooth and expressionless as his face. “Too many days in an open boat in tropical seas can do terrible things to a man.”

Farnholme clenched his fists and started for’ard, but Nicolson and McKinnon caught him by the arms.

“Don’t be a fool,” Nicolson said roughly. “Violence won’t help matters, and we can’t have fighting in a small boat like this.” He relased his grip on Farnholme’s arm, and looked thoughtfully at the man in the bows. “You may be right, Brigadier. I did hear someone moving about the boat, up for’ard, last night, and I did hear something like a thud. Later on I heard a splash. But I checked where the priest had been sitting.”

“His bag is gone, Nicolson. I wonder if you can guess where?”

“I saw his bag,” Nicolson said quietly. “Canvas, and very light. It wouldn’t sink.”

“I’m afraid it would, sir.” McKinnon nodded towards the bows. “The grapnel’s gone.”

“Weighted to the bottom, eh, Bo’sun? That would sink it all right.”

“Well, there you are then,” Farnholme said impatiently. “They killed him, took his bag and flung it over the side. You looked both times you heard a noise and both times you saw Ahmed sitting up. Somebody must have been holding him up—probably by the handle of the knife stuck in his back. Whoever was holding him must have been sitting behind him—in the bows of the boat. And there were only these three damned murderers sitting there.” Farnholme was breathing heavily, his fists still white-knuckled, and his eyes not leaving Siran’s face.

“It sounds as if you were right,” Nicolson admitted. “How about the rest of it?”

“How about the rest of what?”

“You know quite well. They didn’t kill him just for the exercise. What was their reason?”

“How the devil should I know why they killed him?”

Nicolson sighed. “Look Brigadier, we’re not all morons. Of course you know. You suspected Siran immediately. You expected Ahmed’s bag to be missing. And Ahmed was your friend.”

Just for a moment something flickered far back in Farnholme’s eyes, a faint shadow of expression that seemed to be reflected in the sudden tense tightening of Siran’s mouth, almost as if the two men were exchanging a guarded look, maybe of understanding, maybe of anything. But the sun was not yet up, and Nicolson couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t imagining the exchange of glances, and, besides, any idea or suspicion of collusion between the two was preposterous. Give Farnholme a gun and Siran would be only a memory.

“I suppose you have a right to know.” Farnholme appeared to be holding himself tightly under control but his mind was racing furiously, fabricating a story that would bear examination. “It won’t do any harm, not now, not any more.” He looked away from Siran and stared down at the dead man at his feet, and his expression and tone softened. “Ahmed was my friend, you say. He was, but a very new friend, and only then because he desperately needed a friend. His name is Jan Bekker, a countryman of Van Effen’s here. Lived in Borneo—Dutch Borneo—near Samarinda, for many years. Representative of a big Amsterdam firm and supervisor of a whole string of river rubber plantations. And a lot more besides.”

He paused, and Nicolson prompted him: “Meaning?”

“I’m not quite certain. He was some kind of agent for the Dutch Government. All I know is that some weeks ago he broke up and exposed a well-organised Japanese Fifth Column in Eastern Borneo. Dozens of them arrested and shot out of hand—and he also managed to get hold of their complete list of every Japanese agent and fifth-columnist in India, Burma, Malaya and the East Indies.

“He carried it in his bag, and it would have been worth a fortune to the allies. The Japs knew he had it, and they’ve put a fantastic price on his head—dead or alive—and offered a similar reward for the return or destruction of the lists. He told me all this himself. Somehow or other Siran knew of all this, and that’s what he’s been after. He’s earned his money, but I swear before God he’ll never live to collect.”

“And that’s why Bekker or whatever his name is was disguised?”

“It was my idea,” Farnholme said heavily. “I thought I was being very, very clever. Muslim priests are as good as any other priests in the world: a renegade, whisky-drinking priest is an object of contempt and everybody shuns him. I tried as best I could to be the kind of dissolute drinking companion a man like that would have. We weren’t clever enough. I don’t think we could have been anyway. The alarm call was out for Bekker the length and breadth of the Indies.”

“He was a very lucky man to have got even this far,” Nicolson acknowledged. “That’s why the Japs have been at such pains to get us?”

“Heavens above, man, surely it’s all obvious enough now!” Farnholme shook his head impatiently, then looked again at Siran: there was no anger in his eyes now, only cold, implacable purpose. “I’d sooner have a king cobra loose in this boat than that murderous swine there. I don’t want you to have any blood on your hands, Nicolson. Give me your gun.”

“How very convenient,” Siran murmured. Whatever he lacked, Nicolson thought, it wasn’t courage. “Congratulations, Farnholme. I salute you.”

Nicolson looked at him curiously, then at Farnholme. “What’s he talking about?”

“How the devil should I know,” Farnholme answered impatiently. “We’re wasting time, Nicolson. Give me that gun!”

“No.”

“For God’s sake, why not? Don’t be a fool, man. There’s not one of our lives worth a snuff of a candle as long as this man’s at large in the boat.”

“Very likely,” Nicolson agreed. “But suspicion, no matter how strong, is not proof. Even Siran is entitled to a trial.”

“In the name of heaven!” Farnholme was completely exasperated. “Don’t you know that there’s a time and place for these quaint old Anglo-Saxon notions about fair play and justice. This is neither the time nor the place. This is a matter of survival.”

Nicolson nodded. “I know it is. Siran wouldn’t recognise a cricket bat if he saw one. Get back in your seat, Brigadier, please. I’m not completely indifferent to the safety of the others in the boat. Cut one of the heaving lines in three, bo’sun, and make a job on these characters. It doesn’t matter if the knots are a bit tight.”

“Indeed?” Siran raised his eyebrows. “And what if we refuse to subject ourselves to this treatment?”

“Suit yourselves,” Nicolson said indifferently. “The brigadier can have the gun.”

McKinnon made a very thorough job of immobilising Siran and his two men, and took a great deal of grim satisfaction in hauling the ropes tight. By the time he was finished the three men were trussed hand and foot and quite unable to move: as a further precaution he had secured the three rope ends to the ring-bolt in the for’ard apron. Farnholme had made no further protest. It was noticeable, however, that when he resumed his seat on the benches beside Miss Plenderleith, he changed his position so that he was between her and the stern, and from there he could watch both her and the bows of the boat at the same time: his carbine was lying on the seat beside him.

His work done, McKinnon came aft to the sternsheets and sat down beside Nicolson. He brought out dipper and graduated cup, ready to serve out the morning ration of water, then turned suddenly to Nicolson. Half-a-dozen people in the boat were talking—the babble wouldn’t last long after the sun cleared the horizon—and his low pitched words could not have been heard two feet away.

“It’s a desperate long way to Darwin, sir,” he said obliquely.

Nicolson lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug and smiled: but his face was dark with worry. “You, too, Bo’sun? Maybe my judgment was wrong. I’m sure that Siran will never stand trial. But I can’t kill him, not yet.”

“He’s just waiting his chance, sir.” McKinnon was as worried as Nicolson. “A killer. You heard the Brigadier’s story.”

“That’s the trouble. I did hear his story.” Nicolson nodded heavily, looked at Farnholme, glanced at McKinnon and then stared down at his hands. “I didn’t believe a damn single word he said. He was lying all the way.”

The sun wheeled like a great burning ball above the eastern horizon. Inside an hour nearly all talk was stopped and people were crawling back into their shells of remote indifference, each alone with his own private hell of thirst and pain. Hour succeeded interminable hour, the sun climbed higher and higher into the empty washed-out blue of the windless sky, and the lifeboat remained as she had been for days on end now, motionless on the water. That they had moved many miles south in those days Nicolson was well aware, for the current set due south from Straat Banka to the Sunda Strait eleven months out of twelve: but there was no movement relative to the water surrounding them, nothing that the human eye could see.

Nobody moved aboard the boat any more than the boat moved on the surface of the sea. With the sun swinging high towards the zenith, the slightest effort brought exhaustion in its wake, a panting of breath that whistled shrilly through a bondry mouth and cracked and blistered lips. Now and again the little boy moved about and talked to himself in his own private language, but as the day lengthened and the hot and humid air became more and more oppressive and suffocating, his activities and his talk lessened and lessened until finally he was content to lie still on Gudrun’s lap, gazing up thoughtfully into the clear blue eyes: but by and by his eyelids grew heavy and dropped, and he fell asleep. Arms outstretched in dumb show Nicolson offered to take him and give her a rest, but she just smiled and shook her head. It suddenly came home to Nicolson, with a sense of something like wonder, that she nearly always smiled when she spoke: not always, but he’d yet to hear his first complaint from her or see the first expression of discontent. He saw the girl looking at him, strangely, and he forced a smile on his face, then looked away.

Now and again a murmur of voices came from the side benches on the starboard side. What the brigadier and Miss Plenderleith found to talk about Nicolson couldn’t even begin to guess, but find it they did, and plenty of it. In the gaps in their conversation they just sat and looked into one another’s eyes, and the brigadier held her thin wasted hand in his all the time. Two or three days ago it had struck Nicolson as mildly humorous, and he had had visions of the brigadier in a bygone and gentler age, immaculately dressed in white tie and tails and carnation in his buttonhole, hair and moustache as jet black as they were now snowy white, his hansom cab ready while he himself stood at the stage door entrance, waiting. But he couldn’t see anything funny in it, not any longer. It was all rather quiet and pathetic, a Darby and Joan waiting patiently for the end, but not at all afraid.

Slowly Nicolson’s gaze travelled round the boat. There wasn’t much change from yesterday that he could see, except that everybody seemed just that much weaker, that much more exhausted than they had been, with hardly the strength left to move into the few solitary scraps of shade that remained. They were very low. It didn’t need any expert medical eye to see that the distance from listlessness to lifelessness was only a very short step indeed. Some were now so far through that it was only by a conscious effort that they could rouse themselves to accept their midday ration of water, and even then one or two found the greatest difficulty in swallowing. Forty-eight hours and most of them would be dead. Nicolson knew where they were, near enough, since he still had his sextant with him: in the vicinity of the Noordwachter light, perhaps fifty miles due east of the coast of Sumatra. If neither wind nor rain came within the next twenty-four hours, then it wouldn’t matter after that whether it came or not.

On the credit side, the only cheering item was that of the captain’s health. He had come out of his coma just after dawn and now, sitting on a cross seat and wedged between a thwart and bench, he seemed determined not to lose consciousness again. He could speak normally now—as normally as any of them could speak with thirst choking in their throats—and he no longer coughed blood, not at any time. He had lost a great deal of weight in the past week, but in spite of that looked stronger than he had done for days. For a man with a bullet lodged either in his lung or the chest wall to survive the rigours of the previous week, and at the same time be denied all medical attention or medicines was something Nicolson would have refused to believe unless he had seen it. Even now, he found Findhorn’s recuperative powers—Findhorn was almost at his retiring age—difficult to credit. He knew, too, that Findhorn had really nothing to live for, no wife, no family, just nothing, which made his courage and recovery all the more astonishing. And all the more bitter for, with all the guts in the world, he was still a very sick man, and the end could not be very far away. Maybe it was just his sense of responsibility, but perhaps not. It was difficult to say, impossible to say. Nicolson realised that he himself was too tired, too uncaring to worry about it longer. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered. He closed his eyes to rest them from the harsh, shimmering glare of the sea, and quietly dropped off to sleep in the noonday sun.

He awoke to the sound of someone drinking water, not the sound of a person drinking the tiny little rations of hot, brackish liquid that McKinnon doled out three times a day, but great, gasping mouthfuls at a time, gurgling and splashing as if he had a bucket to his head. At first Nicolson thought that someone must have broached the remaining supplies, but he saw immediately that it wasn’t that. Sitting on a thwart up near the mast, Sinclair, the young soldier, had the baler to his head. It was an eight-inch baler, and it held a lot of water. His head was tilted right back, and he was just draining the last few drops from it.

Nicolson rose stiffly to his feet, carefully picked his way for’ard through the bodies sprawled over seats and benches and took the can from the boy’s unresisting hand. He lifted the baler and let a couple of drops trickle slowly into his mouth. He grimaced at the prickly saltiness of the taste. Seawater. Not that there had really been any doubt about it. The boy was staring up at him, his eyes wide and mad, pitiful defiance in his face. There were perhaps half a dozen men watching them, looking at them with a kind of listless indifference. They didn’t care. Some of them at least must have seen Sinclair dipping the baler in the sea and then drink from it, but they hadn’t bothered to stop him. They hadn’t even bothered to call out. Maybe they even thought it was a good idea. Nicolson shook his head and looked down at the soldier.

“That was sea-water, wasn’t it, Sinclair?”

The soldier said nothing. His mouth was twitching, as if he were forming words, but no sound came out. The insane eyes, wide and flat and empty, were fixed on Nicolson, and the lids didn’t blink, not once.

“Did you drink all of it?” Nicolson persisted, and this time the boy did answer, a long, monotonous string of oaths in a high, cracked voice. For a few seconds Nicolson stared down at him without speaking, then shrugged his shoulders tiredly and turned away. Sinclair half rose from his thwart, clawed fingers reaching for the baler, but Nicolson easily pushed him away, and he sank back heavily on his seat, bent forward, cradled his face in his hands and shook his head slowly from side to side. Nicolson hesitated for a moment, then made his way back to the sternsheets.

Midday came and went, the sun crossed over its zenith and the heat grew even more intense. The boat now was as soundless as it was lifeless and even Farnholme’s and Miss Plenderleith’s murmurings had ceased and they had dropped off into an uneasy sleep. And then, just after three o’clock in the afternoon, when even to the most resolute it must have seemed that they were lost in an endless purgatory, came the sudden change.

Little enough in itself, the change was as dramatic as it was abrupt, but a change so slight that at first it failed to register or have its significance encompassed by exhausted minds. It was McKinnon who noticed it first, noticed it and knew what it meant, and he sat bolt upright in the sternsheets, blinking at first in the sea-mirrored glare of the sun, then searching the horizon from north to east. Seconds later he dug his fingers into Nicolson’s arm and shook him awake.

“What is it, Bo’sun?” Nicolson asked quickly. “What’s happened?” But McKinnon said nothing, just sat there looking at him, cracked, painful lips drawn back in a grin of sheer happiness. For a moment Nicolson stared at him, blankly uncomprehending, thinking only that at last McKinnon, too, had gone over the edge, then all at once he had it.

“Wind!” His voice was only a faint, cracked whisper, but his face, a face that could feel the first tentative stirrings of a breeze degrees cooler than the suffocating heat of only minutes previously, showed how he felt. Almost at once, exactly as McKinnon had done, he too stared away to the north and east and then, for the first and only time in his life, he thumped the grinning bo’sun on the back. “Wind, McKinnon! And cloud! Can you see it?” His pointing arm stretched away to the north-east: away in the far distance a bluish purple bar of cloud was just beginning to lift over the horizon.

“I can see it, sir. No doubt about it at all. Coming our way, all right.”

“And that wind’s strengthening all the time. Feel it?” He shook the sleeping nurse by the shoulder. “Gudrun! Wake up! Wake up!”

She stirred, opened her eyes and looked up at him. “What is it, Johnny?”

“Mr. Nicolson to you.” He spoke with mock severity, but he was grinning with delight. “Want to see the most wonderful sight anyone ever saw?” He saw the shadow of distress cross the clear blue of her eyes, knew what she must be thinking, and smiled again. “A raincloud, you chump! A w?onderful, wonderful rain-cloud. Give the captain a shake, will you?”

The effect on the entire boat’s company was astonishing, the transformation almost beyond belief. Within two minutes everybody was wide awake, twisted round and staring eagerly towards the north-east, chattering excitedly to one another. Or not quite everybody—Sinclair, the young soldier, paid no heed at all, just sat staring down at the bottom of the boat, lost in a vast indifference. But he was the solitary exception. For the rest, they might have been condemned men granted the right to live again, and that was almost literally true. Findhorn had ordered an extra ration of water all round. The long bar of clouds was perceptibly nearer. The wind was stronger and cool on their faces. Hope was with them again and life once more worth the living. Nicolson was dimly aware that this excitement, this physical activity, was purely nervous and psychological in origin, that, unknown to them, it must be draining their last reserves of strength, and that any disappointment, any reversal of this sudden fortune, would be the equivalent of a death penalty. But it didn’t seem likely.

“How long, do you think, my boy?” It was Farnholme talking.

“Hard to say.” Nicolson stared off to the northeast. “Hour and a half, perhaps, maybe less if the wind freshens.” He looked at the captain. “What do you think, sir?”

“Less,” Findhorn nodded. “Wind’s definitely strengthening, I think.”

“‘I bring fresh showers for thirsting flowers’,” the second engineer quoted solemnly. He rubbed his hands together. “For flowers substitute Willoughby. Rain, rain, glorious rain!”

“A bit early to start counting your chickens yet, Willy,” Nicolson said warningly.

“What do you mean?” It was Farnholme who replied, his voice sharp.

“Just that rain-clouds don’t necessarily mean rain, that’s all.” Nicolson spoke as soothingly as he could. “Not at first, that is.”

“Do you mean to tell me, young man, that we’ll be no better off than we were before?” There was only one person on the boat who addressed Nicolson as ‘young man.’

“Of course not, Miss Plenderleith. These clouds look thick and heavy, and it’ll mean shelter from the sun, for one thing. But what the captain and I are really interested in is the wind. If it picks up and holds we can reach the Sunda Straits sometime during the night.”

“Then why haven’t you the sails up?” Farnholme demanded.

“Because I think the chances are that we will have rain,” Nicolson said patiently. “We’ve got to have something to funnel the water into cups or baler or whatever we use. And there’s not enough wind yet to move us a couple of feet a minute.”

For the better part of an hour after that nobody spoke. With the realisation that salvation wasn’t as immediate as they had thought, some of the earlier listlessness had returned. But only some. The hope was there, and none of them had any intention of letting it go. No one closed his eyes or went to sleep again. The cloud was still there, off the starboard beam, getting bigger and darker all the time, and it had all their attention. Their gaze was on that and on nothing else and maybe that was why they didn’t see Sinclair until it was too late.

It was Gudrun Drachmann who saw him first, and what she saw made her rise as quickly as she could and stumble for’ard towards the boy. His eyes upturned in his head so that his pupils had vanished and only the whites were visible, he was jerking convulsively in his seat, his teeth chattering violently like a man in an ague and his face was the colour of stone. Even as the girl reached him, calling his name softly, beseechingly, he pushed himself to his feet, struck at her so that she stumbled and fell against the brigadier, and then, before anyone had time to recover and do anything, tore off his shirt, flung it at the advancing Nicolson and jumped overboard, landing flat-faced with a splash that sent water spattering all over the boat.

For a few seconds no one moved. It had been all so swift and unexpected that they could have imagined it. But there was no imagination about the empty thwart in the boat, the spreading ripples on the glassy surface of the sea. Nicolson stood motionless, arrested in mid-step, the ragged shirt caught in one hand. The girl was still leaning against Farnholme, saying ‘Alex’, ‘Alex’, over and over again, meaninglessly. And then there came another splash from right aft, not so loud this time. The bo’sun had gone after him.

The second splash brought Nicolson back to life and action with a perceptible jerk. Stooping quickly, he caught hold of the boat-hook and turned quickly to the side of the boat, kneeling on the bench. Almost without thinking he had dragged his pistol from his belt and was holding it in his free hand. The boat-hook was for McKinnon, the pistol for the young soldier. The panic-stricken grip of a drowning man was bad enough: God only knew what that of a drowning madman might be like.

Sinclair was thrashing about in the water about twenty feet from the boat and McKinnon, just surfaced, was splashing determinedly towards him—like nearly all Islanders, swimming was not one of his better accomplishments—when Nicolson caught sight of something that struck at him like an ice-cold chill. He swung the boat-hook in a wide curving arc that brought it crashing into the water only inches from McKinnon ‘s shoulder. Instinctively the bo’sun caught hold of it and twisted round, his dark face a mass of startled incomprehension.

“Back, man, back!” Nicolson shouted. Even in that moment of near-panic he could hear that his voice was hoarse and cracked. “For God’s sake, hurry up!”

McKinnon started to move slowly towards the boat, but not of his own volition: he still held on to the boat-hook, and Nicolson was drawing it quickly inboard. McKinnon’s face still had its almost comical expression of bewilderment. He looked over his shoulder to where Sinclair was still splashing aimlessly around, more than thirty feet away now, looked back again towards the boat, opened his mouth to speak and then shouted aloud with pain. A split second passed, he shouted again, and then, mysteriously galvanised into furious activity, splashed his way madly towards the boat. Five frantic strokes and he was alongside, half-a-dozen hands dragging him headfirst into the boat. He landed face down on a cross-seat, and, just as his legs came inboard, a greyish, reptilian shape released its grip on his calf and slid back soundlessly into the water.

“What—what on earth was that?” Gudrun had caught a glimpse of the vicious teeth, the evil snake’s body. Her voice was shaking.

“Barracuda,” Nicolson said tonelessly. He carefully avoided looking at her face.

“Barracuda!” The shocked whisper left no doubt but that she had heard all about them, the most voracious killers in the sea. “But Alex! Alex! He’s out there! We must help him, quickly!”

“There’s nothing we can do.” He hadn’t meant to speak so harshly, but the knowledge of his utter powerlessness affected him more than he knew. “There’s nothing anyone can do for him now.”

Even as he was speaking, Sinclair’s agonised scream came at them across the water. It was a frightening sound, half-human, half-animal, and it came again and again, strident with some nameless terror, as he flung himself convulsively about, at times rising half-clear of the sea and arching so far back that his hair almost touched the water, his hands churning foam as he beat insanely at some invisible enemies. The Colt in Nicolson’s hand crashed six times in rapid succession, kicking up gouts of flying water and spray around the soldier, quick, unsighted shots that could never have hoped to accomplish anything. Careless, almost, one might have called them, all except the first: there had been nothing careless about that shot, it had taken Sinclair cleanly through the head. Long before the smell of cordite and blue wisps of smoke had drifted away to the south, the water was calm again and Sinclair had vanished, lost to sight beneath the steel-blue mirror of the sea.

Twenty minutes later that sea was no longer blue but churned to a milky, frothing white as the sheets of driving torrential rain swept across it from horizon to horizon.

Close on three hours had passed, and it was about the time of sundown. It was impossible to see the sun, to know where it was, for the rain-squalls still marched successively south and in the failing light the sky was the same leaden grey at all points of the compass. The rain still fell, still swept across the unprotected boat, but nobody cared. Drenched to the skin, shivering often in the cold rain that moulded and plastered thin cottons to arms and bodies and legs, they were happy. In spite of the sudden, numbing shock the death of Sinclair had given them, in spite of the realisation of the tragic futility of his death with the life-giving rain so near at hand, in spite of these things they were happy. They were happy because the law of self-preservation still yielded place to none. They were happy because they had slaked their terrible thirsts and drunk their fill, and more than their fill, because the cold rain cooled down their burns and blistered skins, because they had managed to funnel over four gallons of fresh rainwater into one of the tanks. They were happy because the lifeboat, driven by the spanking breeze, had already covered many of the miles that stretched between where they had lain becalmed and the now steadily nearing coast of Western Java. And they were deliriously happy, happier than they had dreamed that they could ever be again, because salvation was at hand, because miracles still happened and their troubles were over at last.

It was, as ever, McKinnon that had seen it first, a long, low shape through a distant gap in the rain-squalls, just over two miles away. They had no reason to fear anything but the worst, the inevitable worst, and it had taken only seconds to lower the tattered lug and jib, knock the pin from the mast clamp, unship the mast itself and cower down in the bottom of the boat, so that it had become, even from a short distance, no more than an empty, drifting lifeboat, difficult to see in the mists of driving rain, possibly not worth investigating even if it had been seen. But they had been seen, the long grey shape had altered course to intercept their line of drift, and now they could only thank God that it had altered its course, bless the sharp-eyed lookouts who had impossibly picked out their little grey boat against its vast grey background.

It was Nicolson who had at first incredulously identified it, then Findhorn, McKinnon, Vannier, Evans and Walters had all recognised it too. This was not the first time they had seen one of them, and there could be no possible doubt about it. It was a U.S. Navy Torpedo Boat, and their torpedo boats couldn’t be confused with anything afloat. The long, sweeping flare of the bows, the seventy-foot plywood shell driven by its three high-speed marine motors, its quadruple torpedo tubes and .50 calibre machine-guns were quite unmistakable. It was flying no flag at all, but, almost as if to remove any last doubts they might have about its nationality, a seaman aboard the torpedo boat broke out a large flag that streamed out stiffly in the wind of its passing: it was approaching at a speed of something better than thirty knots—nowhere near its maximum—and the white water was piled high at its bows. Even in the gathering gloom there was no more mistaking the flag than there was the torpedo boat: the Stars and Stripes is probably the most easily identifiable flag of all.

They were all sitting up in the lifeboat now, and one or two were standing, waving at the M.T.B. A couple of men on the M.T.B. waved back, one from the wheelhouse, the other standing by one of the for’ard turrets. Aboard the lifeboat, people were gathering their few pitiful possessions together, preparatory to boarding the American vessel, and Miss Plenderleith was in the act of skewering her hat more firmly on to her head when the M.T.B. abruptly slowed down her big Packard motors, jammed them into reverse and came sliding smoothly alongside, only feet away, dwarfing the little lifeboat. Even before she stopped completely, a couple of heaving lines came sailing across the gap of water and smacked accurately fore and aft into the lifeboat. The coordinated precision, the handling of the boat clearly bespoke a highly-trained crew. And then both boats were rubbing alongside, Nicolson had his hand on the M.T.B.’s side, the other raised in greeting to the short, rather stocky figure that had just appeared from behind the wheelhouse.

“Hallo there!” Nicolson grinned widely, and stretched out a hand in greeting. “Brother, are we glad to see you!”

“Not half as glad as we are to see you.” There was a gleam of white teeth in a sunburnt face, an almost imperceptible movement of the left hand, and the three sailors on deck were no longer interested bystanders but very alert, very attentive guards, with suddenly produced sub-machine-guns rock-steady in their hands. A pistol, too, had appeared in the speaker’s right hand. “I fear, however, that your rejoicing may prove to be rather shorter-lived than ours. Please to keep very still indeed.”

Nicolson felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. With a queer sort of detachment he saw that his hand was no longer resting loosely against the ship’s side but was bar-taut, each separate tendon standing out rigidly from the back of his hand. In spite of all the water he had drunk, his mouth felt suddenly as dry as a kiln. But he managed to keep his voice steady enough.

“What kind of bad joke is this?”

“I agree.” The other bowed slightly, and for the first time Nicolson could see the unmistakable slant, the tight-stretched skin at the corner of the eyes. “For you it is not funny at all. Look.” He gestured with his free hand, and Nicolson looked. The Stars and Stripes was already gone and, even as he watched, the Rising Sun of Japan fluttered up and took its place.

“A regrettable stratagem, is it not?” the man continued. He seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly. “As is also the boat and, alas, the passably Anglo-Saxon appearance of my men and myself. Though specially chosen on account of this last, I can assure you we are not especially proud of it. All that, however, is by the way.” His English was perfect, with a pronounced American accent, and he obviously took pleasure in airing it. “There has been much sunshine and storm in the past week. It is most considerate of you to have survived it all. We have been waiting a long time for you. You are very welcome.”

He stopped suddenly, teeth bared, and lined up his pistol on the brigadier, who had sprung to his feet with a speed astonishing in a man of his years, an empty whisky bottle swinging in his hands. The Japanese officer’s finger tightened involuntarily on the trigger, then slowly relaxed when he saw that the bottle had been intended not for him but for Van Effen, who had half-turned as he had sensed the approaching blow, but raised his arm too late. The heavy bottle caught him just above the ear and he collapsed over his thwart as if he had been shot. The Japanese officer stared at Farnholme.

“One more such move and you will die, old man. Are you mad?”

“No, but this man was, and we would all have died. He was reaching for a gun.” Farnholme stared down angrily at the fallen man. “I have come too far to die like this, with three machine-guns lined on me.”

“You are a wise old man,” the officer purred. “Indeed, there is nothing you can do.”

There was nothing they could do, Nicolson realised helplessly, nothing whatsoever. He was conscious of an overwhelming bitterness, a bitterness that he could taste in his mouth. That they should have come so far, that they should have overcome so much, overcome it impossibly and at the expense of five lives, and then that it should all come to this. He heard the murmur of Peter’s voice behind him and when he turned round the little boy was standing up in the sternsheets, looking at the Japanese officer through the lattice screen of his crossed fingers, not particularly afraid, just shy and wondering, and again Nicolson felt the bitterness and the angry despair flood over him almost like a physical tide. Defeat one could accept, but Peter’s presence made defeat intolerable.

The two nurses were sitting one on either side of him, Lena’s dark, sooty eyes wide with terror, Gudrun’s blue ones with a sadness and despair that all too accurately reflected his own feelings. He could see no fear in her face, but high on the temple, where the scar ran into the hairline, he could see a pulse beating very quickly. Slowly, involuntarily, Nicolson’s gaze travelled all round the boat, and everywhere the expressions were the same, the fear, the despair, the stunned and heart-sickening defeat. Not quite everywhere. Siran’s face was expressionless as ever. McKinnon’s eyes were flickering from side to side as he looked swiftly over the lifeboat, up at the M.T.B. and then down into the lifeboat again—gauging, Nicolson guessed, their suicidal chances of resistance. And the brigadier seemed almost unnaturally unconcerned: his arm round Miss Plenderleith’s thin shoulders, he was whispering something in her ear.

“A touching and pathetic scene, is it not?” The Japanese officer shook his head in mock sorrow. “Alas, gentlemen, alas for the frailty of human hopes. I look upon you and I am almost overcome myself. Almost, I said, but not quite. Further, it is about to rain, and rain heavily.” He looked at the heavy bank of cloud bearing down from the north-east, at the thick curtain of rain, now less than half a mile away, sweeping across the darkening sea. “I have a rooted objection to being soaked by rain, especially when it is quite unnecessary. I suggest, therefore——”

“Any more suggestions are superfluous. Do you expect me to remain in this damned boat all night?” Nicolson swung round as the deep, irate voice boomed out behind him. He swung round to see Farnholme standing upright, one hand grasping the handle of the heavy Gladstone bag.

“What—what are you doing?” Nicolson demanded.

Farnholme looked at him, but said nothing. Instead he smiled, the curve of the upper lip below the white moustache a masterpiece of slow contempt, looked up at the officer standing above them and jerked a thumb in Nicolson’s direction.

“If this fool attempts to do anything silly or restrain me in any way, shoot him down.”

Nicolson stared at him in sheer incredulity, then glanced up at the Japanese officer. No incredulity there, no surprise even, just a grin of satisfaction. He started to speak rapidly in some language quite unintelligible to Nicolson, and Farnholme answered him, readily and fluently, in the same tongue. And then, before Nicolson had quite realised what was happening, Farnholme had thrust a hand into his bag, brought out a gun and was making for the side of the boat, bag in one hand, gun in the other.

“This gentleman said we were welcome.” Farnholme smiled down at Nicolson. “I fear that he referred only to myself. A welcome and, as you can see, honoured guest.” He turned to the Japanese. “You have done splendidly. Your reward shall be great.” Then he broke once more into the foreign language—Japanese, it must be, Nicolson was sure—and the conversation lasted for almost two minutes. Once more he looked down at Nicolson. The first heavy drops of the next rain-squall were beginning to patter on the decks of the M.T.B.

“My friend here suggests that you come aboard as prisoners. However, I have convinced him that you are too dangerous and that you should be shot out of hand. We are going below to consider in comfort the exact methods of your disposal.” He turned to the Japanese. “Tie their boat aft. They are desperate men—it is most inadvisable to have them alongside. Come, my friend, let us go below. But one moment—I forget my manners. The departing guest must thank his hosts.” He bowed ironically. “Captain Findhorn, Mr. Nicolson, my compliments. Thank you for the lift. Thank you for your courtesy and skill in rendezvousing so accurately with my very good friends.”

“You damned traitor!” Nicolson spoke with slow savagery.

“There speaks the youthful voice of unthinking nationalism.” Farnholme shook his head sadly. “It’s a harsh and cruel world, my boy. One has to earn a living somehow.”’ He waved a negligent, mocking hand. “Au revoir. It’s been very pleasant.”

A moment later he was lost to sight and the rain swept down in blinding sheets.

TWELVE

For what seemed a long time no one in the lifeboat spoke or moved, except to ride with the slight rolling of the boat: oblivious of the cold driving rain they just stared blankly, stupidly, at the spot where Farnholme had been standing before he had disappeared.

It probably wasn’t a long time, it just seemed that way, it was probably only a matter of seconds before Nicolson heard Miss Plenderleith call him by name and say something. But in the swish of the heavy rain in the sea and frenetic drumming on the torpedo boat’s deck, her voice was only a meaningless murmur. He turned and stooped, the better to hear, and even in that moment of shock her appearance caught and held his attention. She was sitting on the port side bench, her back as straight as a wand, her hands clasped primly in her lap, her face quiet and composed. She might have been sitting in her drawing-room at home, but for one thing: her eyes were flooded with tears and, even as he watched, two large drops trickled slowly down the lined cheeks and fell on to her hands.

“What’s the matter, Miss Plenderleith?” Nicolson asked gently. “What is it?”

“Take the boat farther back,” she said. Her eyes stared sightlessly ahead, and she gave no signs of seeing him. “He told you. Farther back, at once.”

“I don’t understand.” Nicolson shook his head. “Why do you want us——”

He broke off abruptly as something hard and cold struck painfully at the back of his neck. He whirled round and stared up at the Japanese who had just prodded him with the barrel of his machine-gun, at the smooth, yellow face shining in the rain.

“No speaking, Englishman.” His English was far poorer than his officer’s. He looked dangerous, the kind of man who might welcome the opportunity to use the gently waving gun in his hand. “No speaking, anyone. I do not trust you. I will kill.”

“You heard what I said.” Miss Plenderleith’s voice was firm and clear, without the vestige of a tremor. “Please.”

The sailor moved his gun till it was lined up on Miss Plenderleith’s head, and dozen pairs of eyes watched as the knuckles of his right index finger whitened under the pull. His lips were drawn back in an evil smile and Nicolson knew that the Japanese—many of them, at least—required far less provocation to kill. But Miss Plenderleith just stared up at him with an expressionless face—almost certainly she wasn’t seeing him anyway—and he suddenly lowered the gun with some angry exclamation and took a pace backwards. He jerked his head at the other armed sailor—the officer had taken the third with him when he had gone below—and gestured that the rope made fast to the lifeboat’s bow should be brought farther aft. Nicolson and McKinnon paid the lifeboat along the torpedo boat’s side, and very soon they were streaming off its stern at the end of a couple of fathoms of rope. The two sailors stood side by side on the poop of the torpedo boat, side by side, cocked carbines ready in their hands. Their eyes searched the lifeboat hungrily, searched for the slightest movement, for anything at all that would give them an excuse to use their guns.

The torpedo boat was moving again, engines throttled back to dead slow but still enough to send it cutting through the water at three or four knots. It headed north-east, into the sea and the heavy rain, rain so heavy that, from the lifeboat, the bows of the torpedo boat were almost lost in the mirk and the gloom. The lifeboat itself was beginning to pitch at the end of the tautened rope, but not heavily.

Miss Plenderleith had her back to the rain and the guards. Perhaps there were still tears on her cheeks, it was difficult to say—the heavy rain was soaking through the straw brim of her hat, and all her face was wet. But her eyes were clearer now, and they were looking straight at Nicolson. He caught her glance, saw her drop it to the carbine lying by her side where Farnholme had left it, saw her raise her eyes to his again.

“Don’t look at me,” she murmured. “Pay no attention to me. Can they hear me?”

Nicolson stared ahead at the guards, his face bleak. The tiny shake of his head must have been imperceptible to them.

“Can you see the gun? Behind my bag?”

Nicolson looked idly at the bench where Miss Plenderleith was sitting and looked away again. Behind the canvas and leather bag where Miss Plenderleith kept her knitting and all her worldly possessions he could see the heel of the butt of the carbine. Farnholme’s gun, the carbine he had used so effectively against——Suddenly there flooded into Nicolson’s mind the recollection of all the times the brigadier had used that gun, of the damage he’d done with it, how he’d blown up the big gun on the submarine, how he’d beaten off the attack by the Zero that had attacked the lifeboat, how he’d saved his, Nicolson’s life on the beach of that little island, and all at once he knew that there was something fantastically wrong with this desertion and betrayal, that no man could so wholly alter——

“Can you see it?” Miss Plenderleith repeated urgently. Nicolson was startled, but didn’t show it. He nodded slowly, carefully. The butt of the carbine was less than a foot from his hand.

“It’s cocked,” Miss Plenderleith said quietly. “It’s ready to fire. Foster said it was ready to fire.”

This time Nicolson did look at her, slow astonishment and wonder in his face, his eyes blinking in the driving rain as he tried to read her expression. And then he had forgotten all about Miss Plenderleith, and he was half out of his seat, staring intently for’ard, his head automatically reaching for the carbine.

Even at that distance of forty or fifty feet the sound of the explosion was deafening and the sheer physical shock of the pressure wave like an invisible blow in their faces. Smoke and flames belched out through a great hole blown in the starboard side and almost at once the torpedo boat was heavily on fire amidships. The guards, their charge completely forgotten, had swung round to face for’ard, but one of them, caught off-balance by the force of the explosion, stumbled, flung away his machine-gun in a clawing, desperate attempt to regain balance and save himself, failed and fell backwards over the stern into the sea: the other had only taken a couple of running paces forward when the blast of the carbine in Nicolson’s hand pitched him forward on his face, dead. Even as he was falling, McKinnon was plunging towards the bows, an axe in his hand, and one vicious blow on the tow-rope taut-stretched across the gunwale severed it completely. Immediately, Nicolson pushed the tiller hard over to starboard, and the lifeboat slewed away heavily to the west. The torpedo boat still throbbed north-east on unaltered course, and within half a minute all signs of it, even the flames that twisted high above the bridge, were completely lost in the rain-squalls and the rapidly falling darkness.

Swiftly, and in a strange unanimity of silence, they stepped the mast, hoisted the lug and jib, and bore off into the rain and the gloom with as much speed as they could command from their tattered sails. With the port gunwale dipping perilously low, Nicolson steered a point north of west: when the torpedo boat recovered from the shock and the fire—and it was probably too large a craft to be permanently crippled by an explosion even of that magnitude—it would come looking for them, but it would almost certainly go looking towards the south-west, in the direction the wind was blowing, in the direction of the Sunda Strait and freedom.

Fifteen minutes passed slowly by, fifteen minutes in which there was only the swift slap of the waves against the hull, the flapping of shredded sails, the creaking of blocks and the tap-tapping of the yard against the mast. Now and again someone would be about to speak, to seek out the reason for the explosion aboard the torpedo boat, then he would catch sight of that stiff-backed little figure with the ridiculous straw hat skewered on the grey bun of hair, and change his mind. There was something about the atmosphere, there was something about that little figure, about the upright carriage, about the indifference to the cold and the rain, about its fierce pride and complete helplessness that precluded easy conversation, that precluded any conversation at all.

It was Gudrun Drachmann who had the courage to make the first move, the delicacy to make it without blundering. She rose carefully to her feet, the blanketed form of the little boy in her arm, and moved across the canted bottom-boards towards the empty seat beside Miss Plenderleith—the seat where the brigadier had been sitting. Nicolson watched her go, unconsciously holding his breath. Far better if she hadn’t gone. So easy to make a mistake, so almost impossible not to make a mistake. But Gudrun Drachmann made no mistake.

For a minute or two they sat together, the young and the old, sat without moving, sat without speaking. Then the little boy, half-asleep in his wet blanket, stretched out a chubby hand and touched Miss Plenderleith on her wet cheek. She started, half turned in her seat, then smiled at the boy and caught her hand in his, and then, almost without thinking, she had the little boy on her lap and was hugging him in her thin arms. She hugged him tightly, but it was as if the child knew that there was something far amiss, he just stirred sleepily and looked at her gravely under heavy eyelids. Then, just as gravely, he smiled at her, and the old lady hugged him again, even more tightly, and smiled back down at him, smiled as if her heart was breaking. But she smiled.

“Why did you come and sit here?” she asked the girl. You and the little one—why did you come?” Her voice was very low.

“I don’t know.” Gudrun shook her head, almost as if the thought were occurring to her for the first time. “I’m afraid I just don’t know.”

“It’s all right. I know.” Miss Plenderleith took her hand and smiled at her. “It’s very curious, it is really very curious. That you should come, I mean. He did it for you, he did it all for you—for you and the little one.”

“You mean——”

“Fearless Foster.” The words were ridiculous, but not the way Miss Plenderleith said them. She said them as if she were saying a prayer. “Fearless Foster Farnholme. That was what we used to call him, when we were in school. He was afraid of nothing that walked on earth.”

“You have known him so long, Miss Plenderleith?”

“He said you were the best of us all.” Miss Plenderleith hadn’t even heard the question. She shook her head musingly, her eyes soft with remembrance. “He teased me about you this afternoon. He said he didn’t know what the young men of the present generation were coming to and, by heaven, if he was thirty years younger, he’d have had you to the altar years ago.”

“He was very kind.” Gudrun smiled without any embarrassment. “I’m afraid he didn’t know me very well.”

“That’s what he said, that’s exactly what he said.” Miss Plenderleith gently removed the child’s thumb from his mouth: he was almost asleep. “Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn’t really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn’t count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn’t matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world.” Miss Plenderleith smiled, her grief momentarily lost in nostalgic remembrance. “Foster used to complain that there were very few good-hearted people like himself left.”

“Brigadier Farnholme was very kind,” Gudrun murmured.

“Brigadier Farnholme was a very clever man,” Miss Plenderleith said in gentle reproof. “He was clever enough to—well, never mind. You and the little boy. He was very fond of the little boy.”

“Trailing clouds of glory do we come,” Willoughby murmured.

“What’s that?” Miss Plenderleith looked at him in surprise. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. Just a passing thought, Miss Plenderleith.”

Miss Plenderleith smiled at him, then sat gazing down at the little boy. Silence again, but a comfortable silence now. It was Captain Findhorn, speaking for the first time, who broke it, who asked the question they all wanted answered.

“If we come home again, we will owe it all to Brigadier Farnholme. I do not think any of us will ever forget that. You have told us why he did it. You seem to have known him far better than any of us, Miss Plenderleith. Can you tell me how he did it.”

Miss Plenderleith nodded. “I’ll tell you. It was very simple, because Foster was a very simple and direct man. You all noticed that big Gladstone bag he carried?”

“We did.” Findhorn smiled. “The one he carried his—ah—supplies in.”

“That’s right, whisky. Incidentally, he hated the stuff—used it only for local colour. Anyway, he left all the bottles and all the other contents of his bag behind on the island, in a hole in the rocks, I believe. Then he——”

“What? What did you say?” It was Van Effen speaking, still groggy from Farnholme’s blow on the head, leaning so far forward on his seat that he winced with the pain of his injured leg. “He—he left all his stuff behind?”

“That’s what I said. Why should you find that so surprising, Mr. Van Effen?”

“No reason at all, I suppose.” Van Effen leaned back and smiled at her. “Please continue.”

“That’s all, really. He’d found lots of Japanese grenades on the beach that night and he’d stuffed fourteen or fifteen into his Gladstone bag.”

“Into his bag?” Nicolson patted the seat beside him. “But they’re under here, Miss Plenderleith.”

“He found more than he told you.” Miss Plenderleith’s voice was very low. “He took them all aboard with him, he spoke Japanese fluently and he had no difficulty in persuading them that he was carrying Jan Bekker’s plans with him. When he got below he was going to show them the plans, put his hand inside the bag, press a grenade release catch and leave his hand there. He said it would only take four seconds.”

There was no moon that night, and no stars, only the dark scudding cloud-wrack overhead, and Nicolson drove the lifeboat on, for hour after hour, by guess and by God. The glass of the compass bowl had cracked, nearly all the spirit had escaped and the card was gyrating so uncontrollably that trying to read it in the feeble light of a failing torch was quite impossible. He steered instead by the wind, trying to keep it on the port quarter all the time, gambling that the trades would hold steady, and neither back nor veer to any appreciable degree. Even with the wind steady, handling the boat was difficult enough: more and more water was pouring in through the ruptured planks aft and she was sitting heavily by the stern, falling away to the south time after time.

As the night passed his anxiety and tension increased, a tension that communicated itself to most of the others in the boat, few of whom slept that night. Shortly after midnight, even with the roughest dead reckoning, Nicolson knew that he must be within ten or twelve miles of the Sunda Straits. Not more, probably even a good deal less, perhaps only five miles. And he had reason to be anxious. Their chart of the Eastern Archipelago was now salt-stained, rotted and useless, but he remembered all too clearly the rocks, the reefs and the shoals that lay off the south-east coast of Sumatra. But he couldn’t remember where they were, and he didn’t know where the lifeboat was, perhaps even his latitude reckonings were so far out that they would miss the Straits altogether. Their chances of tearing the bottom out on some off-shore reef seemed as good as their chances of missing it: and the passengers were so sick, so tired and so hurt that were they to pile up not more than half a mile from land not half of them had a hope of survival. And, even if they missed all the waiting perils, they would still have to beach the boat through heavy surf.

Shortly after two o’clock in the morning Nicolson sent the bo’sun and Vannier up to the bows to keep a lookout ahead. Half a dozen others volunteered to stand up and keep watch also, but Nicolson curtly ordered them to remain where they were, to lie as low as possible in the bottom of the boat and give maximum stability. He might have added, but he didn’t, that McKinnon’s eyes were probably better than all the others put together.

Half an hour more passed, and suddenly Nicolson became aware that some subtle change was taking place. The change itself wasn’t sudden, it was the realisation of the change that struck at him almost like a blow and made him peer desperately ahead into the darkness. The long, low swell from the north-west was changing, it was becoming shorter and steeper with every minute that passed, but he was so tired, so physically exhausted with steering blindly all night long that he’d almost missed the change. And the wind was still the same, no stronger, no weaker than it had been for hours past.

“McKinnon!” Nicolson’s hoarse shout had half a dozen dozing people struggling up to a sitting position. “We’re running into shallows!”

“Aye, I think you’re right, sir.” The bo’sun’s voice, not particularly perturbed, carried clearly against the wind. He was standing upright on the mast thwart, on the port side, one hand gripping the mast, the other shading his eyes as he stared ahead into the night.

“Can you see anything?”

“Damn the thing I see,” McKinnon called back. “It’s a bloody black night, sir.”

“Keep looking. Vannier?”

“Sir?” The voice was excited, but steady enough for all that. On the brink of breakdown less than twelve hours ago, Vannier had made a remarkable recovery and seemed to have regained more life and energy than any of them.

“Get the lug down! Fast as you can. Don’t furl it—no time. Van Effen, Gordon, give him a hand.” The lifeboat was beginning to pitch quite violently in the rapidly shortening seas. “See anything yet, Bo’sun?”

“Nothing at all, sir.”

“Cut Siran loose. And his two men. Send them back amidships.” He waited for half a minute until the three men came stumbling aft. “Siran, you and your men get a crutch apiece. Gordon, you get another. When I give the words you will ship oars and start pulling.”

“Not tonight, Mr. Nicolson.”

”You said?”

“You heard what I said. I said ‘not tonight’.” The tone was cool and insolent. “My hands are numb. And I’m afraid I don’t just feel like cooperating.”

“Don’t be a bloody fool, Siran. Lives depend on this.”

“Not mine.” Nicolson could see the white gleam of teeth in the darkness. “I am an excellent swimmer, Mr. Nicolson.”

“You left forty people to die, didn’t you, Siran?” Nicolson asked obliquely. The safety-catch of his Colt clicked, unnaturally loud in the sudden silence. A second passed, two, three, then Siran slammed a crutch home into its socket, reached for an oar and muttered orders to his two men.

“Thank you,” Nicolson murmured. He raised his voice. “Listen, all of you. I think we’re nearing shore. The chances are that there will be rocks or reefs off the beach, or a heavy surf running. The boat may founder or capsize—not likely, but it may.” It’ll be a ruddy miracle if it doesn’t, he thought bleakly. “If you find yourselves in the water, stick together. Hang on to the boat, the oars, lifebelts or anything that will float. And whatever happens, hang on to each other. Do you all understand?”

There was a low murmur of assent. Nicolson flashed his torch round the inside of the boat. From what he could see in the sickly yellow light everybody was awake. Even their sodden, shapeless clothes couldn’t disguise the peculiar tenseness of their attitudes. Quickly he switched off the light. Weak though the beam was, his pupils were narrowing enough to affect his night vision and he knew it.

“Still nothing, Bo’sun?” he called out.

“Nothing at all, sir. It’s as black as a—wait a minute!” He stood there immobile, one hand on the mast, head cocked sideways, saying nothing.

“What is it, man?” Nicolson shouted. “What can you see?”

“Breakers!” McKinnon called. “Breakers or surf. I can hear it.”

“Where? Where are they?”

“Ahead. Can’t see them yet.” A pause. “Starboard bow, I think.”

“Cut the jib!” Nicolson ordered. “Mast down, Vannier.” He leaned far over on the tiller, bringing the lifeboat round to face wind and sea. She answered the helm slowly, soggily; there were at least fifty gallons of sea-water swishing about the after end of the boat, but she came round eventually: even water-logged and in a running sea, she’d still carried enough way from the thrust of the jib.

“I can see it now.” It was McKinnon shouting from the bows. “Starboard quarter, sir.”

Nicolson twisted in his seat, looked quickly over his shoulder. For a moment or two he could see nothing, he couldn’t even hear anything, and then he could both hear and see it, a thin white line in the darkness, a long continuous line that vanished and appeared again, closer than it had been when it faded. Surf, it must be surf, no breakers ever looked like that in the darkness. Thank God for so much anyway. Nicolson faced for’ard again.

“Right, Bo’sun, let it go.”

McKinnon had been waiting the word, the iron-hooped mouth of the sea-anchor in his hands. Now he flung it as far for’ard into the sea as he could, paying out the warp as the sea-anchor filled and started dragging.

“Get those oars out!” Nicolson had already unshipped the rudder and drawn the shaft of the steering oar up through the grummet, sculling furiously to keep the lifeboat head on to sea until the sea-anchor took hold: no easy work when he couldn’t make out the set of the waves in the darkness, when he’d nothing to guide him but the wind in his face and the water-logged movement of the boat. He could hear the scraping and muffled oaths as men tried to free trapped oars, then the metallic clunks as they dropped into the crutches. “Give way together,” he called. “Easy, now, easy!”

He had no hope that they would pull together in the darkness, and he didn’t expect it. Just so long as they pulled, he could correct any excesses with his steering oar. He glanced quickly over his shoulder. The line of surf was almost directly astern now, and its low sullen booming carried clearly to his ears, even against the wind. It could have been fifty yards away, it could have been two hundred and fifty yards away. It was impossible to tell in the darkness.

He faced round again, tried to peer for’ard, but the wind whipped the rain and the salt spray into his eyes, and he could see nothing. The wind appeared to be strengthening. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. “How’s it taking, McKinnon?”

“Och, it’s just fine, sir. Taking grand.” Several fathoms of the sea-anchor were already stretched out tautly over the bow, and the bo’sun had just finished stabbing the attached oil-bag with his gully knife. He’d made a thorough job of the stabbing, the oil wouldn’t have to last for long, and the more they had over the surface of the sea the easier would be their passage through the surf. He passed the oil-bag over the bows, let some more of the warp pass through his hands, then tied it securely to the mast thwart.

They hadn’t taken all the beaching precautions a moment too soon. The surf had been much nearer fifty than two hundred and fifty yards, and already they were almost on it. Carefully, expertly, making the fullest possible use of the oars, steering oar and sea anchor, Nicolson slowly backed the lifeboat on to the beginning of the smooth convexity of the swell of the surf. Almost immediately the boat picked up speed, rose and rode in swiftly with the giant wave as the oars came out of the water and McKinnon pulled the tripping line of the sea-anchor, sped along smoothly and soundlessly as the surf curved its way into seething white destruction, checked suddenly as oars dipped and the tripping line was released at Nicolson’s sharp command, then plunged over the breaking crest of the surf and raced in to the shelving beach in a phosphorescent smother of foam and spray—there had been no time for the sea to carry the oil so far ahead—with the bartaut anchor warp holding the stern pointing straight into the shore, and the white water passing them by, out-distancing them in the race for the shore. It was then and only then, when the worst was safely by, that Nicolson, peering intently astern, saw something that shouldn’t have been there. His hoarse shout of warning came almost on the instant of recognition, but it came too late.

The jagged rock—or maybe it was a knife-edge of coral—sliced the bottom out of the rushing boat, from the stern clear back to the bows. The jarring, braking shock jerked people free from their clutching handholds, flung them in headlong confusion, all arms and bodies and legs, towards the stern, and hurled two or three over the side into the water. A second later the wrecked boat slewed violently to the side and overturned, catapulting everyone into the seething afterwash of the surf.

Of the seconds that followed no one had afterwards any more than a confused, inchoate recollection, a recollection of being rolled over and over by the surging sea, of swallowing sea-water and scrambling to their feet on the shingly, shelving beach only to be knocked down and buffeted by the inverted lifeboat, scrambling to their feet again to have their legs sucked from under them by the retreating seas, struggling upright again and wading, staggering ashore to fling themselves down on the beach in gasping, heart-pounding exhaustion.

Nicolson made three trips to the beach altogether. That first was with Miss Plenderleith. The shock of the collision had flung her hard against him even as they went over the stern, and he had instinctively tightened his arm round her as they had gone to the bottom together. She had been almost twice the weight he had expected, she had both her forearms locked through the handles of her heavy canvas travelling bag, and resisted Nicolson’s efforts to tear it away with what he could only imagine to be a strength—an unreasoning suicidal strength—born of fear and panic. But he had got her ashore somehow, still grimly clutching her bag, waited his chance for the receding surf, then plunged back into the sea to help Vannier carry the captain ashore. Findhom hadn’t wanted assistance, he kept on repeating that he didn’t want assistance, but his legs and his strength had gone as a result of his wound and the suffering of the past week, and he would have drowned where he had lain, in a couple of feet of water. Slipping, stumbling, falling and getting up again, they had carried him ashore bodily and dumped him on the shingle beyond the reach of the waves.

By now there were almost a dozen of them clustered in a tight knot on the beach, some lying, some sitting, some standing, indistinct blurs in the darkness who gasped for breath or moaned or retched sea-water in convulsive agony. Chest heaving and gasping for breath himself, Nicolson started to take a quick roll-call of those present. But he didn’t even get beyond the first name.

“Gudrun. Miss Drachmann!” There was no reply, just the moaning and the painful retching. “Miss Drachmann! Has anyone seen Miss Drachmann? Has anyone got Peter?” There was only silence. “For God’s sake, somebody answer! Has anyone seen Peter? The little boy? Has anyone seen him?” But there was only the sullen boom of the surf, the rustling shirr of the retreating sea dragging the shingle down the beach.

Nicolson dropped to his knees, felt the forms and faces of those who were lying on the beach. No Peter there, no Gudrun Drachmann. He jumped to his feet, knocked staggering someone who was standing in his way and rushed madly down into the sea, plunged out into the water and was knocked off his feet by the surge of the incoming surf. He was on his feet again like a cat, all his exhaustion gone as if it had never existed. He was vaguely conscious of someone plunging into the sea behind him but paid no attention.

Six running, splashing steps at the full stretch of his legs and something struck him with cruel, numbing force against the knee-caps. The boat, drifting upside down. He somersaulted in mid-air, struck his shoulder against the keel, landed flat on his back on the water on the other side with an explosive smack that drove all the breath out of his body, then was on his way again, propelled by a fear and a nameless anger such as he had never known before. The pain in his chest and his legs was another turn of the rack for every step he took, but he drove himself on remorselessly as if the fire in his legs and his body’s gasping demands for air simply did not exist. Another two steps and he had crashed into something soft and yielding and knocked it backwards into the next incoming rush of water. He stooped, grabbed hold of a shirt and lifted, bracing the two of them against the surge of the sea.

“Gudrun?”

“Johnny! Oh, Johnny!” She clung to him and he could feel her trembling.

“Peter! Where’s Peter?” he demanded urgently.

“Oh, Johnny!” The habitual cool self-possession was gone, and her voice was almost a wail. “The boat struck and—and——”

“Where is Peter?” His fingers digging deeply into her shoulders, he was shaking her violently, his voice a savage shout.

“I don’t know, I don’t know! I—I can’t find him.” She broke away, dived sideways into the water that was boiling waist-high by them. He caught her, jerked her to her feet and whirled round. It was Vannier who had followed him into the surf, and he was right behind him. He thrust the girl at him.

“Take her ashore, Vannier.”

“I won’t go! I won’t!” She was struggling in Vannier’s arms, but she hadn’t the strength left to struggle very much. “I lost him! I lost him!”

“You heard me, Vannier?” Nicolson’s voice as he turned away was a cutting whip. Vannier mumbled “Yes, sir” to the retreating back and started to drag the half-hysterical girl through the surf.

Again and again Nicolson plunged into the white water, his hands scrabbling desperately along the shingled bed of the sea: again and again he came up empty-handed. Once he thought he had found him, but it was only an empty bag; he threw it away like a man demented and flung himself yet farther out into the surf, near the coral that had sunk them. He was up almost shoulder high in the water now, being swept off his feet with monotonous regularity, swallowing great mouthfuls of sea, shouting the name of the boy over and over again like some crazy litany, driving his exhausted body to incredible, inhuman efforts, driven by a horrifying fear, a dreadful anxiety that left him no longer sane, and anxiety such as he had not known could exist in the heart of any man. Two minutes, perhaps three, had elapsed since the boat had struck, and even in his madness he knew that the little boy could not have lived so long in these waters. What little reason he had left told him so, but he ignored it, dived once more through the creaming surf to the shingled floor of the sea. But again nothing, below the water or on the surface, only the wind, the rain, the darkness and the deep-throated booming of the surf. And then, high and clear above the wind and the sea, he heard it.

The child’s thin, terrified cry came from his right, along the beach, about thirty yards away. Nicolson whirled and plunged in that direction, cursing the deep waters that reduced his stumbling run to grotesque slow-motion. Again the child cried, not a dozen feet away this time. Nicolson shouted, heard a man’s answering call, and then all at once he was upon them, the looming bulk of a man as tall as himself, with the child high up in his arms.

“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Nicolson.” Van Effen’s voice was very faint and far away. “The little one is not harmed. Please to take him from me.” Nicolson had barely time to snatch him in his arm before the Dutchman swayed on his feet, just once, then toppled and fell his length, face down in the foaming water.

THIRTEEN

The jungle, dank, dripping and steaming hot, was all around them. High above, through tiny gaps in the interwoven branches of heavily lianad trees, they could catch glimpses of the grey sullen sky, the same sky that had completely obscured the sunrise, just over two hours previously. The light that filtered down from these tree-tops had a strangely unreal quality, sinister and foreboding, but a quality that accorded well with the claustrophobic green walls of the jungle and the scummed, miasmal swamps that bounded both sides of the jungle path.

Even as a jungle path it was almost a failure. As far as the jungle was concerned, it offered a fairly free passage, and axes or machetes had evidently been busy, fairly recently, on either side. But as a path it was treacherous to a degree, one moment hard-packed and worn smooth by constant use, the next vanishing abruptly and mysteriously as it rounded a giant tree-trunk and dipped into the waiting swamps ahead then reappearing a few yards ahead, smooth and firm again.

Nicolson and Vannier, already covered to the waists in the rotting, evil-smelling slime, were beginning to discover the techniques for dealing with these sudden breaches in the path. Invariably, they were beginning to find, there was an alternative route round these swamp patches and if they cast around long enough they usually found it. But it took too long to seek out these bypasses and, more than once, they had wandered so far from the track that they had regained it only by chance, so that now, unless the bypass was almost immediately obvious, they plunged through the swamps and regained firm land on the other side, pausing every time to wipe off as much of the slime as possible and the ugly grey leeches that fastened to their legs. Then they would hurry on again, following the tortuous path round the massive trees as best they could in the weird, dim half-light of the tropical forest, trying their best to ignore the strange stirrings and rustlings that paralleled their progress on either side.

Nicolson was a seaman, first, last and all the time. He was little at home on land, still less so in the jungle, and this was not a journey that he would ever have made, would ever have contemplated making, had there been any option. But there had been no option, none whatsoever, a fact that had become cruelly evident soon after the first grey stirrings of dawn had let him look around to assess their position and the condition of the boat’s company. Both had been very far from reassuring.

They had landed somewhere on the Java shore of the Sunda Straits, in a deep bay, two miles wide across the horns, with a narrow shingled beach and a jungle that crowded down almost to the water’s edge, a dense, impenetrable looking jungle that ran back into the high rain-forests that covered the slopes of the low hills to the south. The shores of the bay itself were completely empty of any life, animal or human, or any signs of life: there was only their own little company, huddled for what pitiful shelter they could under a cluster of palms, and, about a hundred yards along the beach, the upturned lifeboat.

The lifeboat was in bad shape. A great hole, almost fifteen feet in length, had been ripped out between the keel and the bilge grab-rail, and the keel itself had been broken and wrenched away from its hog piece. The lifeboat was beyond repair, a total loss. There was only the jungle left for them, and they were in no condition to face that.

Captain Findhorn, for all his courage, was still a very sick man, unable to walk a dozen steps. Van Effen was weak too, and in considerable pain, violently sick at regular intervals: before Nicolson and McKinnon had succeeded in freeing his badly mangled leg from the clam that had seized it while he had been bringing the child ashore, he had almost drowned in the shallow water, and this, coupled with the shrapnel wound in the thigh received some days previously and the crack on the skull lately given him by Farnholme had dangerously lowered his resistance and powers of recuperation. Both Walters and Evans had swollen arms from infected wounds, and they, too, suffered constantly, while McKinnon, though in no great pain, limped on a badly stiffened leg. Willoughby was weak, Gordon shiftless and worse than useless and Siran and his men obviously intended to be of help to no one but themselves.

That left only Nicolson and the fourth officer, and Nicolson knew that there was nothing they could do for the others, not directly. To try to repair the lifeboat was out of the question, and to think of building any kind of boat or raft with the few tools they had left was just ridiculous. On land they were, and on land they would have to remain. But they couldn’t remain on that beach indefinitely. If they did, they would starve. Nicolson had no illusions about their ability to survive for any time at all on the food they could scrape from trees, bushes, on and under the ground. An experienced jungle man might get enough for survival, but the chances were that they would poison themselves in the very first meal they took. Even if they didn’t, bark and berries wouldn’t keep seriously ill men alive for long, and without medicines and fresh bandages for infected and suppurating wounds, the outlook was bleak indeed.

Food, shelter, bandages and medicine—these were the essentials and wouldn’t just come to them. They would have to go to look for them, to seek for help. How far distant help might be, and in what direction it would lie, was anybody’s guess. The north-west corner of Java, Nicolson knew, had a fair population, and there were, he remembered, one or two largish towns some way inland. Too far inland—their best chances lay with the coastal fishing villages. They might encounter hostility instead of help, they might possibly encounter Japanese—in a mountainous land of forest and jungle like Java, they would almost certainly confine their activities to the coastal areas. But these possibilities, Nicolson realised, weren’t even worth considering: they had to do this, and the incidental risks, no matter how severe, had to be ignored. Less than an hour after dawn he had taken a Colt .455—the only other salvaged weapon, the brigadier’s machine-carbine, he had left with McKinnon—and moved off into the jungle, Vannier close behind him.

Less than twenty yards inland, just before they had reached the belt of forest, they had struck a well-defined path, running north-east and south-west between the woods and the sea. Automatically, without even looking at one another, they had turned south-west: it wasn’t until they had gone some distance that Nicolson realised why they had done it: in the long run, the south represented ultimate escape and freedom. Less than half a mile from where they had left the others, the beach to their left curved away to the west and north-west, following the lower horn of the bay: but the path had carried straight on across the base of the promontory, leaving the scrub and bushes and penetrating deep into the rain-forest itself.

Ninety minutes and three miles after leaving the beach Nicolson called a halt. They had just struggled through a thirty-yard patch of watery swamp that had taken them almost up to the armpits, and both men were exhausted. The effort, the sheer labour involved in their grotesquely slow-motion wading through these swamps was energy-sapping enough for men who had had little to drink and almost nothing to eat for a week: but even worse was the steaming jungle, the oppressive heat, the enervating humidity that stung and blinded their eyes with sweat.

Safe on a patch of firm ground, Nicolson sat and leaned his back against a thick tree-trunk. He wiped some mud off his forehead with the back of his left hand—the right still clutched the gun—and looked at Vannier, who had slid down almost full length on the ground, a forearm across his eyes, his chest rising and falling, deeply, quickly.

“Enjoying yourself, Fourth? I bet you never thought your Second Mate’s ticket was a licence for traipsing through the Indonesian jungles?” Unconsciously, almost, he kept his voice down to a gentle murmur: the jungle, and everything about it, breathed hostility.

“Bloody awful, isn’t it, sir?” Vannier stirred, groaned softly as some aching muscle rebelled, then tried to smile. “These tree-swinging Tarzans you see in films give you a quite erroneous idea of how progress is made through the jungle. Me, I think this damn path here just goes on for ever and ever. You don’t think we’re travelling in circles, do you, sir?”

“Possible enough,” Nicolson admitted. “Haven’t seen the sun all day, and it’s so blasted thick overhead that you can’t even see lightness in the sky. We could be going north, south, or west, but I don’t think so. I think this path will come out again to the sea.”

“I hope you’re right.” Vannier was gloomy, but not depressed. Looking at the thin, sun-darkened face, with the now too-prominent cheekbones and the blistered, resolute mouth, Nicolson thought that, in the past few days, the furnace of privation and experience had cast Vannier in a completely different mould, changing him from an irresolute, uncertain boy to a toughened, determined man, a man aware of newfound resources and unsuspected capacities, a man well worth having by his side.

A minute, perhaps two, passed in silence, a silence marred only by the diminishing sound of their breathing and the sodden dripping of water in the leaves of the trees. Then, abruptly, Nicolson stiffened, his left hand reaching out to touch Vannier warningly on the shoulder. But the warning was unheeded. Vannier, too, had heard it, was drawing his legs under him and rising steadily, noiselessly to his feet. Seconds later both men were standing behind the trunk of the tree, waiting.

The murmur of voices and the soft pad of footsteps on the matted jungle floor came steadily nearer, the owners of the voices still hidden by the curve in the trail, less than ten yards away. They would have to wait till the last moment before identifying the approaching men, but it couldn’t be helped. Nicolson looked swiftly round for a better place of hiding but there was none. The tree-trunk would have to do, and behind the tree-trunk they would wait. The approaching men—it sounded as if there were only two of them—might be Japanese. Even muffled by his shirtfront, the click of the Colt’s safety-catch sliding off sounded unnaturally loud: a month ago he would have shrunk from the thought of shooting unsuspecting men from ambush; a month ago …

Suddenly the approaching men had rounded the bend in the trail and were in full view. Three men, not two, and certainly not Japanese, Nicolson realised with quick relief. Relief and a vague surprise: subconsciously he had expected, if not Japanese, Sumatran natives dressed in the scanty minimum the climate demanded and carrying spears or blow-pipes: two of the newcomers were dressed in denims and faded blue shirts. Even more upsetting to preconceived notions was the rifle the eldest of the three carried. But it didn’t upset the steadiness of the Colt in his hand. Nicolson waited until they were only ten feet away then stepped out into the middle of the path, the pistol barrel lined up motionless on the chest of the man with the rifle.

The man with the rifle was quick. A break in mid-stride, a flicker of the seamed brown eyes under the straw hat and the long snout of the rifle was swinging up as the left hand reached down for the barrel. But the young man by his side was even quicker. His sinewy hand darted out and clamped down on the barrel of the other’s rifle, checking its upward sweep, and he answered the surprise and anger in the other’s face with quick, sharp words. The elder man nodded heavily, looked away and let the gun droop till its muzzle almost touched the ground. Then he muttered something to the young man, who nodded and looked at Nicolson, eyes hostile in a calm, smooth face.

“Begrijp U Nederlands?”

“Dutch? Sorry, I don’t understand.” Nicholson lifted his shoulders in incomprehension, then looked briefly at Vannier. “Take his gun, Fourth. From the side.”

“English? You speak English?” The young man’s tongue was slow and halting. He was peering at Nicholson with eyes suspicious but no longer hostile, then his glance lifted an inch or two above Nicolson’s eyes and he suddenly smiled. He turned and spoke rapidly to the man by his side, then looked at Nicolson. “I tell my father you are English. I know your hat. Of course you are English.”

“This?” Nicolson touched the badge on his uniform cap.

“Yes. I live in Singapore “—he waved his hand vaguely towards the north—” for almost two years. Often I see English officers from ships. Why are you here?”

“We need help,” Nicolson said bluntly. His first instinct had been to temporise, make sure of his ground, but something about the quiet dark eyes of the young man changed his mind: not he realised wryly, that he was in any position to temporise anyway. “Our ship has been sunk. We have many sick, many hurt. We need shelter, food, medicines.”

“Give us back the gun,” the young man said abruptly.

Nicolson didn’t hesitate. “Give them back the gun, Fourth.”

“The gun?” Vannier was apprehensive, and looked it. “But how do you know——”

“I don’t. Give them the gun.” Nicolson thrust the Colt into his belt.

Reluctantly, Vannier handed the rifle back to the man in the straw hat. The man snatched it, folded his arms over his gun and stared off into the forest. The young man looked at him in exasperation, then smiled apologetically to Nicolson.

“You must excuse my father,” he said haltingly. “You have hurt his feelings. Men do not take guns from him.”

“Why?”

“Because Trikah is Trikah, and nobody dare.” The young man’s voice held a blend of affection and pride and amusement. “He is the headman of our village.”

“He is your chief?” Nicolson looked at Trikah with new interest. On this man, on his capacity to make decisions, to lend or refuse aid, all their lives might depend. Now that he looked closely, Nicolson could see in the lined brown face, grave and unsmiling, the authority, the repose one would associate with the ruler of a tribe or village. Trikah, in appearance, was very like his son and the boy who stood some distance behind them—a younger son, Nicolson guessed. All three shared the low, wide forehead, intelligent eyes, finely chiselled lips and thin, almost aquiline nose: they had no negroid characteristics whatsoever, were almost certainly of unmixed Arabian descent. A good man to help you, Nicolson thought—if he would help you.

“He is our chief,” the young man nodded. “I am Telak, his eldest son.”

“My name is Nicolson. Tell your father I have many sick English men and women on the beach, three miles to the north. We must have help. Ask him if he will help us.”

Telak turned to his father, spoke rapidly in a harsh staccato tongue for a minute, listened to his father, then spoke again. “How many are sick?”

“Five men—at least five men. There are also three women—I do not think they could walk far. How many miles is it to your village?”

“Miles?” Telak smiled. “A man can walk there in ten minutes.” He spoke again to his father, who nodded several times as he listened, then turned and spoke briefly to the young boy by his side. The boy listened intently, appeared to repeat instructions, flashed his white teeth in a smile at Nicolson and Vannier, turned quickly and ran off in the direction he had come.

“We will help you,” Telak said. “My young brother has gone to the village—he will bring strong men and litters for the sick. Come, let us go to your friends.”

He turned, led the way into an apparently impenetrable patch of forest and undergrowth, skirted the swamp through which Nicolson and Vannier had so lately waded, and led them back on to the path again, all inside a minute. Vannier caught Nicolson’s eye and grinned.

“Makes you feel stupid, doesn’t it? Easy enough when you know how.”

“What does your friend say?” Telak asked.

“Just that he wishes we had had you with us earlier on,” Nicolson explained. “We spent most of our time wading up to the waists in swamps.”

Trikah grunted an inquiry, listened to Telak, then muttered to himself. Telak grinned.

“My father says only fools and very little children get their feet wet in the forest. He forgets that one must be used to it.” He grinned again. “He forgets the time—the only time—he was ever in a car. When it moved off he jumped over the side and hurt his leg badly.”

Telak talked freely as they walked along through the filtered green light of the jungle. He made it quite obvious that he and his father were in no way pro-British. Nor were they pro-Dutch nor pro-Japanese. They were just pro-Indonesian, he explained, and wanted their country for themselves. But, once the war was over, if they had to negotiate with anyone for the freedom of their country, they would rather do it with the British or the Dutch. The Japanese made great protestations of friendship, but once the Japanese moved in on a country, they never moved out again. They asked for what they called co-operation, Telak said, and already they were showing that if they didn’t get it one way, willingly, they would get it another—with the bayonet and the tommygun.

Nicolson looked at him in quick surprise and sudden dismay.

“There are Japanese near here? They have landed, then?”

“Already they are here,” Telak said gravely. He gestured to the east. “The British and Americans still fight, but they cannot last long. Already the Japanese have taken over a dozen towns and villages within a hundred miles of here. They have—what do you call it—a garrison, they have a garrison at Bantuk. A big garrison, with a colonel in charge. Colonel Kiseki.” Telak shook his head like a man shivering with cold. “Colonel Kiseki is not human. He is an animal, a jungle animal. But the jungle animals kill only when they have to. Kiseki would tear the arm off a man—or a little child—as a thoughtless child would pull the wings off a fly.”

“How far away from your village is this town?” Nicolson asked slowly.

“Bantuk?”

“Where the garrison is. Yes.”

“Four miles. No more.”

“Four miles! You would shelter us—you would shelter so many within four miles of the Japanese! But what will happen if——”

“I am afraid that you cannot stay long with us,” Telak interrupted gravely. “My father, Trikah, says it will not be safe. It will not be safe for you or for us. There are spies, there are those who carry information for reward, even among our own people. The Japanese would capture you and take my father, my mother, my brothers and myself to Bantuk.”

“As hostages?”

“That is what they would call it.” Telak smiled sadly. “The hostages of the Japanese never return to their villages. They are a cruel people. That is why we help you.”

“How long can we stay?”

Telak consulted briefly with his father, then turned to Nicolson. “As long as it is safe. We will feed you, give you a hut for sleeping and the old women of our village can heal any wounds. Perhaps you can stay three days, but no more.”

“And then?”

Telak shrugged his shoulders and led the way through the jungle in silence.

They were met by McKinnon less than a hundred yards from where the boat had beached the previous night. He was running, staggering from side to side, and not because of his stiffened leg: blood was trickling down into his eyes from a bruised cut in the middle of his forehead, and Nicolson knew without being told who must have been responsible.

Furious, mortified and blaming only himself, McKinnon was very bitter, but no fault could really be attached to him. The first he had known of the heavy hurtling stone that had knocked him unconscious was when he had recovered his senses and found it lying by his side, and no man can watch three others, indefinitely and simultaneously. The others had been powerless, for the concerted attack had been carefully planned and the only carbine in the company snatched by Siran from McKinnon even as he fell. Siran and his men, Findhorn said, had made off towards the north-east.

McKinnon was all for pursuing the men, and Nicolson, who knew that Siran, alive and free, was a potential danger no matter where he was, agreed. But Telak vetoed the idea. Impossible to find them in the jungle in the first place, he said: and searching for a man with a machine-gun who could pick his place of ambush and then lie still was a very quick way of committing suicide. Nicolson acknowledged the verdict of an expert and led them down to the beach.

Just over two hours later the last of the litter-bearers entered Trikah’s kampong—the village clearing in the jungle. Small thin men but amazingly tough and enduring, most of the bearers had made the journey without being relieved of their loads or once stopping.

Trikah, the chief was as good as his promise. Old women washed and cleaned suppurating wounds, covered them with cool, soothing pastes, covered these in turn with large leaves and bound the whole with strips of cotton. After that, all were fed, and fed magnificently. More correctly, they were given a splendid selection of food to eat—chicken, turtle eggs, warmed rice, durians, crushed prawns, yams, sweet boiled roots and dried fish: but hunger had long since died, they had lived too long with starvation to do anything but token justice to the spread before them. Besides, the paramount need was not for food, but for sleep, and sleep they soon had. No beds, no hammocks, no couch of twigs or grass: just cocoanut matting on the swept earthen floor of a hut, and that was enough, more than enough, it was paradise for those who had been without a night’s sleep for longer than their weary minds could remember. They slept like the dead, lost beyond call in the bottomless pit of exhaustion.

When Nicolson awoke, the sun had long gone and night had fallen over the jungle. A still, hushed night, and a still, hushed jungle. No chatter of monkeys, no cries of night birds, no sounds of any life at all. Just the hush and the stillness and the dark. Inside the hut it was hushed, too, and still, but not dark: two smoking oil lamps hung from poles near the entrance.

Nicolson had been deep sunk in drugged, uncaring sleep. He might have slept for hours longer, and would have, given the opportunity. But he did not awake naturally. He awoke because of a sharp stab of pain that reached down even through the mists of sleep, a strange unknown pain that pierced his skin, cold and sharp and heavy. He awoke with a Japanese bayonet at his throat.

The bayonet was long and sharp and ugly, its oiled surface gleaming evilly in the flickering light. Down its length ran the notched runnel for blood. At a distance of a few inches, it looked like a huge metallic ditch, and into Nicolson’s uncomprehending, half-waking mind flickered evil visions of slaughter and mass burials. And then the film was away from his eyes, and his gaze travelled with sick fascination up the shining length of the bayonet, up to the barrel of the rifle and the bronzed brown hand that held it half-way down, beyond the bolt and magazine to the wooden stock and the other bronzed hand, beyond that again to the belted grey-green uniform and the face beneath the visored cap, a face with the lips drawn far back in a smile that was no smile at all, but an animal snarl of hate and expectancy, a sneering malignancy well matched by the blood lust in the porcine little eyes. Even as Nicolson watched, the lips drew still further back over the long, canine teeth, and the man leaned again on the stock of his rifle. The point of the bayonet went right through the skin at the base of the throat. Nicolson felt the waves of nausea flood over him, almost like the waves of the sea. The lights in the hut seemed to flicker and grow dim.

Seconds passed and his vision gradually returned. The man above him—an officer, Nicolson could see now, he had a sword by his side—had not moved, the bayonet still rested on his throat. Slowly, painfully, as best he could without moving head or neck even a millimetre, Nicolson let his eyes wander slowly round the hut, and the sickness came back to him again. Not from the bayonet, this time, but from the bitterness, the hopelessness that welled up in his throat in an almost physical tide of despair. His guard was not the only one in the hut. There must have been at least a dozen of them, all armed with rifles and bayonets, all with rifles and bayonets pointing down at the sleeping men and women. There was something weird and ominous about their silence and stealth and unmoving concentration. Nicolson wondered dimly whether they were all to be murdered in their sleep, and had no sooner done so when the man above him shattered the idea and the brooding silence.

“Is this the swine you spoke of?” He spoke in English, with the precise, grammatical fluency of an educated man who has not learned the language among the people who spoke it. “Is this their leader?”

“That is the man Nicolson.” It was Telak who spoke, shadowed just beyond the doorway. He sounded remote, indifferent. “He is in charge of the party.”

“Is that the case? Speak up, you English pig!” The officer emphasised his request with another jab at Nicolson’s throat. Nicolson could feel the blood trickling slowly, warmly, on to the collar of his shirt. For a moment he thought to deny it, to tell the man that Captain Findhorn was his commanding officer, but instinct immediately told him that things would go very hard with the man whom the Japanese recognised as the leader. Captain Findhorn was in no condition to take any further punishment. Even a blow, now, could easily be enough to kill him.

“Yes, I am in charge.” Even to himself, his voice sounded weak and husky. He looked at the bayonet, tried to gauge his chances of knocking it aside, recognised that it was hopeless. Even if he did, there were another dozen waiting men ready to shoot him down. “Take that damned thing away from my neck.”

“Ah, of course! How forgetful of me.” The officer removed his bayonet, stepped back a pace and then kicked Nicolson viciously in the side, just above the kidney. “Captain Yamata, at your service,” he murmured silkily. “An officer in His Imperial Majesty’s Nipponese Army. Be careful how you speak to a Japanese officer in future. On your feet, you swine.” He raised his voice to a shout. “All of you, on your feet!”

Slowly, shakily, grey-faced beneath his dark tan and almost retching with the agony in his side, Nicolson rose to his feet. All around the hut others, too, were shaking off the dark fog of sleep and pushing up dazedly off the floor, and those who were too slow, too sick or too badly hurt were jerked cruelly upright regardless of their moans and cries and hustled out towards the door. Gudrun Drachmann, Nicolson saw, was one of those who were roughly handled; she had bent over to roll a still sleeping Peter in a blanket and gather him in her arms, and the guard had jerked them both up with a violence that must nearly have dislocated the girl’s arm: the sharp cry of pain was hardly uttered before she had bitten it off in tight-lipped silence. Even in his pain and despair Nicolson found himself looking at her, looking and wondering, wondering at her patience and courage and the selfless unceasing devotion with which she had looked after the child for so many long days and endless nights, and as he looked and wondered he was conscious of a sudden and almost overwhelming sense of pity, conscious that he would have done anything to save this girl from further harm and hurt degradation, a feeling, he had to confess to himself with slow surprise, that he could never remember having had for any other than Caroline. He had known this girl for only ten days, and he knew her better than he would have known most in a dozen lifetimes: the quality and the intensity of their experiences and suffering in the past ten days had had the peculiar power and effect of selecting, highlighting and magnifying with a brutal and revealing clarity faults and merits, vices and virtues that might otherwise have remained concealed or dormant for years. But adversity and privation had been a catalyst that had brought the best and the worst into unmistakable view and, like Lachie McKinnon, Gudrun Drachmann had emerged shining and untarnished out of the furnace of pain and suffering and the extremest hardships. For a moment and incredibly, Nicolson forgot where he was, forgot the bitter past and empty future and looked again at the girl and he knew for the first time that he was deceiving himself, and doing it deliberately. It wasn’t pity, it wasn’t just compassion he felt for this slow-smiling scarred girl with a skin like a rose at dusk and the blue eyes of northern seas: or if it had been, it would never be again. Never again. Nicolson shook his head slowly and smiled to himself, then grunted with pain as Yamata drove the heel of his rifle between his shoulder blades and sent him staggering towards the door.

It was almost pitch dark outside, but light enough for Nicolson to see where the soldiers were taking them—towards the brightly-lit elders’ meeting-place, the big square council house where they had eaten earlier, on the other side of the kampong. It was also light enough for Nicolson to see something else—the faint outline of Telak, motionless in the gloom. Ignoring the officer behind him, ignoring the certainty of another teeth-rattling blow, Nicolson stopped, less than a foot away from him. Telak might have been a man carved from stone. He made no movement, no gesture at all, just stood still in the darkness, like a man far lost in thought.

“How much did they pay you, Telak?” Nicolson’s voice was hardly more than a whisper.

Seconds passed and Telak did not speak. Nicolson tensed himself for another blow on the back, but no blow came. Then Telak spoke, his words so faraway a murmur that Nicolson had to bend forward, involuntarily, to hear him.

“They paid me well, Mr. Nicolson.” He took a pace forward and half-turned, so that his side and profile were suddenly caught in the light streaming from the door of the hut. His left cheek, neck, arm and upper chest were a ghastly mass of sword or bayonet cuts, it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended; the blood seemed to mask the whole side of his body and, even as Nicolson watched, he could see it drip soundlessly on to the hard-beaten earth of the kampong. “They paid me well,” Telak repeated tonelessly. “My father is dead, Trikah is dead. Many of our men are dead. We were betrayed and they took us by surprise.”

Nicolson stared at him without speaking, all thought temporarily blocked by the sight of Telak—a Telak, he could see now, with another Japanese bayonet only inches from his back. Not one bayonet, but two: Telak would have fought well before they struck him down. And then thought did come, pity and shock that this should have happened, and so soon, to men who had so selflessly befriended them, then, swift on the heels of that thought, bitter regret for the words that he himself had just uttered, for the horribly unjust accusation that must have been the last few grains of salt in the wounds of Telak’s sorrow and suffering. Nicolson opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, only a gasp of pain as a rifle butt again thudded into his back, a gasp synchronised with Yamata’s low, evil laugh in the darkness.

Rifle now reversed, the Japanese officer drove Nicolson across the kampong at the jabbing point of his bayonet. Ahead of him, Nicolson could see the others being herded through the sharply-limned rectangle of light that was the entrance to the council house. Some were already inside. Miss Plenderleith was just passing through, with Lena at her back, then Gudrun with Peter, followed closely by the bo’sun and Van Effen. Then Gudrun, approaching the door, stumbled over something on the ground, overbalanced with the weight of the little boy in her arms, and almost fell. Her guard caught her savagely by the shoulder and pushed. Perhaps he meant to push her through the door, but if he did his direction was bad, for girl and child together crashed heavily into the lintel of the doorway. Almost twenty feet away Nicolson could hear the thud of a head or heads against unyielding wood, the girl’s exclamation of pain and young Peter’s shrill, high-pitched cry of fear and hurt. McKinnon, only a few feet behind the girl shouted something unintelligible—his native Gaelic, Nicolson guessed—took two quick steps forward and leapt for the back of the guard who had pushed the girl: but the swinging rifle butt of the soldier behind was even faster and the bo’sun never saw it coming. …

The council house, brightly lit now with half a dozen oil-lamps, was a large, lofty room, twenty feet in width by thirty in length, with the entrance door in the middle of one of the longer sides. To the right hand side of the door, taking up nearly all the width of the room, was the elder’s platform, with another door behind it leading out to the kampong. All the rest of the big wooden house, facing the door and to the left of it, was completely bare, hard-packed earth and nothing else. On this bare earth the prisoners sat in a small, tight semicircle. All except McKinnon—Nicolson could just see him from where he sat, the shoulders, the lifeless, outflung arms and the back of the dark, curly head cruelly illumined by the harsh bar of light streaming out from the doorway of the council house, the rest of his body shadowed in the darkness.

But Nicolson had only an occasional glance to spare for the bo’sun, none at all for the watchful guards who lounged behind them or with their backs to the doorway. He had eyes at the moment only for the platform, for the men on the platform, thoughts only for his own stupidity and folly and squeamishness, for the carelessness that had led them all, Gudrun and Peter and Findhorn and all the rest of them, to this dark end.

Captain Yamata was sitting on the platform, on a low bench, and next to him was Siran. A grinning, triumphant Siran who no longer bothered to conceal his emotions with an expressionless face, a Siran obviously on the best of terms with the broadly smiling Yamata, a Siran who from time to time removed a long black cheroot from his gleaming teeth and blew a contemptuous cloud of smoke in the direction of Nicolson. Nicolson stared back with bleak unwavering eyes, his face drained of all expression. There was murder in his heart.

It was all too painfully obvious what had happened. Siran had pretended to go north from the beach where they had land—a subterfuge, Nicolson thought savagely, that any child should have expected. He must have gone some little way to the north, hidden, waited until the litter-bearers had moved off, followed them, bypassed the village, moved on to Bantuk and warned the garrison there. It had all been so inevitable, so clearly what Siran had been almost bound to do that any fool should have foreseen it and taken precautions against it. The precautions consisting of killing Siran. But he, Nicolson, had criminally failed to take these precautions. He knew now that if he ever again had the chance he would shoot Siran with as little emotion as he would a snake or an old tin can. He knew also that he would never have the chance again.

Slowly, with as much difficulty as if he were fighting against the power of magnetism, Nicolson dragged his gaze away from Siran’s face and looked round the others sitting on the floor beside him. Gudrun, Peter, Miss Plenderleith, Findhorn, Willoughby, Vannier —they were all there, all tired and sick and suffering, nearly all quiet and resigned and unafraid. His bitterness was almost intolerable. They had all trusted him, trusted him completely, implicitly depended upon him to do all in his power to bring them all safely home again. They had trusted him, and now no one of them would ever see home again … He looked away towards the platform. Captain Yamata was on his feet, one hand hooked in his belt, the other resting on the hilt of his sword.

“I shall not delay you long.” His voice was calm and precise. “We leave for Bantuk in ten minutes. We leave to see my commanding officer, Colonel Kiseki, who is very anxious to see you all: Colonel Kiseki had a son who commanded the captured American torpedo boat sent to meet you.” He was aware of the sudden quick looks between the prisoners, the sharp indrawing of breath and he smiled faintly. “Denial will serve you nothing. Captain Siran here will make an excellent witness. Colonel Kiseki is mad with grief. It would have been better for you—for all of you, each last one of you—had you never been born.

“Ten minutes,” he went on smoothly. “Not more. There is something we must have first, it will not take long, and then we will go.” He smiled again, looked slowly round the prisoners squatting on the floor beneath him. “And while we wait, I am sure you would all care to meet someone whom you think you know but do not know at all. Someone who is a very good friend of our glorious Empire, someone who, I feel sure, our glorious Emperor will wish to thank in person. Concealment is no longer necessary, sir.”

There was a sudden movement among the prisoners, then one of them was on his feet, advancing towards the platform, speaking fluently in Japanese and shaking the bowing Captain Yamata by the hand. Nicolson struggled half-way to his feet, consternation and disbelief in every line of his face, then fell heavily to the ground as a rifle butt caught him across the shoulder. For a moment his neck and arm seemed as if they were on fire, but he barely noticed it.

“Van Effen! What the devil do you think——”

“Not Van Effen, my dear Mr. Nicolson,” Van Effen protested. “Not ‘Van’ but ‘von’. I’m sick and tired of masquerading as a damned Hollander.” He smiled faintly and bowed. “I am at your service, Mr. Nicolson. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexis von Effen, German counter-espionage.”

Nicolson stared at him, stared without speaking, nor was he alone in his shocked astonishment. Every eye in the council house was on Van Effen, eyes held there involuntarily while stunned minds fought to orientate themselves, to grasp the situation as it was, and memories and incidents of the past ten days slowly coalesced into comprehension and the tentative beginnings of understanding. The seconds dragged interminably by and formed themselves into a minute, and then almost another minute, and there were no more tentative wonderings and deepening suspicions. There was only certainty, stone cold certainty that Colonel Alexis von Effen was really who he claimed to be. There could be no doubt at all.

It was Van Effen who finally broke the silence. He turned his head slightly and looked out the door, then glanced again at his late comrades in distress. There was a smile on his face, but there was no triumph in it, no rejoicing, no signs of pleasure at all. If anything, the smile was sad.

“And here, gentlemen, comes the reason for all our trials and suffering of the past days, of why the Japanese—my people’s allies, I would remind you—have pursued and harried us without ceasing. Many of you wondered why we were so important to the Japanese, our tiny group of survivors. Now you will know.”

A Japanese soldier walked past the men and women on the floor and dumped a heavy bag between Van Effen and Yamata. They all stared at it, then stared at Miss Plenderleith. It was her bag, and her lips and knuckles were pale as ivory, her eyes half-shut as if in pain. But she made no move and said nothing at all.

At a sign from Van Effen the Japanese soldier took one handle of the bag, while Van Effen took the other. Between them they raised it to shoulder height, then inverted it. Nothing fell to the ground, but the heavily weighted lining dropped through the inverted mouth of the canvas and leather bag and hung down below it as if it were filled with lead. Van Effen looked at the Japanese officer. “Captain Yamata?”

“My pleasure, Colonel” Yamata stepped forward, the sword hissing from its sheath. It gleamed once in the bright yellow light from the oil-lamps, then its razored edge sliced cleanly through the tough canvas lining as if it had been so much paper. And then the gleam of the sword was lost, buried, extinguished in the dazzling, scintillating stream of fire that poured from the bag and pooled on the earth beneath in a deep, lambent cone of coruscating brilliance.

“Miss Plenderleith has quite a taste in gee-gaws and trinkets.” Van Effen smiled pleasantly and touched the sparkling radiance at his feet with a casual toe. “Diamonds, Mr. Nicolson. The largest collection, I believe, ever seen outside the Union of South Africa. These are valued at just under two million pounds.”

FOURTEEN

The soft murmur of Van Effen’s voice faded away and the silence in the council house was heavy and deep. For each man and woman there the others might not have existed. The great heap of diamonds at their feet, sparkling and flaming with a barbaric magnificence in the light of the flickering oil-lamps, had a weirdly hypnotic quality, held every eye in thrall. But by and by Nicolson stirred and looked up at Van Effen. Strangely enough, he could feel no bitterness, no hostility towards this man: they had come through too much together, and Van Effen had come through it better than most, unselfish, enduring and helpful all the way. The memory of that was much too recent to be washed away.

“Borneo stones, of course,” he murmured. “From Banjermasin by the Kerry Dancer—couldn’t have been any other way. Uncut, I suppose —and you say they’re worth two million?”

“Rough cut and uncut,” Van Effen nodded. “And their market value is at least that—a hundred fighter planes, a couple of destroyers, I don’t know. In wartime they’re worth infinitely more to any side that gets its hands on them.” He smiled faintly. “None of these stones will ever grace milady’s fingers. Industrial use only—diamond-tipped cutting tools. A great pity, is it not?”

No one spoke, no one as much as glanced at the speaker. They heard the words, but the words failed to register, for that moment they all lived in their eyes alone. And then Van Effen had stepped quickly forward, his foot swinging, and the great pile of diamonds were tumbling over the earthen floor in a glittering cascade.

“Trash! Baubles!” His voice was harsh, contemptuous. “What matter all the diamonds, all the precious stones that ever were when the great nations of the world are at each other’s throats and men are dying in their thousands and their hundreds of thousands? I wouldn’t sacrifice a life, not even the life of an enemy, for all the diamonds in the Indies. But I have sacrificed many lives, and put many more I’m afraid, in deadly danger to secure another treasure, an infinitely more valuable treasure than these few paltry stones at our feet. What do a few lives matter, if losing them enables a man to save a thousand times more?”

“We can all see how fine and noble you are,” Nicolson said bitterly. “Spare us the rest and get to the point.”

“I have already arrived,” Van Effen said equably. “That treasure is in this room, with us, now. I have no wish to prolong this unduly or seek after dramatic effect.” He stretched out his hand. “Miss Plenderleith, if you please.”

She stared at him, her eyes uncomprehending.

“Oh, now, come, come.” He snapped his fingers and smiled at her. “I admire your performance, but I really can’t wait all night.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said blankly.

“Perhaps it may help you if I tell you that I know everything.” There was neither gloating nor triumph in Van Effen’s voice, only certainty and a curious overtone of weariness. “Everything, Miss Plenderleith, even to that simple little ceremony in a Sussex village on 18th February, 1902.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Nicolson demanded.

“Miss Plenderleith knows, don’t you Miss Plenderleith?” There was almost compassion in Van Effen’s voice: for the first time the life had faded from her lined old face and her shoulders were sagging wearily.

“I know.” She nodded in defeat and looked at Nicolson. “He is referring to the date of my marriage—my marriage to Brigadier-General Farnholme. We celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary aboard the lifeboat” She tried to smile, but failed.

Nicolson stared at her, at the tired little face and empty eyes, and all at once he was convinced of the truth of it. Even as he looked at her, not really seeing her, memories came flooding in on him and many things that had baffled him gradually began to become clear … But Van Effen was speaking again.

“18th February, 1902. If I know that, Miss Plenderleith, I know everything.”

“Yes, you know everything.” Her voice was a distant murmur.

“Please.” His hand was still outstretched. “You would not care for Captain Yamata’s men to search you.”

“No.” She fumbled under her salt-stained, bleached jacket, undid a belt and handed it to Van Effen. “I think this is what you want.”

“Thank you.” For a man who had secured what he had spoken of as a priceless treasure, Van Effen’s face was strangely empty of all triumph and satisfaction. “This is indeed what I want.”

He undid the pouches of the belt, lifted out the photostats and films that had lain inside and held them up to the light of the flickering oil-lamps. Almost a minute passed while he examined them in complete silence, then he nodded his head in satisfaction and returned papers and films to the belt.

“All intact,” he murmured. “A long time and a long way—but all intact.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Nicolson demanded irritably. “What is that?”

“This?” Van Effen glanced down at the belt he was buckling round his waist. “This, Mr. Nicolson, is what makes everything worth while. This is the reason for all the action and suffering of the past days, the reason why the Kerry Dancer and the Viroma were sunk, why so many people have died, why my allies were prepared to go to any length to prevent your escape into the Timor Sea. This is why Captain Yamata is here now, although I doubt whether even he knows that—but his commanding officer will. This is——”

“Get to the point!” Nicolson snapped.

“Sorry.” Van Effen tapped the belt. “This contains the complete, fully detailed plans, in code, of Japan’s projected invasion of Northern Australia. Japanese codes are almost impossible to break, but our people know that there is one man in London who could do it. If anyone could have escaped with these and got them to London, it would have been worth a fortune to the allies.”

“My God!” Nicolson felt dazed. “Where—where did they come from?”

“I don’t know.” Van Effen shook his head. “If we had known that they would never have got into the wrong hands in the first place … The full-scale invasion plans, Mr. Nicolson—forces employed, times, dates, places—everything. In British or American hands, these would have meant three months’ setback to the Japanese, perhaps even six. At this early stage of the war, such a delay could have been fatal to the Japanese: you can understand their anxiety to recover these. What’s a fortune in diamonds compared to these, Mr. Nicolson?”

“What, indeed,” Nicolson muttered. He spoke automatically, a man with his mind far away.

“But now we have both—the plans and the diamonds.” There was still that strange, complete lack of any inflection of triumph in Van Effen’s voice. He reached out a toe and touched the pile of diamonds. “Perhaps I was over hasty in expressing my contempt of these. They have their own beauty.”

“Yes.” The bitterness of defeat was sharp in Nicolson’s mouth, but his face was impassive. “A fantastic sight, Van Effen.”

“Admire them while you may, Mr. Nicolson.” Captain Yamata’s voice, cold and harsh, cut through the spell, brought them all tumbling back to reality. He touched the tip of the cone of diamonds with his sword-point and the white fire glittered and blazed as the stones spilled over on to the ground. “They are beautiful, but man must have eyes to see.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nicolson demanded.

“Just that Colonel Kiseki has had orders only to recover the diamonds and deliver them intact to Japan. Nothing was said about prisoners. You killed his son. You will see what I mean.”

“I can guess.” Nicolson looked at him with contempt. “A shovel, a six by two hole and a shot in the back when I’ve finished digging. Oriental culture. We’ve heard all about it.”

Yamata smiled emptily. “Nothing so quick and clean and easy, I assure you. We have, as you say, culture. Such crudities are not for us.”

“Captain Yamata.” Van Efifen was looking at the Japanese officer, fractionally narrowed eyes the only sign of emotion in an expressionless face.

“Yes, Colonel?”

“You—you can’t do that. This man is not a spy, to be shot without trial. He’s not even a member of the armed forces, Technically, he’s a noncombatant.”

“Of course, of course.” Yamata was heavily ironic. “To date he has only been responsible for the deaths of fourteen of our sailors and an airman. I shudder to think of the carnage if he ever became a combatant. And he killed Kiseki’s son.”

“He didn’t. Siran will bear that out.”

“Let him explain that to the colonel,” Yamata said indifferently. He sheathed his sword. “We quibble, and uselessly. Come, let us go. Our truck should be here shortly.”

“Truck?” Van Eflfen queried.

“We left it almost a mile away.” Yamata grinned. “We did not wish to disturb your sleep. What’s the matter, Mr. Nicolson?” he finished sharply.

“Nothing,” Nicolson answered shortly. He had been staring out through the open doorway and in spite of himself a flicker of excitement had crossed his face, but he knew that his eyes had been safely away before Yamata had caught his expression. “The truck isn’t here yet. I would like to ask Van Effen one or two questions.” He hoped his voice sounded casual.

“We have a minute or two,” Yamata nodded. “It might amuse me. But be quick.”

“Thank you.” He looked at Van Effen. “As a matter of interest, who gave Miss Plenderleith the diamonds—and the plans?”

“What does it matter now?” Van Effen’s voice was heavy, remote. “It’s all past and done with now.”

“Please,” Nicolson persisted. It had suddenly become essential to stall for time. “I really would like to know.”

“Very well.” Van Effen looked at him curiously. “I’ll tell you. Farnholme had them both—and he had them nearly all the time. That should have been obvious to you from the fact that Miss Plenderleith had them. Where the plans came from I’ve told you I don’t know: the diamonds were given him by the Dutch authorities in Borneo.”

“They must have had a great deal of faith in him,” Nicolson said dryly.

“They had. They had every reason to. Farnholme was utterly reliable. He was an infinitely resourceful and clever man, and knew the East—especially the islands—as well as any man alive. We know for a fact that he spoke at least fourteen Asiatic languages.”

“You seem to have known a great deal about him.”

“We did. It was our business—and very much to our interest—to find out all we could. Farnholme was one of our arch-enemies. To the best of our knowledge he had been a member of your Secret Service for just over thirty years.”

There were one or two stifled gasps of surprise and the sudden low murmur of voices. Even Yamata had sat down again and was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his keen dark face alight with interest.

“Secret Service!” Nicolson let his breath go in a long, soundless whistle of surprise, rubbed a hand across his forehead in a gesture of disbelief and wonderment. He had guessed as much five minutes ago. Under the protective cover of his hand his eyes flickered sideways for a split second, glanced through the open door of the council house, then looked at Van Effen. “But—but Miss Plenderleith said he commanded a regiment in Malaya, some years ago.”

“That’s right, he did.” Van Effen smiled. “At least, he appeared to.”

“Go on, go on.” It was Captain Findhorn who urged him.

“Not much to go on with. The Japanese and myself knew of the missing plans, within hours of their being stolen. I was after them with official Japanese backing. We hadn’t reckoned on Farnholme having made arrangements to take the diamonds with him also—a stroke of genius on Farnholme’s part. It served a double purpose. If anyone penetrated his disguise as an alcoholic beachcomber on the run, he could buy his way out of trouble. Or if anyone were still suspicious of him and discovered the diamonds they would be sure to think that that accounted for his disguise and odd behaviour and let it go at that. And, in the last resort, if the Japanese discovered on what ship he was, he hoped that cupidity or their natural desire to recover such a valuable wartime merchandise would make them think twice about sinking the ship, in the hope that they might get the plans and so recover the diamonds another way, killing two birds with one stone. I tell you, Farnholme was brilliant. He had the most diabolically ill luck.”

“It didn’t work out that way,” Findhorn objected. “Why did they sink the Kerry Dancer?”

“The Japanese didn’t know he was aboard at the time,” Van Effen explained. “But Siran did—he always did. He was after the diamonds, I suspect, because some renegade Dutch official double-crossed his own people and gave Siran the information in return for a promised share of the profits when Siran laid hands on the stones. He would never have seen a single guilder or stone. Neither would the Japanese.”

“A clever attempt to discredit me.” It was Siran speaking for the first time, his voice smooth and controlled. “The stones would have gone to our good friends and allies, the Japanese. That was our intention. My two men here will bear me out.”

“It will be difficult to prove otherwise,” Van Effen said indifferently. “Your betrayal this night is worth something. No doubt your masters will throw the jackal a bone.” He paused, then went on: “Farnholme never suspected who I was—not, at least, until after we had been several days in the lifeboat. But I had known him all along, cultivated him, drunk with him. Siran here saw us together several times and must have thought that Farnholme and I were more than friends, a mistake anyone might make. That, I think, is why he rescued me—or rather didn’t chuck me overboard when the Kerry Dancer went down. He thought I either knew where the diamonds were or would find out from Farnholme.”

“Another mistake,” Siran admitted coldly. “I should have let you drown.”

“You should. Then you might have got the whole two million to yourself.” Van Effen paused for a moment’s recollection, then looked at the Japanese officer. “Tell me, Captain Yamata, has there been any unusual British naval activity in the neighbourhood recently?”

Captain Yamata looked at him in quick surprise. “How do you know?”

“Destroyers, possibly?” Van Effen had ignored the question. “Moving in close at night?”

“Exactly.” Yamata was astonished. “They come close in to Java Head each night, not eighty miles from here, then retire before dawn, before our planes can come near. But how——”

“It is easily explained. On the dawn of the day the Kerry Dancer was sunk, Farnholme spent over an hour in the radio room. Almost certainly he told them of his escape hopes—south from the Java Sea. No allied ship dare move north of Indonesia—it would be a quick form of suicide. So they’re patrolling the south, moving close in at nights. My guess is that they’ll have another vessel patrolling near Bali. You have made no effort to deal with this intruder, Captain Yamata?”

“Hardly.” Yamata’s tone was dry. “The only vessel we have here is our commander’s, Colonel Kiseki’s. It is fast enough, but too small—just a launch, really only a mobile radio station. Communications are very difficult in these parts.”

“I see.” Van Effen looked at Nicolson. “The rest is obvious. Farnholme came to the conclusion that it was no longer safe for him to carry the diamonds round with him any longer—nor the plans. The plans, I think, he gave to Miss Plenderleith aboard the Viroma, the diamonds on the island—he emptied his own bag and filled it with grenades … I have never known a braver man.”

Van Effen was silent for a few moments, then continued. “The poor renegade Muslim priest was just that and no more: Farnholme’s story, told on the spur of the moment, was completely untrue, but typical of the audacity of the man—to accuse someone else of what he was doing himself … And just one final thing—my apologies to Mr. Walters here.” Van Effen smiled faintly. “Farnholme wasn’t the only one who was wandering into strange cabins that night. I spent over an hour in Mr. Walters’ radio room. Mr. Walters slept well. I carry things with me that ensure that people will sleep well.”

Walters stared at him, then glanced at Nicolson, remembering how he had felt that next morning, and Nicolson remembered how the radio operator had looked, white, strained and sick. Van Effen caught Walters’ slow nod of understanding.

“I apologise, Mr. Walters. But I had to do it, I had to send out a message. I am a skilled operator, but it took me a long time. Each time I heard footsteps in the passage outside, I died a thousand deaths. But I got my message through.”

“Course, speed and position, eh?” Nicolson said grimly. “Plus a request not to bomb the oil cargo tanks. You just wanted the ship stopped, isn’t that it?”

“More or less,” Van Effen admitted. “I didn’t expect them to make quite so thorough a job of stopping the ship, though. On the other hand, don’t forget that if I hadn’t sent the message, telling them the diamonds were on board, they would probably have blown the ship sky-high.”

“So we all owe our lives to you,” Nicolson said bitterly. “Thank you very much.” He looked at him bleakly for a long, tense moment, then swung his gaze away, his eyes so obviously unseeing that no one thought to follow his gaze. But his eyes were very far indeed from unseeing, and there could be no doubt about it now. McKinnon had moved, and moved six inches, perhaps nearer nine, in the past few minutes, not in the uncontrolled, jerky twitchings of an unconscious man in deep-reaching pain, but in the stealthy, smoothly coordinated movements of a fully conscious person concentrating on inching silently across the ground, so silently, so soundlessly, with such imperceptible speed that only a man with his nerves strung up to a pitch of hyper-sensitivity could have seen it at all. But Nicolson saw it, knew there could be no mistake at all. Where originally there had been head, shoulders and arms lying in the bar of light that streamed out through the door, now there was only the back of the black head and one tanned forearm. Slowly, unconcernedly, his face an empty, expressionless mask, Nicolson let his gaze wander back to the company. Van Effen was speaking again, watching him with speculative curiosity.

“As you will have guessed by now, Mr. Nicolson, Farnholme remained safely in the pantry during the fight because he was sitting with two million pounds in his lap and wasn’t going to risk any of it for any old-fashioned virtue of courage and honour and decency. I remained in the dining-saloon because I wasn’t going to fire on my allies—and you will recall that the only time I did—at the sailor in the conning-tower of the submarine—I missed. A very convincing miss, I’ve always thought. After the initial attack no Japanese ‘plane attacked us on the Viroma, when we were clearing the boat—or afterwards: I had signalled with a torch from the top of the wheelhouse.

“Similarly the submarine did not sink us—the captain wouldn’t have been very popular had he returned to base and reported that he had sent two million pounds worth of diamonds to the bottom of the South China Sea.” He smiled, again without mirth. “You may remember that I wished to surrender to that submarine—you adopted a rather hostile view-point about that.”

“Then why did that ‘plane attack us?”

“Who knows?” Van Effen shrugged his shoulders. “Getting desperate, I suppose. And don’t forget that it had a seaplane in attendance—it could have picked up one or two selected survivors.”

“Such as yourself?”

“Such as myself,” Van Effen admitted. “Shortly after this Siran found out that I hadn’t the diamonds—he searched my bag during one of the nights we were becalmed: I saw him do it and I let him do it, and there was nothing in it anyway. And it always lessened my chances of being stabbed in the back—which happened to his next suspect, the unfortunate Ahmed. Again he chose wrongly.” He looked at Siran with unconcealed distaste. “I suppose Ahmed woke up while you were rifling his bag?”

“An unfortunate accident.” Siran waved an airy hand. “My knife slipped.”

“You have very little time to live, Siran.” There was something curiously prophetic about the tone of Van Effen’s voice, and the contemptuous smile drained slowly from Siran’s face. “You are too evil to live.”

“Superstitious nonsense!” The smile was back, the upper lip curled over the even white teeth.

“We shall see, we shall see.” Van Effen transferred his gaze to Nicolson. “That’s all, Mr. Nicolson. You’ll have guessed why Farnholme hit me over the head when the torpedo boat came alongside. He had to, if he was to save your lives. A very, very gallant man—and a fast thinker.” He turned and looked at Miss Plenderleith. “And you gave me quite a fright, too, when you said Farnholme had left all his stuff on the island. Then I realised right away that he couldn’t have done that, because he’d never have a chance of going back there again. So I knew you must have it.” He looked at her compassionately. “You are a very courageous lady, Miss Plenderleith. You deserved better than this.”

He finished speaking, and again the deep, heavy silence fell over the council house. Now and again the little boy whimpered in his uneasy sleep, a small frightened sound, but Gudrun rocked and soothed him in her arms and by and by he lay still. Yamata was staring down at the stones, the thin aquiline face dark and brooding, seemingly in no hurry to move off. The prisoners were almost all looking at Van Effen, their expressions ranging from astonishment to blank incredulity. Behind them stood the guards, ten or twelve in all, alert and watchful and their guns ready in their hands. Nicolson risked a last quick look out through the lighted doorway, felt the breath checking in his throat and the almost unconscious tightening of his fists. The doorway and the lighted oblong beyond it were completely empty. McKinnon had gone. Slowly, carelessly, easing out his pent-up breath in a long soundless sigh, Nicolson looked away—and found Van Effen’s speculative eyes full upon him. Speculative—and understanding. Even as Nicolson watched, Van Effen looked sideways through the door for a long, meaningful moment, looked back at Nicolson again. Nicolson felt the chill wave of defeat wash through his mind, wondered if he could get to Van Effen’s throat before he spoke. But that would do no good, it would only postpone the inevitable. Even if he killed him—but Nicolson knew he was fooling himself, he hadn’t a chance, and even if he had, even to save themselves, he could do Van Effen no harm. He owed Van Effen a life—Peter’s. Van Effen could have freed himself very easily that morning—the clam hadn’t been all that large. He could have let Peter go and released himself by the use of both his hands: but he had elected, instead, to stand there in agony with the child in his arms and have his leg badly mauled and cut … Van Effen was smiling at him, and Nicolson knew it was too late to stop him from speaking.

“Beautifully done, wasn’t it, Mr. Nicolson?”

Nicolson said nothing. Captain Yamata lifted his head and looked puzzled. “What was beautifully done, Colonel?”

“Oh, just the whole operation.” Van Effen waved his hand. “From beginning to end.” He smiled deprecatingly, and Nicolson could feel the blood pounding in his pulse.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yamata growled. He rose to his feet. “Time we were going. I can hear the truck coming.”

“Very well.” Van Effen flexed his wounded leg stiffly: with the clam bite and the shrapnel wound in his thigh it was almost useless to him. “To see your colonel? Tonight?”

“Inside the hour,” Yamata said briefly. “Tonight Colonel Kiseki entertains important headmen and chiefs in his villa. His son lies dead, but duty crushes grief. Crushes it, I say, not kills it. But the sight of all these prisoners will lighten his saddened heart.”

Nicolson shivered. Someone, he thought wryly, walking over his grave. Even without the almost sadistic anticipation in Yamata’s voice, he had no illusions as to what lay in store for himself. For a moment he thought of all the stories he had heard of Japanese atrocities in China, then resolutely pushed the thought away. An empty mind on a razor edge was his only hope, he knew, and that no hope at all. Not even with McKinnon out there, for what could McKinnon do except get himself killed. The thought that the bo’sun might try to make good his own escape never crossed Nicolson’s mind. McKinnon just wasn’t made that way … Van Effen was speaking again.

“And afterwards? When the colonel has seen the prisoners? You have quarters for them?”

“They won’t need quarters,” Yamata said brutally. “A burial party will be all that’s required.”

“I’m not joking, Captain Yamata,” Van Effen said stiffly.

“Neither am I, Colonel.” Yamata smiled, said no more. In the sudden silence they could hear the squeal of brakes and the blipping of an accelerator as the truck drew up in the middle of the kampong. Then Captain Findhorn cleared his throat.

“I am in charge of our party, Captain Yamata. Let me remind you of international wartime conventions.” His voice was low and husky, but steady for all that. “As a captain in the British Mercantile Marine, I demand——”

“Be quiet!” Yamata’s voice was almost a shout, and his face was twisted in ugliness. He lowered his voice until it was almost a whisper, a caressing murmur more terrifying by far than a roar of anger. “You demand nothing, Captain. You are in no position to demand anything. International conventions! Bah! I spit at international conventions. These are for the weak, for simpletons and for children. The strong have no need for them. Colonel Kiseki has never heard of them. All Colonel Kiseki knows is that you have killed his son.” Yamata shivered elaborately. “I fear no man on earth, but I fear Colonel Kiseki. Everyone fears Colonel Kiseki. At any time he is a terrible man. Ask your friend there. He has heard of him.” He pointed at Telak, standing in the background between two armed guards.

“He is not a man.” All Telak’s left side was ridged and lumped in long streaks of coagulated blood. “He is a fiend. God will punish Colonel Kiseki.”

“Ah, so?” Yamata said something quickly in Japanese, and Telak staggered back as a rifle butt jabbed cruelly into his face. “Our allies,” Yamata purred apologetically, “but they have to be educated. In particular, they must not speak ill of our senior army officers … At any time, I said, Colonel Kiseki is a terrible man. But now that his only son has been killed … “He allowed his voice to trail off into silence.

“What will Colonel Kiseki do?” There was no trace of emotion, of any feeling in Van Effen’s voice. “Surely the women and children——”

“They will be the first to go—and they will take a long time going.” Captain Yamata might have been discussing arrangements for a garden party. “Colonel Kiseki is a connoisseur, an artist in this sort of thing—it is an education for lesser men such as myself to watch him. He thinks mental suffering is no less important than physical pain.” Yamata was warming to his subject, and finding it more than pleasant. “For instance, his main attention will be directed towards Mr. Nicolson here.”

“Inevitably,” Van Effen murmured.

“Inevitably. So he will ignore Mr. Nicolson—at first, that is. He will concentrate instead on the child. But he may spare the boy, I don’t know, he has a strange weakness for very small children.” Yamata frowned, then his face cleared. “So he will pass on to the girl here—the one with the scarred face. Siran tells me she and Nicolson are very friendly, to say the least.” He looked at Gudrun for a long moment of time, and the expression on his face woke murder in Nicolson’s heart. “Colonel Kiseki has rather a special way with the ladies—especially the young one: a rather ingenious combination of the green bamboo bed and the water treatment. You have heard of them, perhaps, Colonel?”

“I have heard of them.” For the first time that evening Van Effen smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, and Nicolson felt fear for the first time, the overwhelming certainty of ultimate defeat. Van Effen was toying with him, the cat with the mouse, sadistically lending false encouragement while waiting for the moment to pounce. “Yes, indeed I have heard of them. It should be a most interesting performance. I presume I shall be permitted to watch the—ah—festivities?”

“You shall be our guest of honour, my dear Colonel,” Yamata purred.

“Excellent, excellent. As you say, it should be most educative.” Van Effen looked at him quizzically, waved a lackadaisical hand towards the prisoners. “You think it likely that Colonel Kiseki will—ah—interview them all? Even the wounded?”

“They murdered his son,” Yamata answered flatly.

“Quite so. They murdered his son.” Van Effen looked again at the prisoners, and his eyes were bleak and cold. “But one of them also tried to murder me. I don’t think Colonel Kiseki would miss just one of them, would he?”

Yamata raised his eyebrows. “I’m not quite certain that I——”

“One of them tried to kill me,” Van Effen said harshly. “I have a personal score to settle. I would take it as a great favour, Captain Yamata, to be able to settle that score now.”

Yamata looked away from the soldier who was pouring the diamonds back into the torn bag and stroked his chin. Nicolson could once more feel the blood pounding in his pulse, forced himself to breathe quietly, normally. He doubted if anyone else knew what was going on.

“I suppose it is the least you are entitled to—we owe you a very great deal. But the colonel——” Suddenly the doubt and uncertainty cleared from Yamata’s face, and he smiled. “But of course! You are a senior allied officer. An order from you——”

“Thank you, Captain Yamata,” Van Effen interrupted. “Consider it given.” He whirled round, limped quickly into the middle of the prisoners, bent down, twisted his hand in Gordon’s shirtfront and jerked him viciously to his feet. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this, you little rat. Get across there.” He ignored Gordon’s struggles, his fear-maddened face and incoherent protestations of innocence, marched him across to an empty space at the back of the council house, at a point directly opposite the door, and flung him into a huddled heap, sprawled almost his length against the back wall of the hut, one arm raised in pathetic defence, unreasoning panic limned in every line of his unlovely face.

Van Effen ignored the panic, the protestations and the man, turned quickly round and limped across towards the elders’ platform, towards the Japanese soldier who stood with his own rifle under one arm and Farnholme’s machine-carbine under the other. With the careless assurance of a man who expects neither question nor resistance, Van Effen firmly relieved the soldier of the machine-carbine, checked that it was fully loaded, slipped the catch to automatic and hobbled back again towards Gordon who still lay where he had left him, eyes unnaturally wide and staring, moaning softly, long, quivering indrawn breaths were the only sound in the room. Every eye in the room was on Van Effen and Gordon, eyes that reflected various states of pity or anger or anticipation or just blank incomprehension. Nicolson’s face was quite expressionless, Yamata’s almost so, but the tongue running slowly over his lips gave him away. But no one spoke, no one moved, no one thought to speak or move. A man was about to be killed, to be murdered, but some indefinable factor in that electric atmosphere prevented any protest, any interruption, from anyone inside that house. And when the interruption did come, a sudden, jarring shock that shattered the spell as a stone might shatter a delicate crystal, it came from the kampong outside.

The high-pitched yell in Japanese jerked every head towards the door. Immediately afterwards came the sound of a short, sharp scuffle, a cry, a revolting, hollow sound like a giant cleaver splitting a water-melon, a momentary, weirdly ominous silence, then a roar and a rush of smoke and flame and the doorway and most of the wall were engulfed, with incredible speed, in a leaping, crackling wall of flame.

Captain Yamata took two steps towards the doorway, opened his mouth to shout an order and died with his mouth still open, the slugs from Van Effen’s carbine tearing half his chest away. The staccato hammering of the machine-gun inside the room was almost deafening, completely blotting out the roar of the flames. The sergeant still on the platform died next, then a soldier beside him, then a great red flower spread outwards from the centre of Siran’s face, and still Van Effen crouched low over the slowly swinging barrel of his carbine, his hand locked on the trigger, his face that of a man carved from stone. He staggered when the first Japanese rifle bullet caught him high up on the shoulder, stumbled and fell to one knee as a second bullet smashed into his side with the force of a battering ram, but still no flicker of expression crossed his face and the ivory-knuckled trigger finger only tightened the more. That much and that only Nicolson saw before he catapulted himself backwards and crashed into the legs of a soldier lining his tommy-gun on the man by the far wall. They went down together in a writhing, twisting, furiously struggling heap, then Nicolson was smashing the butt of the tommy-gun again and again into the dark blur of the face before him and was on his feet once more, knocking aside a gleaming bayonet blade and kicking viciously for an unprotected groin.

Even as he closed with the man, hooked fingers locking round a scrawny throat, he was conscious that Walters and Evans and Willoughby were on their feet also, fighting like madmen in the weird half-light compounded of the red glare of the flames and the choking acrid smoke that filled the room. He was conscious, too, that Van Effen’s machine-carbine had fallen silent, that another machine-gun, with a different cyclic rate, was firing through the licking, resinous flames that all but curtained off the doorway. And then he had forgotten all about these things, another man had seized him from behind and locked an elbow round his throat, strangling him in a grim and savage silence. There was a red mist, a mist shot through with sparks and flame, swimming before his eyes, and he knew it was his own blood pounding in his head and not the furiously burning walls of the council house. His strength was going, he was just sliding away into the darkness, when he vaguely heard the man behind him cry out in agony, and then McKinnon had him by the arm, leading him at a stumbling run out through the blazing doorway. But they were too late—too late at least for Nicolson. The blazing overhead beam falling from the roof caught him only a glancing blow on head and shoulder, but it was enough, in his weakened state more than enough, and the darkness closed over him.

He came to almost a minute later, lying huddled against the wall of the nearest upwind hut from the council house. He was dimly aware of men standing and moving around him, of Miss Plenderleith wiping blood and soot from his face, of the great tongue of flame licking thirty or forty feet vertically upwards into a dark and starless sky as the coucil house, a wall and most of the roof already gone, burnt torch-like to destruction.

Consciousness returned. He staggered to his feet, pushing Miss Plenderleith ungently to one side. All firing had stopped now, he realised, and he could hear the distant sound of a truck engine revving and fading, revving and fading as it slammed through the gears—the Japanese, or what few of them were left, leaving in a panic-stricken hurry.

“McKinnon!” He had to raise his voice above the crackling roar of the flames. “McKinnon! Where are you?”

“He’s round the other side of that house, somewhere.” It was Willoughby speaking, and he was pointing to the burning council house. “He’s all right, Johnny.”

“Everybody out?” Nicolson demanded. “Anybody left inside that thing. For God’s sake tell me!”

“They’re all out, I think, sir.” Walters was at his side, his voice hesitant. “Nobody left where we were all sitting, I know that.”

“Thank God, thank God!” He stopped abruptly. “Is Van Effen out?”

No one said anything.

“You heard what I said,” Nicolson shouted. “Is Van Effen out?” He caught sight of Gordon, reached him in two steps and caught him by the shoulder. “Is Van Effen still in there? You were nearest him.”

Gordon stared at him blankly, his eyes still wide with fear. His mouth was working, the lips jerking and twisting in uncontrollable fashion, but no words came out. Nicolson released his grip on the shoulder, struck him twice, savagely, across the face, open-handed and back-handed, caught him again before he could fall.

“Answer me or I’ll kill you, Gordon. Did you leave Van Effen in there?”

Gordon nodded his head jerkily, his fear-whitened face wealing red from the imprint of Nicolson’s fingers.

“You left him in there?” Nicolson demanded incredulously. “You left him to die in that inferno?”

“He was going to murder me!” Gordon whined. “He was going to kill me.”

“You bloody fool! He saved your life. He saved all our lives.” He sent Gordon staggering with a savage shove, brushed off a couple of restraining hands and had covered the ten paces to the council house and leapt through the sheeted flame of the doorway before he had properly realised what he was doing.

The heat inside struck at him with the physical impact of a violent blow, he could feel it engulf him, wash over him in a great wave of burning pain. The superheated air, starved now of its life-giving oxygen, seared down into his lungs like fire itself. He could smell his hair singeing almost immediately, and the tears flooded into his eyes and threatened to blind him, and had it been any darker inside he would have been blinded: but in the savage red glare of the flames it was as bright, almost, as the noon-day sun.

There was no difficulty in seeing Van Effen. He was huddled against the still intact far wall, sitting on the ground, propped up on one arm. His khaki shirt and drill trousers were saturated with blood, and his face was ashen. Gasping, choking, his heaving lungs fighting for air and getting none, Nicolson stumbled as fast as he could across to the far wall of the council house. He had to hurry, he knew, he could last only moments in this atmosphere, half a minute at the most. His clothes were already smouldering, torn edges smoking and burning irregularly red, his tortured lungs couldn’t find the oxygen for his rapidly weakening body and the heat on his face and body was like a blast furnace.

Van Effen looked at him vaguely, without either expression or comment. Probably half dead already, Nicolson thought, God only knew how the man had survived even that long. He stooped, tried to pry Van Effen’s fingers free from the guard and trigger of the machine-carbine, but it was hopeless, the hand was locked across the metal like a band of iron. There was no time to lose, perhaps it was already too late. Gasping, struggling, the sweat running off his overheated body in streams, Nicolson put out the last of his fading strength in one despairing effort and raised the wounded man up in his arms.

He had covered half the return journey when a crackling, rending noise, loud even above the roar of the flames, made him break step and halt just in time as several blazing, smoking timbers from the roof crashed to the ground in a pyrotechnic eruption of flying sparks and red-hot embers not three feet from where he stood. The doorway was completely blocked off. Nicolson jerked back his head, stared upwards through smarting, sweat-filmed eyes, gathered a hasty blurred impression of a crumbling, caving roof already falling in upon him, and waited no longer. Four stumbling, plunging steps it took him to cross the blazing beams that lay between them and the doorway, and four steps were eternity. The now tindery dry khaki drills caught fire immediately and the writhing cocoons of flame ran up his legs so fast and so far that he could feel their hungry tips licking agonisingly at the bare forearms that supported the dead weight of Van Effen. Red-hot swords of fire pierced the soles of his feet in merciless excoriation and his nostrils were full of the sickening stench of scorching flesh. His mind was going, his strength was gone, and no sense of time or purpose or direction was left him when he felt urgent hands catching him by the arms and shoulders and pulling him out into the cool, sweet, life-giving air of the evening.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to hand Van Effen over to outstretched arms, to collapse himself on the ground and let the waiting wave of unconsciousness wash over him and carry him off to merciful oblivion, and the temptation to do both was almost irresistible. But he did neither, just stood instead with wide-planted feet, sucking giant draughts of air into a body that seemed able to accommodate only a fraction of what it needed. Seconds passed and his mind began to clear, the trembling in his legs eased, and he could see Walters and Evans and Willoughby crowding round him, but he ignored them, brushed through and carried Van Effen to the shelter of the nearest up-wind hut in the kampong.

Slowly, with an infinite gentleness, he lowered the wounded man to the ground, and started to unbutton the holed and blood-stained shirt. Van Effen caught his wrists with feeble hands.

“You are wasting your time, Mr. Nicolson.” His voice was only a feeble murmur with blood in it, barely audible above the crackling roar of the flames.

Nicolson ignored him, ripped the sides of the shirt apart and winced in shock at the sight that lay below. If Van Effen were to live, he would have to be strapped up, and at once. He tore off his own charred and shredded shirt, ripped it and padded the wounds as his eyes travelled up to the German’s white, pinched face. Van Effen’s lips twisted in some kind of a smile, it might have been a sardonic smile, but it was difficult to tell without reading the expression in his eyes, and it was no longer possible to read anything in Van Effen’s eyes for they were already misted over with the glaze of approaching unconsciousness.

“I told you—don’t waste time,” he murmured. “The launch—Kiseki’s launch. Get it. It has a radio, probably a big transmitter—you heard what Yamata said … Walters can send a message.” His voice was an urgent whisper. “At once, Mr. Nicolson, at once.” His hands dropped away from Nicolson’s wrists and fell limply by his side, palm upwards on the hard-packed earth of the kampong.

“Why did you do it, Van Effen?” Nicolson stared down at the sick man and shook his head, slowly, wonderingly, from side to side. “Why in the name of heaven did you do it?”

“God only knows. Or maybe I know also.” He was breathing very rapidly, very shallowly, now, with only a few gasping words to every breath. “Total war is total war, Mr. Nicolson, but this is work for barbarians.” He gestured weakly at the blazing hut. “If any one of my countrymen could have been with me tonight, he would have done what I have done. We’re people, Mr. Nicolson, we’re just people.” He reached up one flaccid hand, pulled the opened shirt to one side, and smiled. “If you cut us, do we not bleed?” He burst into a paroxysm of bubbling, whooping coughs that contracted torn stomach muscles and lifted head and shoulders clear of the ground, then sank back again, so quiet, so still, that Nicolson stooped quickly forward, in sudden surety that the man was gone. But Van Effen lifted his eyelids again, with the slowness and infinite effort of a man raising a massive weight and smiled at Nicolson through filmed and misted eyes.

“We Germans do not go easily. This is not the end of Van Effen.” He paused for a long moment, went on in a whisper: “Winning a war costs a great deal. It always costs a great deal. But sometimes the cost is too high, and it is not worth the price. Tonight the cost, the price asked, was far too high. I—I could not pay the price.” A great gout of flame shot up from the roof of the council house, bathing his face in its red and savage glare, then it died down again and his face was white and still and he was murmuring something about Kiseki.

“What is it?” Nicolson was so low over him now that their faces were almost touching. “What did you say?”

“Colonel Kiseki.” Van Effen’s voice was very far away. He tried to smile again, but it was only a pathetic twitch of his lower lip. “Perhaps we have something in common. I think——” Here his voice faded into nothingness, then came again, strongly. “I think we both have a weakness for very little children.”

Nicolson stared down at him, then twisted round as a loud, rending crash echoed across the kampong and a sheet of flame leapt up, a flame that illumined every remotest corner of the little village. The council house, its last supports burnt out, had collapsed in on itself and was burning more furiously than ever. But only for a moment. Even as Nicolson watched the licking tongues of flame shrank back down towards the earth and the dark gloomy shadows crept forward from every side. Nicolson looked away and bent down to talk again to Van Effen, but Van Effen was unconscious.

Slowly, wearily, Nicolson straightened himself, but remained sunk on his knees, staring down at the grievously wounded man. All at once the exhaustion, the despair and the sharp, fiery agony of his legs and feet and arms flooded in on him and the temptation to let himself go, to slip into the friendly, embracing darkness that hovered round the woolly, shadowed edges of his mind was almost overpowering. He was actually swaying backwards and forwards on his knees, eyes all but closed and his arms swinging limply from his shoulders, when he heard a voice shouting, the sound of feet thudding across the kampong at a dead run and felt the hard urgent fingers biting cruelly through the red charred skin of his upper arm.

“Come on, sir, come on! For God’s sake get to your feet!” There was a fierceness, a burning desperation in McKinnon’s voice that Nicolson had never heard before. “They’ve got them, sir. Those yellow devils have taken them away!”

“What? What?” Nicolson shook his aching fuzzy head from side to side. “They’ve taken what away? The plans, the diamonds? They’re welcome to all——”

“I hope the diamonds go to hell and roast there with every little yellow bastard in the East.” McKinnon was half-sobbing, half-shouting at the top of his voice in a voice Nicolson had never heard before, his eyes were flooded with tears, his great fists white-knuckled by his side, and he was quite mad, insane with rage. “It’s not only the diamonds they’ve taken, sir, I wish to God it was. The inhuman devils have taken hostages with them, I saw them throw them into their truck. The captain, Miss Drachmann and that poor wee boy!”

FIFTEEN

Beyond anger lies fury, the heedless, ungovernable rage of the berserker, and beyond that again, a long, long step beyond the boundary of madness, lies the region of cold and utterly uncaring indifference. When a man enters that region, as few ever do, he is no longer himself, he is a man beside himself, a man without all his normal codes and standards of feeling and thought and emotions, a man for whom words like fear and danger and suffering and exhaustion are words that belong to another world and whose meaning he can no longer comprehend. It is a state characterised by an abnormally heightened clarity of mind, by a hyper-sensitive perception of where danger lies, by a total and unhuman disregard for that danger. It is, above all, a state characterised by an utter implacability. It was in such a state that Nicolson found himself at half-past eight on the evening of that day in late February, seconds only after McKinnon had told him that Gudrun and Peter were gone.

His mind was clear, unnaturally so, swiftly weighing up the situation as far as he knew it, balancing the possibilities and the probabilities, racing ahead and formulating the only plan that could offer any hope at all of success. His weariness, the sheer physical exhaustion, had dropped from him like a falling cloak: he knew the change was psychological, not physiological, that he would pay heavily for it later, but it didn’t matter, he was oddly certain that no matter what the source of his energy, it would carry him through. He was still aware, remotely, of the severe burns on his legs and arms, of the pain in his throat where the Japanese bayonet had bitten in so deeply, but his awareness was no more than an intellectual acknowledgment of these burns and wounds, they might well have belonged to another man.

His plan was simple, suicidally simple, and the chances of failure so high that they seemed inevitable, but the thought of failure never entered his mind. Half a dozen questions fired at Telak, the same at McKinnon and he knew what he must do, what everyone must do if there was to be any hope at all. It was McKinnon’s story that settled the problem for him.

The council house had blazed so fiercely, had gone up with such incredible speed, for one reason only—McKinnon had saturated the whole windward wall with the contents of a four-gallon can of petrol. He had stolen this from the Japanese truck within a couple of minutes of its arrival—the driver had kept careless watch and was now lying on the ground, less than ten feet away—and he had been just on the point of setting fire to it when a patrolling sentry had almost literally stumbled across him. But he had done more than steal the petrol, he had tried to immobilise the truck. He had searched for the distributor, failed to find it in the darkness, but had located the carburettor intake fuel line, and the soft copper had bent like putty in his hands. It seemed unlikely, impossible rather, that the truck could get much more than a mile on the cupful of fuel that remained—and it was four miles to the town of Bantuk.

Quickly, Nicolson asked Telak for co-operation, and got it at once. With his father and several of his tribesmen dead, neutrality no longer existed for Telak. He said little, but what little he did say was bitter and savage and concerned with nothing but vengeance. He nodded immediate compliance to Nicolson’s request that he provide a guide to lead the main party—only seven now, all told, under the leadership of Vannier—via the main road to Bantuk, where they were to seize and board the launch, if this could be done in absolute silence, and rapidly translated to one of his tribesmen, giving him the rendezvous. He then ordered half a dozen of his men to search the dead Japanese soldiers lying around the kampong and to bring all their weapons and ammunition to a central spot. A tommy-gun, two automatic rifles and a strange automatic pistol proved to be still serviceable. Telak himself disappeared into a nearby hut and emerged with two Sumatran parangs, honed to razor-sharp edges, and a couple of curious, elaborately-chased daggers, ten inches long and shaped like a flame, which he stuck in his own belt. Within five minutes of the destruction of the council house, Nicolson, McKinnon and Telak were on their way.

The road to Bantuk—no road, really, but a graded jungle path barely six feet wide—wound tortuously in and out among palm-oil plantations, tobacco plantations and evil-smelling swamps, waist deep and infinitely treacherous in the darkness. But the way Telak led them that night skirted the road only once, crossed it twice, penetrated straight through swamps and paddy fields and plantations, arrow-straight for the heart of Bantuk. All three men were hurt, and badly: all of them had lost blood, Telak most of all, and no competent doctor would have hesitated to immobilise any of the three in hospital: but they ran all the way to Bantuk, across impossible, energy-sapping, heart-breaking terrain, never once breaking down into a walk. They ran with their hearts pounding madly under the inhuman strain, leaden legs fiery with the pain of muscles taxed far beyond endurance, chests rising and falling, rising and falling as starving lungs gasped for more and still more air, the sweat running off their bodies in streams. They ran and they kept on running, Telak because this was his element and his father lay dead in the village with a Japanese bayonet through his chest, McKinnon because he was still mad with rage and his heart would keep him going until he dropped, Nicolson because he was a man beside himself and all the pain and labour and suffering was happening to someone else.

The second time they crossed the road they saw the Japanese truck, not five yards away in the darkness. They didn’t even break stride, there could be no doubt that it was abandoned, that the Japanese had taken their prisoners with them and hurried on on foot towards the town. And the truck had managed to travel much farther than they had expected before it had broken down, at least half-way towards Bantuk, and they had no means of knowing how long ago the Japanese had left it. Nicolson was coldly aware that their chances now were all the poorer, very slender indeed. All of them knew it, but not one of them expressed the thought, suggested that they might ease their killing pace, even if only a fraction. If anything they lengthened their strides and pounded on even more desperately through the darkness.

More than once, after the sight of that truck, pictures flashed into Nicolson’s mind of how the Japanese soldiers must be treating their prisoners as they hurried them on fearfully along the jungle path. He had visions of rifle butts, maybe even bayonets, prodding viciously into the sick old captain, stumbling in sheer weakness and weariness, and into Gudrun as she, too, stumbled along in the darkness, cruelly handicapped by the crippling weight of the little boy in her arms—even after half a mile, a two-year old can become an intolerable weight. Or maybe she had dropped young Peter, maybe they had abandoned the little boy in their haste, left him by the side of the jungle, left him surely to die. But the mentor watching over Nicolson’s mind that night never let these thoughts stay with him long. They stayed long enough only to spur him on to even greater efforts, never long enough for obsession and ultimate weakness. Throughout all that interminable lurching, gasping run in the darkness, Nicolson’s mind remained strangely cold and remote.

It had turned cold, the stars had gone and it was beginning to rain when at last they reached the outskirts of Bantuk. Bantuk was a typical Javanese coastal town, not too big, not too little, a curious intermingling of the old and the new, a blend of Indonesia of a hundred years ago and of Holland ten thousand miles away. On the shore, following the curve of the bay, were the crazy, ramshackle huts erected on long bamboo poles below the highwater mark, with their suspended nets to trap the tidal catch of fish, and half-way along the beach a curved breakwater hooked far out into the bay, sheltering launches and fishing vessels, the tented prahus and the double outrigger canoes too large to be dragged up past the fishing-huts. Paralleling the beach, behind the huts, stretched two or three straggling, haphazard rows of straw-roofed wooden huts as found in the villages in the interior, and behind that again was the shopping and business centre of the community, which led in turn to the houses that stretched back into the gentle valley behind. A typical Dutch suburb, this last, not perhaps with the wide, lined boulevards of Batavia or Medan, but with trim little bungalows and the odd colonial mansion, every one of them with its beautifully kept garden.

It was towards this last section of the town that Telak now led his two companions. They raced through the darkened streets in the middle of the town, making no attempt at concealment, for the time for concealment was past. Few people saw them, for there were few abroad in the rain-washed streets. At first Nicolson thought that the Japanese must have declared a curfew, but soon saw that this was not the case, for a few coffee shops here and there were still open, their smocked Chinese proprietors standing under the awnings at the doorways, watching their passing in an impassive silence.

Half a mile inland from the bay, Telak slowed down to a walk and gestured Nicolson and McKinnon into the sheltered gloom of a high hedge. Ahead of them, not more than fifty yards away, the metalled road they were now standing on ended in a cul-de-sac. The bounding wall was high, arched in the middle, and the archway beneath was illuminated by a pair of electric lanterns. Below the archway itself two men were standing, talking and smoking, each leaning a shoulder against the curving walls. Even at that distance there was no mistaking the grey-green uniforms and hooked caps of the Japanese army, for the light was strong. Behind the archway they could see a drive-way stretching back up the hill, illuminated by lamps every few yards. And beyond that again was a high, white-walled mansion. Little of it was visible through the archway, just a pillared stoop and a couple of big bay windows to one side, both of them brightly lit. Nicolson turned to the gasping man by his side.

“This is it, Telak?” They were the first words spoken since they had left the kampong.

“This is the house.” Telak’s words, like Nicolson’s, came in short, jerky gasps. “The biggest in Bantuk.”

“Naturally.” Nicolson paused to wipe the sweat off his face and chest and arms. Very particularly he dried the palms of his hands. “This is the way they would come?”

“No other way. They are sure to come up this road. Unless they have already come.”

“Unless they have already come,” Nicolson echoed. For the first time the fear and anxiety swept through his mind like a wave, a fear that would have panicked his mind and an anxiety that would have wrecked his plans but he thrust them ruthlessly aside. “If they’ve come, it’s already too late. If not, we still have time in hand. We may as well get our breath back for a minute or two—we can’t go into this more dead than alive. How do you feel, Bo’sun?”

“My hands are itching, sir,” McKinnon said softly. “Let’s go in now.”

“We won’t be long,” Nicolson promised. He turned to Telak. “Do I see spikes above the walls?”

“You do.” Telak’s voice was grim. “The spikes are nothing. But they’re electrified all the way.”

“So this is the only way in?” Nicolson asked softly.

“And the only way out.”

“I see. I see indeed.” No words were spoken for the next two minutes, there was only the sound of their breathing becoming shallower and more even, the intervals between breaths lengthening all the time. Nicolson waited with an almost inhuman patience, carefully gauging the moment when recovery would be at its maximum but the inevitable reaction not yet set in. Finally he stirred and straightened, rubbing his palms up and down the charred remnants of his khaki drills to remove the last drop of excess moisture, and turned again to Telak.

“We passed a high wall on this side about twenty paces back?”

“We did,” Telak nodded.

“With trees growing up behind it, close to the wall?”

“I noticed that also,” Telak nodded.

“Let’s get back there.” Nicolson turned and padded softly along in the shelter of the hedge.

It was all over inside two minutes, and no one more than thirty or forty yards away could have heard the slightest whisper of sound. Nicolson lay on the ground at the foot of the high wall and moaned softly, then more loudly, more pitifully still as his first groans had attracted no attention at all. Within seconds, however, one of the guards started, straightened up and peered anxiously down the road, and a moment later the second guard, his attention caught by an especially anguished moan, did the same. The two men looked at one another, held a hurried consultation, hesitated, then came running down the road, one of them switching on a torch as he came. Nicolson moaned even more loudly, twisted in apparent agony so that his back was to them and so that he could not be so quickly identified as a Westerner. He could see the flickering gleam of bayonets in the swinging light of the torch, and an edgy guard would be just that little bit liable to prefer investigating a corpse to a living enemy, no matter how seriously hurt he might appear to be.

Heavy boots clattering on the metalled road, the two men slithered to a stop, stooped low over the fallen man and died while they were still stooping, the one with a flame-shaped dagger buried to the hilt in his back as Telak dropped off the high wall above, the other as McKinnon’s sinewy hands found his neck a bare second after Nicolson had kicked the rifle out of his unsuspecting hand.

Nicolson twisted swiftly to his feet, stared down at the two dead men. Too small, he thought bitterly, far too damned small. He’d hoped for uniforms, for disguise, but neither of these two uniforms would have looked at any of the three of them. There was no time to waste. Telak and himself at wrists and ankles, one swing, two, a powerful boost from McKinnon in the middle and the first of the guards was over the high wall and safely out of sight, five seconds more and the other had joined him. Moments later all three men were inside the grounds of the mansion.

The well-lighted pathway was flanked on both sides by either high bushes or trimmed trees. On the right-hand side, behind the trees, was only the high wall with the electric fence on top: on the other side of the drive-way was a wide, sloping lawn, bare in patches but well-kept and smooth, dotted with small trees irregularly planted in circular plots of earth. Light reached the lawn from the drive-way and the front of the house, but not much. The three men flitted soundlessly across the grass, from the shadowed shelter of one tree to the next until they reached a clump of bushes that bordered the gravel in front of the portico of the house. Nicolson leaned forward and put his mouth to Telak’s ear.

“Ever been here before?”

“Never.” Telak’s murmur was as soft as his own.

“Don’t know about any other doors? Never heard if the windows are barred or live-wired or fitted with intruder alarms?”

Telak shook his head in the darkness.

“That settles it,” Nicolson whispered. “The front door. They won’t be expecting visitors, especially visitors like us, through the front door.” He groped at his belt, unhooked the parang Telak had given him and began to straighten up from his kneeling position. “No noise, no noise at all. Quick and clean and quiet. We mustn’t disturb our hosts.”

He took half a pace forward, choked a muffled exclamation and sank back to his knees again. He had little option. McKinnon, for all his medium height, weighed almost two hundred pounds and was phenomenally strong.

“What is it,” Nicolson whispered. He rubbed his burnt forearm in silent agony, certain that McKinnon’s digging forefingers had torn off some of the skin.

“Someone coming,” McKinnon breathed in his ear. “Must have guards outside.”

Nicolson listened a second, then shook his head in the gloom to show that he could hear nothing. For all that he believed the bo’sun—his hearing was on a par with his remarkable eyesight.

“On the verge, not the gravel,” McKinnon murmured. “Coming this way. I can take him.”

“Leave him alone.” Nicolson shook his head strongly. “Too much noise.”

“He’ll hear us crossing the gravel.” McKinnon’s voice sank even lower, and Nicolson could hear the man coming now, could hear the soft swish of feet in the wet grass. “There’ll be no noise. I promise it.”

This time Nicolson nodded and gripped his arm in token of consent. The man was almost opposite them now, and in spite of himself Nicolson shivered. To his certain knowledge this would be the soft-spoken Highland bo’sun’s fourth victim that night, and only one of them, so far, had managed to get even a breath of sound past his lips. How long one could live with a man—three years in his case—and not really get to know him …

The man was just a foot past them, head turned away as he looked towards the two lighted windows and the far-off murmur of voices from behind them, when McKinnon rose to his feet, noiseless as a wraith, hooked hands closing round the man’s neck like a steel trap. He was as good as his word. There was no noise at all, not even the faintest whisper of sound.

They left him behind the bushes and crossed the gravel at a steady, unhurried walk, in case there were still some guards in the grounds to hear them, mounted the steps, crossed the portico and walked unchallenged through the wide open double doors.

Beyond lay a wide hall, softly lit from a central chandelier, with a high, arching roof, walls panelled in what looked like oak, and a gleaming parquetry floor, finely tesselated in jarrah and kauri and some light-coloured tropical hardwoods. From either side of the hall, wide, sweeping staircases, a darker-coloured wood than that of the walls, curved up to meet the broad, pillared balcony that ran the full length of both sides and the back. At the foot of either stairway was a set of double doors, closed, and between them, at the back, a third, single door. All the doors were painted white, lending an incongruous note to the dusky satin of the walls. The door at the back of the hall was open.

Nicolson gestured to McKinnon and Telak to take up position one on either side of the double doors to the right, then padded cat-footed across the hall to the open door at the back. He could feel the cool, hard floor under the pads of his feet; that gruelling cross-country run must have torn off most of what charred remains of canvas soles had been left him after he had carried Van Effen out of the burning council house. His mind registered it automatically, but disregarded it, just as it disregarded the pain of the raw, burnt flesh. There would come a time for suffering, but that time was not yet. That feeling of ice-cold indifference coupled with its razor-edged calculation was with him still, more strongly than ever.

He flattened himself against the far wall, cocked his head in listening, his eyes turned towards the open doorway. At first he could hear nothing, then faintly he caught the far-off murmur of voices and the occasional chink of crockery. The kitchens and the servants’ quarters, obviously—and if the men behind these double doors were eating, and they might well be, this being about the hour of the late evening meal, servants would be liable to be coming down that long passage and across the hall at any moment. Nicolson slid noiselessly forward and risked a quick glance round the edge of the door. The passage was dimly lit, about twenty feet in length, with two closed doors on either side and one at the far end, open, showing a white rectangle of light. There was no one to be seen. Nicolson stepped into the passage, felt behind the door, found a key, withdrew it, stepped back out into the entrance hall, pulled the door softly shut behind him and locked it.

He recrossed the hall as softly as he had come and rejoined the others at the white-painted double doors. Both men looked at him as he approached—McKinnon still grim and implacable, his surging anger well under control but ready to explode at any moment, Telak a ghastly, blood-smeared sight under the lights, dusky face drawn and grey with fatigue, but revenge would keep him going for a long time yet. Nicolson whispered a few instructions in Telak’s ear, made sure he understood and waited until he had slipped away and hidden himself behind the right-hand staircase.

There was a low murmur of voices from behind the double-doors, a murmur punctuated by an occasional guffaw of laughter. For a few moments Nicolson listened with his ear to the crack between the two doors, then tested each in turn with an infinitely gentle pressure of a probing forefinger. Each yielded an almost imperceptible fraction of an inch, and Nicolson straightened, satisfied. He nodded at McKinnon. The two men lined up the guns at their sides, muzzles just touching the white-painted woodwork in front of them, kicking the doors wide open and walked into the room together.

It was a long, low room, wood-panelled and parquet-floored like the hall, with wide bay windows, mosquito-curtained. The far wall of the room had another, smaller window, and the two doors in the left wall had a long, oaken side-board between them, this last the only wall furnishing. Most of the floor space was taken up by a U-shaped banqueting-table and the chairs of the fourteen men who sat around it. Some of the fourteen were still talking, laughing and drinking from the deep glasses in their hands, oblivious of the entrance of the two men, but, one by one, the sudden silence of the others caught the attention of those who still talked, and they too fell silent, staring towards the door and sitting very still indeed.

For a man allegedly mourning the death of his son, Colonel Kiseki was making a magnificent job of dissembling his sorrow. There was no doubt to his identity. He occupied the ornate, high-backed chair of honour at the top of the table, a short, massive man of tremendous girth, with his neck bulging out over his tight uniform collar, tiny, porcine eyes almost hidden in folds of flesh, and very short black hair, grey at the temples, sticking up from the top of his round head like the bristles of a wire brush. His face was flushed with alcohol, empty bottles littered the table in front of him and the white cloth was stained with spilt wine. He had had his head flung back and been roaring with laughter when Nicolson and McKinnon had entered, but now he was sitting hunched forward in his chair, tightly-gripping fists ivory-knuckled on the arms of his chair, the laughter in his puffy face slowly congealing into an expression of frozen incredulity.

No one spoke, no one moved. The silence in the room was intense. Slowly, watchfully, Nicolson and McKinnon advanced one on either side of the table, the soft padding of their feet only intensifying the uncanny silence, Nicolson to the left, McKinnon advancing up by the wide bay windows. And still the fourteen men sat motionless in their seats, only their eyes slowly swivelling as they followed the movements of the two men with the guns. Half-way up the left-hand side of the table Nicolson halted, checked that McKinnon had his eye on the whole table, turned and opened the first door on his left, let the door swing slowly open as soon as it had clicked, swung noiselessly round and took a silent step towards the table. As soon as the door had clicked an officer with his back to him, his hand hidden from McKinnon on the other side, had started to slide a revolver from a side holster and already had the muzzle clear when the butt of Nicolson’s automatic rifle caught him viciously just above the right ear. The revolver clattered harmlessly on to the parquet floor and the officer slumped forward heavily on to the table. His head knocked over an almost full bottle of wine and it gurgled away in the unnatural silence until it had almost emptied itself. A dozen pairs of eyes, as if mesmerised by the only moving thing in that room, watched the blood-red stain spread farther and farther across the snow-white cloth. And still no one had spoken.

Nicolson turned again to look through the now open door. A long passage, empty. He shut the door, locked it, turned his attention to the next. A cloak-room lay behind this, small, about six feet square and windowless. This door Nicolson left open.

He went back to the table, moved swiftly down one side of it, searching men for weapons while McKinnon kept his tommy-gun gently circling. As soon as he had finished searching he waited until McKinnon had done the same on his side. The total haul was surprisingly small, a few knives and three revolvers, all of the latter taken from army officers. With the one recovered from the floor that made four in all. Two of these Nicolson gave McKinnon, two he stuck in his own belt. For close, concentrated work the automatic rifle was a far deadlier weapon.

Nicolson walked to the head of the table and looked down at the grossly corpulent man sitting in the central chair.

“You are Colonel Kiseki?”

The officer nodded but said nothing. The astonishment had now vanished, and the watchful eyes were the only sign of expression in an otherwise impassive face. He was on balance again, completely under control. A dangerous man, Nicolson thought bleakly, a man whom it would be fatal to underestimate.

“Tell all these men to put their hands on the table, palm upwards, and to keep them there.”

“I refuse.” Kiseki folded his arms and leaned, back negligently in his chair. “Why should I——” He broke off with a gasp of pain as the muzzle of the automatic rifle gouged deeply into the thick folds of flesh round his neck.

“I’ll count three,” Nicolson said indifferently. He didn’t feel indifferent. Kiseki dead was no good to him. “One. Two——”

“Stop!” Kiseki sat forward in his chair, leaning away from the pressure of the rifle, and started to talk rapidly. Immediately hands came into view all round the table, palms upward as Nicolson had directed.

“You know who we are?” Nioolson went on.

“I know who you are.” Kiseki’s English was slow and laboured, but sufficient. “From the English tanker Viroma. Fools, crazy fools! What hope have you? You may as well surrender now. I promise you——”

“Shut up!” Nicolson nodded at the men sitting on either side of Kiseki, an army officer and a heavy-jowled, dark-faced Indonesian with immaculately waved black hair and a well-cut grey suit. “Who are these men?”

“My second in command and the Mayor of Bantuk.”

“The Mayor of Bantuk, eh?” Nicolson looked at the mayor with interest. “Collaborating well, I take it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kiseki looked up at Nicolson through narrowed slits of eyes. “The mayor is a founder, a member of our Greater East Asia co-prosperity——”

“For heaven’s sake, shut up!” Nicolson glanced round the others sitting at the table—two or three officers, half-a-dozen Chinese, an Arab and some Javanese—then looked back at Kiseki. “You, your second in command and the Mayor remain here. The rest into that cloakroom there.”

“Sir!” McKinnon was calling softly from his place by one of the bay windows. “They’re coming up the drive now!”

“Hurry up!” Again Nicolson jammed his rifle into Kiseki’s neck. “Tell them. Into that cloakroom. At once!”

“In that box? There is no air.” Kiseki pretended horror. “They will suffocate in there.”

“Or they can die out here. They can take their choice.”

Nicolson leaned yet more heavily on the rifle and his forefinger began to whiten on the trigger. “But not until you go first.”

Thirty seconds later the room was still and almost empty, three men only sitting at the head of the banqueting-table. Eleven men were jammed into the tiny cloakroom, and the door was locked against them. McKinnon was pressed fiat to the wall close by one of the open double doors, and Nicolson was in the open doorway that led into the side passage. He was placed so that he could see the entrance to the double doors through the crack between his own door and the jamb. He was also placed so that the rifle in his hand was lined up on the centre of Colonel Kiseki’s chest. And Colonel Kiseki had had his orders. He’d had his orders, and Colonel Kiseki had lived too long, had seen too many desperate and implacable men not to know that Nicolson would shoot him like a dog even on the suspicion, far less the certainty, that he was being double-crossed. Colonel Kiseki’s reputation for cruelty was matched only by his courage, but he was no fool. He intended to carry out his orders implicitly.

Nicolson could hear young Peter crying, a tired, dispirited wail, as the soldiers crossed the gravel and mounted the steps to the portico, and his mouth tightened. Kiseki caught his look and his muscles tensed in expectancy, waiting for the numbing crash of the bullet, then saw Nicolson shake his head and visibly, consciously relax. And then the footsteps had crossed the hall, halted at the doorway, then advanced again as Kiseki shouted out an order. A moment later the Japanese escort —there were six of them altogether—were inside the room, pushing their prisoners in front of them.

Captain Findhorn was in the lead. A soldier held him by either arm, his legs were dragging and he was ashen-faced and drawn, breathing quickly, hoarsely and in great pain. As soon as the soldiers halted they released his arms. He swayed once backwards, once forwards, his bloodshot eyes turned up in his head and he crumpled and folded slowly to the floor, fading into the merciful oblivion of unconsciousness. Gudrun Drachmann was directly behind him, Peter still in her arms. Her dark hair was tangled and dishevelled, the once-white shirt ripped half-way down her back. From where he stood, Nicolson couldn’t see her back, but he knew the smooth skin would be pock-marked with blood, for the soldier behind had his bayonet pressed into her shoulders. The impulse to step out from behind the door and empty the automatic rifle’s magazine into the man with the bayonet was almost overwhelming, but he crushed it down, stood where he was, still and quiet, looking from Kiseki’s impassive face to the smudged, scarred face of the girl. She, too, Nicolson could see now, was swaying slightly, her legs trembling with weariness, but she still held her head proudly and high.

Suddenly Colonel Kiseki barked an order. His men stared at him, uncomprehending. He repeated it almost immediately, smashing the flat of his hand down on the table before him, and at once four of the six men dropped the arms they were carrying on to the parquet floor. A fifth frowned in a slow, stupid fashion, as if still unwilling to believe his ears, looked at his companions, saw their arms on the floor, opened his hand reluctantly and let his rifle crash down on the floor beside the weapons of his comrades. Only the sixth, the man with the bayonet in Gudrun’s back, realised that something was very far wrong. He dropped lower into a crouch, glanced wildly round then collapsed to the floor like a stricken tree as Telak came up feather-footed from the hall behind him and smashed his rifle down on the unprotected back of the soldier’s head.

And then Nicolson and McKinnon and Telak were all in the room, Telak herding the five Japanese soldiers into a corner, McKinnon kicking the double doors shut and keeping a wary eye on the three men at the table, Nicolson unashamedly hugging the girl and the young boy still in her arms, smiling his delight and immense relief and saying nothing, while Gudrun, stiff-backed and straight, stared at him, for a long, long moment in uncomprehending wonder and disbelief, then sagged heavily against him, her face buried in his shoulder, murmuring his name over and over again. McKinnon was looking at them from time to time, grinning hugely, all the savage anger gone from his face. But he didn’t look at them for more than a fraction of a second at a time, and the muzzle of his gun never wavered from the three men at the top of the table.

“Johnny, Johnny!” The girl lifted her head and looked at him, the intensely blue eyes now shining and misted, rolling tear-drops cutting through the dark smudges on her cheek. She was shivering now, shivering from reaction and from the cold of her wet rain-soaked clothes, but she was quite oblivious of all that. The happiness in her eyes was something that Nicolson had never seen before. “Oh, Johnny, I thought it was all finished. I thought that Peter and I——” She broke off and smiled at him again. “How in the world did you get here? I—I don’t understand. How did you?”

“Private aeroplane.” Nicolson waved an airy hand. “It was no trouble. But later, Gudrun. We must hurry. Bo’sun?”

“Sir?” McKinnon carefully removed the smile from his face.

“Tie up our three friends at the head of the table there. Their wrists only. Behind their backs.”

“Tie us up!” Kiseki leaned forward, his fists clenched on the table top. “I see no need——”

“Shoot ‘em if you have to,” Nicolson ordered. “They’re no use to us any more.” He thought it as well not to add that Kiseki’s usefulness was yet to come but feared that the knowledge of his intentions might provoke the man to an act of desperation.

“Consider it done, sir.” McKinnon advanced purposefully towards them, tearing down several mosquito curtains as he passed. Twisted, they would make excellent ropes. Nicolson turned away from Gudrun after seeing her and Peter into a chair, and stooped low over the captain. He shook him by the shoulder and Findhorn finally stirred and wearily opened his eyes. Aided by Nicolson he sat up, moving like a very old man and gazed slowly round the room, comprehension slowly dawning on his exhausted mind.

“I don’t know how on earth you did it, but well done, my boy.” He looked back at Nicolson, inspected him from head to toe, wincing as he saw the cuts and savage burns on his chief officer’s legs and forearms. “What a bloody mess! I hope to God you don’t feel half as bad as you look.”

“Top of the world, sir,” Nicolson grinned.

“You’re a fluent liar, Mr. Nicolson. You’re as much a hospital case as I am. Where do we go from here?”

“Away, and very shortly. A few minutes, sir. Some little things to attend to first.”

“Then go by yourselves.” Captain Findhorn was half-joking, wholly earnest. “I think I’d rather take my chance as a prisoner of war. Frankly, my boy, I’ve had it, and I know it. I couldn’t walk another step.”

“You won’t have to, sir. I guarantee it.” Nicolson poked an inquiring toe at the bag one of the soldiers had been carrying, stooped and had a look inside. “Even brought the plans and the diamonds right here. But then, where else would they bring them? I hope, Colonel Kiseki, that you hadn’t set your heart too much on these?”

Kiseki stared at him, his face expressionless. Gudrun Drachmann drew in a quick breath.

“So that’s Colonel Kiseki!” She looked at him for a long moment, then shivered. “I can see that Captain Yamata was right enough. Thank God you got here first, Johnny.”

“Captain Yamata!” Kiseki’s eyes small enough normally in the folds of fat, had almost vanished. “What happened to Captain Yamata?”

“Captain Yamata has joined his ancestors,” Nicolson said briefly. “Van Effen shot him almost in half.”

“You’re lying! Van Effen was our friend, our very good friend.”

“‘ Was’ is right,” Nicolson agreed. “Ask your men here—later.” He nodded to the group still cowering under the menace of Telak’s rifle. “Meantime, send one of these men to collect a stretcher, blankets and torches. I needn’t warn you what will happen if you try any foolish tricks.”

Kiseki looked at him impassively for a moment, then spoke rapidly to one of his men. Nicolson waited until he had gone then turned again to Kiseki.

“You must have a radio in this house. Where is it?”

For the first time Kiseki smiled, displaying a magnificent collection of gold inlays on his front teeth.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr.—ah——”

“Nicolson. Never mind the formalities. The radio, Colonel Kiseki.”

“That is the only one we have.” Grinning more broadly still, Kiseki nodded towards the sideboard. He had to nod. McKinnon had already lashed his wrists behind his back.

Nicolson barely glanced at the small receiver.

“Your transmitter, Colonel Kiseki, if you don’t mind,” Nicolson said softly. “You don’t depend on carrier pigeons for communication, do you?”

“English humour. Ha-ha. Very funny indeed.” Kiseki was still smiling. “Of course we have a transmitter, Mr.—ah—Nicolson. At the barracks, our soldiers’ quarters.”

“Where?”

“The other end of the town.” Kiseki had the appearance of a man actually enjoying himself. “A mile from here. At least a mile.”

“I see.” Nicolson looked thoughtful. “Too far—and I very much doubt my ability to march you into your own barracks at the point of a gun, destroy a transmitter and get out again—not without getting myself killed in the process.”

“You show signs of wisdom, Mr. Nicolson,” Kiseki purred.

“I’m just not suicidally minded.” Nicolson rubbed his stubble of beard with a forefinger, then looked up at Kiseki again. “And that’s the only transmitter in town, eh?”

“It is. You’ll have to take my word for that.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Nicolson lost interest in the matter, watched McKinnon finish tying up the other officer with an enthusiastic heave that brought a sharp exclamation of pain, then turned as the soldier sent off by the colonel returned with stretcher, blankets and two torches. Then he looked back at the head of the table, first at Kiseki, then at the civilian by his side. The mayor was trying to look indignant and outraged, but only succeeded in looking scared. There was unmistakable fear in his dark eyes, and there was a violent tic at the corner of his mouth. He was sweating freely, and even the beautifully cut grey suit seemed to have become suddenly limp … Nicolson switched his glance back to Kiseki.

“The mayor is a good friend of yours, I take it, Colonel?” He could see the look in McKinnon’s eyes as he busied himself with the mayor’s wrists, the look of a man anxious to be gone and impatient of this talk, but he ignored it.

Kiseki cleared his throat pompously. “In our—what is the word?—capacities as commander of the garrison and the representative of the people we naturally——”

“Spare me the rest,” Nicolson interrupted. “I suppose his duties bring him here quite often.” He was looking at the mayor now, a deliberately contemptuous speculation in his eyes, and Kiseki fell for it.

“Comes here?” Kiseki laughed. “My dear Nicolson, this is the mayor’s house. I am only his guest.”

“Indeed?” Nicolson looked at the mayor. “You speak a few words of English perhaps, Mr. Mayor.”

“I speak it perfectly.” Pride momentarily overcame fear.

“Excellent,” Nicolson said dryly. “How about speaking some now?” His voice dropped an octave to a calculated theatrically low growl: the mayor didn’t look as if he would take much terrifying. “Where does Colonel Kiseki keep his transmitter in this house?”

Kiseki swung round on the mayor, his face suffused with anger at being tricked, started to shout something unintelligible at him, stopped short in mid-torrent as McKinnon cuffed him heavily over the ear.

“Don’t be a fool, Colonel,” Nicolson said wearily. “And don’t insist on treating me like a fool. Who ever heard of a military commander, especially in a red-hot, troubled area such as this is bound to be, having his communications centre a mile from where he is himself? Obviously the transmitter’s here, and just as obviously it would take all night to make you talk. I doubt if the mayor’s willing to make such sacrifices for your precious co-prosperity sphere.” He turned to the frightened looking civilian again. “I’m in a hurry. Where is it?”

“I will say nothing.” The mayor’s mouth worked and twisted even when he wasn’t speaking. “You can’t make me talk.”

“You’re not even kidding yourself.” Nicolson looked at McKinnon. “Just kind of twist his arm, will you, Bo’sun?”

McKinnon twisted. The mayor screamed, more in anticipatory fear than in any real pain. McKinnon slackened his grip.

“Well?”

“I don’t know what you were talking about.”

This time McKinnon didn’t have to be told. He jerked the mayor’s right arm high up until the back of his wrist was flat against the shoulder-blade. The mayor shrieked like a pig at the approach of the poleaxe.

“Upstairs.” The mayor was sobbing with pain and fear—chiefly fear. “On the roof. My arm—you’ve broken my arm!”

“You can finish tying him up now, Bo’sun.” Nicolson turned away in disgust. “Right, Colonel, you can lead the way.”

“My gallant friend here can finish the job.” Kiseki spat the words out. His teeth were tightly clenched and the expression on his face boded ill for the mayor should they meet again in different circumstances. “He can show you where it is.”

“No doubt. But I would prefer you to come. Some of your men might be wandering about with machine-guns and I’m quite sure they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the mayor and myself full of a lot of little holes. But you’re a foolproof life insurance.” Nicolson transferred his rifle to his left hand, pulled one of the revolvers from his belt and checked that the safety-catch was off. “I’m in a hurry, Colonel. Come on.”

They were back inside five minutes. The transmitter was now a havoc of twisted steel and shattered valves, and they had encountered no one, coming or going. The mayor’s screams appeared to have attracted no attention, possibly because of the closed doors, but more probably, Nicolson suspected, because the staff were well accustomed to such sounds emanating from Kiseki’s rooms.

McKinnon had not been idle in his absence. Captain Findhorn, covered with blankets and holding a rather fearful Peter Tallon in his arms, was lying comfortably on the stretcher on the floor. A Japanese soldier squatted at each of the four comers of the stretcher, and closer inspection showed that they hadn’t much option: the bo’sun had tied their wrists securely to the handles. The mayor and Kiseki’s second in command were tied together by a short length of rope linking their right and left elbows respectively. Telak’s victim still lay on the floor and Nicolson suspected that he would be there for a long time to come. There was no sign of the sixth man.

“Very nice indeed, Bo’sun.” Nicolson looked round approvingly. “Where’s our missing friend?”

“He’s not really missing, sir. He’s in the cloakroom there.” Ignoring Kiseki’s scowls and protests, McKinnon was busy securing him to the mayor’s left elbow. “It was a bit of a job getting the door shut, but I managed it.”

“Excellent.” Nicolson took a last look round the room. “No point in waiting any longer, then. Let’s be on our way.”

“Where are we going?” Kiseki had his feet planted wide, his huge head hunched far down into his shoulders. “Where are you taking us?”

“Telak tells me that your personal launch is the finest and fastest for a hundred miles up and down the coast. We’ll be through the Sunda Straits and into the Indian Ocean long before the dawn comes.”

“What!” Kiseki’s face was contorted in fury. “You’re taking my launch! You’ll never get away with it, Englishman, you’ll never get away with it.” He paused, another and even more shocking thought occurred to him and he lunged forward across the parquet floor, dragging the other two behind him and kicking out at Nicolson in berserk anger. “You’re taking me with you, damn you, you’re taking me with you!”

“Of course. What else did you think?” Nicolson said coldly. He stepped back a couple of paces to avoid the flailing feet and jabbed the muzzle of his rifle, none too gently into Kiseki’s midriff, just below the breast-bone. Kiseki doubled up in agony. “You’re our one guarantee of a safe-conduct. We’d be madmen to leave you behind.”

“I won’t go,” Kiseki gasped. “I won’t go. You can kill me first, but I won’t go. Concentration camps! Prisoner-of-war of the English! Never, never, never! You can kill me first!”

“It won’t be necessary to kill you.” Nicolson pointed out. “We can tie you, gag you, even take you on a stretcher if we have to.” He nodded at the cloakroom door. “Plenty of cheap labour in there. But it would only complicate matters. You can come on your feet or you can come on a stretcher with a couple of bullet holes in your legs to quieten you down.”

Kiseki looked at the pitiless face and made his choice. He came on his feet.

On their way down to the jetty they met no Japanese soldiers, no one at all. A windless night, but the rain was falling heavily, persistently, and the streets of Bantuk were deserted. At long, long last, luck was turning their way.

Vannier and the others were already aboard the launch. There had been only one man on guard, and Telak and his men had been as silent as the night. Van Effen was already asleep in a bunk below, and Walters was just about to begin transmission. Forty-four feet long and with a fourteen-foot beam, the launch gleamed and shone even in the rain and the darkness and was ready for instant departure.

Willoughby took over the engine-room and almost drooled with sheer joy at the sight of the big, immaculately kept twin diesels. Gordon and Evans loaded another half-dozen drums of fuel oil on to the deck aft. And McKinnon and Vannier were already making a round of the larger vessels behind the breakwater, checking for radio sets, smashing the magneto of the only other launch in the harbour.

They left at exactly ten o’clock at night, purring gently out into a sea as smooth as a mill-pond. Nicolson had begged Telak to accompany them, but he had refused, saying that his place was with his people. He had gone up the long jetty without as much as a backward glance, and Nicolson knew they would never see him again.

As they moved out into the darkness, the four Japanese soldiers, still lashed to the stretchers, ran pell-mell up the vanishing jetty, shouting at the tops of their high-pitched voices. But their cries were abruptly lost, drowned in a sudden clamour of sound as the launch rounded the point of the breakwater, the twin throttles jammed wide open, and headed south-west under maximum power towards Java Head and the Indian Ocean beyond.

They rendezvoused with H.M.A.S. Kenmore, a Q-class destroyer, at half-past two in the morning.

Now read more great books by Len Deighton, Jack Higgins & Alistair MacLean. Click here to buy BERLIN GAME, NIGHT OF THE FOX and HMS ULYSSES.

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About the Authors

LEN DEIGHTON

Len Deighton was born in 1929. He worked as a railway clerk before doing his National Service in the RAF as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch.

After his discharge in 1949, he went to art school – first to the St Martin’s School of Art, and then to the Royal College of Art on a scholarship. His mother was a professional cook and he grew up with an interest in cookery – a subject he was later to make his own in an animated strip for the Observer and in two cookery books. He worked for a while as an illustrator in New York and as art director of an advertising agency in London.

Deciding it was time to settle down, Deighton moved to the Dordogne where he started work on his first book, The Ipcress File. Published in 1962, the book was an immediate success.

Since then his work has gone from strength to strength, varying from espionage novels to war, general fiction and non-fiction. The BBC made Bomber into a day-long radio drama in ‘real time’. Deighton’s history of World War Two, Blood, Tears and Folly, was published to wide acclaim – Jack Higgins called it ‘an absolute landmark’.

As Max Hastings observed, Deighton captured a time and a mood – ‘To those of us who were in our twenties in the 1960s, his books seemed the coolest, funkiest, most sophisticated things we’d ever read’ – and his books have now deservedly become classics.

JACK HIGGINS

Jack Higgins lived in Belfast till the age of twelve. Leaving school at fifteen, he spent three years with the Royal Horse Guards, serving on the East German border during the Cold War. His subsequent employment included occupations as diverse as circus roust? about, truck driver, clerk and, after taking an honours degree in sociology and social psychology, teacher and university lecturer.

The Eagle Has Landed turned him into an international bestselling author, and his novels have since sold over 250 million copies and have been translated into sixty languages. In addition to The Eagle Has Landed, ten of them have been made into successful films. His recent bestselling novels include The Killing Ground, Rough Justice, A Darker Place, The Wolf at the Door, The Judas Gate, A Devil is Waiting and The Death Trade.

In 1995 Jack Higgins was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leeds Metropolitan University. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an expert scuba diver and marksman. He lives on Jersey.

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a-half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses, his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a school master. In 1983 he was awarded a D.Litt from the same university.

He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest-selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide best-sellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.

Also by the Same Authors

LEN DEIGHTON

FICTION

The Ipcress File

Horse Under Water

Funeral in Berlin

Billion-Dollar Brain

An Expensive Place to Die

Only When I Larf

Bomber

Declarations of War

Close-Up

Spy Story

Yesterday’s Spy

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

SS-GB

XPD

Goodbye Mickey Mouse

MAMista

City of Gold

Violent Ward

THE SAMSON SERIES

Berlin Game

Mexico Set

London Match

Winter: The Tragic Story of a Berlin Family 1899–1945

Spy Hook

Spy Line

Spy Sinker

Faith

Hope

Charity

NON-FICTION

Action Cook Book

Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain

Airshipwreck

French Cooking for Men

Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk

ABC of French Food

Blood, Tears and Folly

JACK HIGGINS

Sad Wind from the Sea

Cry of the Hunter

The Thousand Faces of Night

Comes the Dark Stranger

The Dark Side of the Island

Pay the Devil

Passage by Night

Wrath of the Lion

The Graveyard Shift

The Iron Tiger

The Violent Enemy

Brought in Dead

East of Desolation

A Game for Heroes

The Last Place God Made

Toll for the Brave

The Wrath of God

The Khufra Run

The Savage Day

A Prayer for the Dying

Bloody Passage

Storm Warning

The Valhalla Exchange

Day of Judgment

To Catch a King

Solo

Luciano’s Luck

Dillinger

Exocet

Memoirs of a Dance-Hall Romeo

A Season in Hell

Sheba

LIAM DEVLIN

The Eagle Has Landed

Touch the Devil

Confessional

The Eagle Has Flown

DOUGAL MUNRO & JACK CARTER

Night of the Fox

Cold Harbour

Flight of Eagles

PAUL CHAVASSE

The Testament of Caspar Schultz

Year of the Tiger

The Keys of Hell

Midnight Never Comes

Dark Side of the Street

A Fine Night for Dying

SEAN DILLON

Eye of the Storm

Thunder Point

On Dangerous Ground

Angel of Death

Drink with the Devil

The President’s Daughter

The White House Connection

Day of Reckoning

Edge of Danger

Midnight Runner

Bad Company

Dark Justice

Without Mercy

The Killing Ground

Rough Justice

A Darker Place

The Wolf at the Door

The Judas Gate

A Devil is Waiting

The Death Trade

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

HMS Ulysses
The Guns of Navarone
South by Java Head
The Last Frontier
Night Without End
Fear is the Key
The Dark Crusader
The Satan Bug
The Golden Rendezvous
Ice Station Zebra
When Eight Bells Toll
Where Eagles Dare
Force 10 from Navarone
Puppet on a Chain
Caravan to Vaccarès
Bear Island
The Way to Dusty Death
Breakheart Pass
Circus
The Golden Gate
Seawitch
Goodbye California
Athabasca
River of Death
Partisans
Floodgate
San Andreas
The Lonely Sea (stories)
Santorini

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk

Winter first published in Great Britain by Hutchinson Ltd 1987

The Eagle Has Flown first published in Great Britain by Chapmans Publishers Ltd 1991

South by Java Head first published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1958

Winter copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 1987

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2010

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2010

The Eagle Has Flown © Jack Higgins 1991

South by Java Head © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1958

Winter cover design and photography © Arnold Schwartzman 2009

The Eagle Has Flown cover illustration © Nik Keevil 2013; cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

South by Java Head cover illustration © headdesign 2008

E-bundle cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

Len Deighton, Jack Higgins and Alistair MacLean assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of their works.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

These novels are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780586068953, 9780007304653, 9780006172482

Ebook Edition © December 2013 ISBN: 9780007563401

Version: 2013-11-14

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