‘They’re on their way.’
‘Really?’ This was news to Merz.
‘Yes. Originally we planned for a whole new aircraft. We called it the Bf-210. It’s in production but we won’t be building as many as we expected. Instead we’ll be giving you the “F” variant, and then the “G”. Every day will be Christmas, believe me. These will be lovely aircraft.’
Dieter grinned. All well and good, he said, but what about the design on the drawing board?
Hahn had recently been in Berlin. Goering, to everyone’s quiet astonishment, had put together a group of aircraft designers in anticipation of heavier raids over the Reich’s major cities. The British would no longer be relying on Scheisse aircraft a child could shoot out of the sky. Even now, they’d be working on big multi-engined bombers with a long reach and a huge payload. The Luftwaffe had to be prepared for that. And they had to have an answer.
‘Easy. We shoot them down.’
‘I agree. And so does Goering. But how? These bombers will be flying at night. First you have to find them. Then, unless you’re crazy, you have to stay well clear of their own guns. Mid-upper turrets? Turrets in the tail? Turrets in the nose? These will be castles with wings. No pilot got old by underestimating the enemy.’
Merz shot him a look. He was impressed.
‘Is this you talking?’
‘No. As it happens, it’s Goering. But that’s not the point. This is pure logic. Pretend you’re the British. Get inside their heads. This is what you’d do. It’s obvious. And so we have to have an answer. Now. Before these machines appear and we no longer sleep at night. So,’ – he gestured at the board – ‘it’s very dark. You’re carrying a radar set. It’s the job of the man behind you to work that set and find the target. He does well. You slip into the bomber stream. You’ve found your target. You’re one of the best, Herr Merz. What do you do next?’
‘I shoot him down.’
‘Of course. But how?’
Dieter was trying to visualise the situation and this man, to his credit, was making it easy.
‘The blind spot,’ he said softly.
‘And where might that be?’
‘Underneath. Where none of the crew can see you.’
‘How close?’
‘Close enough not to miss.’
‘Aimed shots?’
‘Possibly not.’ Dieter’s eyes were back on the side view of the 110. The four stubby little pipes, he thought. Pointing directly upwards.
‘We’re talking formation flying,’ he said. ‘Same speed, same direction. You hold station for as long as you need to. If your guns are vertical, or near-vertical, the rest is down to physics.’
‘A kill every time?’
‘Yes. And a very big bang if you hit the target’s bomb bay. You’ve thought of that?’
‘We have.’
‘And you’ve got the answer?’
‘Not yet.’
‘So is that why I’m here?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Hahn nodded at the desk. ‘Drink your coffee. It’s getting cold.’
Dieter emptied his cup. Hahn had yet more meetings to attend but was happy to let Merz have the run of his office while he was away. With Hahn gone, Dieter settled behind the desk, trying to test this elegant theory against the million rogue factors that made real-life combat such a satisfying challenge. By the time Hahn came back, he thought he had at least a couple of answers.
‘Imagine this,’ he said. ‘We tell every pilot to fly immediately below the centre line of the bomber. The safest place to hide is between the wing roots. Agree an ideal vertical separation between you and the target, offset the cannons left and right, and you’re guaranteed hits on the engines and the fuel tanks. That way you avoid the bombs.’
‘Number two solution?’
‘The brains of any plane are the pilots. Kill them both, pilot and co-pilot, and the game’s over. So this time you angle the cannons slightly forward, so they chew up the cockpit. Same principle. Number one, you put holes in both wings. Number two, you put holes in both pilots. Both times you’re leaving the bombs alone. But both times the aircraft’s fucked.’
‘Excellent,’ Hahn was grinning again. ‘And you think all that’s possible? In combat?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Dieter checked his watch. ‘One day we should try and find out.’
*
In his borrowed Mercedes, Dieter made excellent time on the run north to Bamberg. He skirted the city to the west and then made for Bad Stiffelstein. By now it was late afternoon, and nearly dark. Beata’s father had given him the name of the hotel where his daughter was staying but, instead of checking first at reception, Dieter decided to follow the signs for the shrine.
The Basilika Vierzehnheiligen stood on a low hill three kilometres east of the city. In peacetime a spiritual landmark like this would be floodlit at night, a beacon for lost souls, but nowadays darkness was Germany’s best friend. An entrance gate looming suddenly out of nowhere took Dieter by surprise. He slowed for the turn into the drive. Dimly, in the gathering gloom, he could make out the mass of the church.
He hadn’t expected something so enormous. He parked the car and stood beside it, gazing up at the twin towers. It was a cloudless night, colder than he’d anticipated, and the black outline of the cupolas was etched against a thin crescent of moon. He stood a step backwards, then another, still looking up. A gigantic prayer for the needy and the lost, he thought. A hymn to the afflicted, sculpted in the local stone, then aged by centuries of weather.
To the left Dieter found the entrance to the church, a huge wooden door, the big iron latch cold beneath his fingertip. Curious, he lifted the latch and pushed hard on the door. To his surprise, it swung open. At once he could hear chanting, the low, haunting murmur of male voices, and with it came the sweetness of incense. Dieter closed the door behind him. The interior of the church was cavernous, lit by a handful of candles. Stone arches receded into the darkness. After the chill of the night air outside, the temperature seemed to have plummeted still further.
Already, Dieter felt a sense of trespass. All his life he’d had a lazy rapport with his Maker, a relationship untroubled by regular church attendance. In some dim, unspoken way he’d always taken a degree of divine protection for granted but when it came to the business of survival he preferred to trust his own instincts. He’d known a number of fellow pilots who’d always crossed themselves before take-off and most of them were now dead.
He was advancing down the aisle now, step by careful step. At the far end of the church, half a dozen faces, strangely disembodied, were chanting plainsong in the soft yellow glow of a nest of candles on the altar. Dieter paused, buoyed by the voices, letting the sombre chords, plaiting and replaiting, carry him away. Then, way above the bass tread of the plainsong, he heard another sound, piercing, shrill, high-pitched, and he looked up in time to catch a flurry of bats criss-crossing in the gloom, and as he watched them he thought of Pauli Hahn and his carefully angled cannons and all the technical cleverness that would take flyers like Dieter Merz to within touching distance of the bellies of enemy bombers. Pauli had called the device Schräge Musik, the Devil’s jazz, and Dieter had known exactly what he meant.
Merz had always trusted his instincts. He liked to think that no one – in the air or on the ground – ever took him by surprise. Until now.
‘My father told me you’d come.’
He spun round. It was Beata. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t even been aware of her presence, yet here she was, another face in the darkness. She offered a cold cheek for a kiss.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Thank you for being here.’
She led him to the pew where she’d been sitting. He recognised her bag on the neighbouring seat. Georg had bought it for her in Ulm, a memento after a particularly successful air display back in the hot summer days before the Polish adventure. Beata put the bag on her lap and gestured for Dieter to sit beside her.
‘How long have
you been here?’ he whispered.
‘All day. All day yesterday and all day today.’
‘And has it helped?’
‘That’s a fighter pilot’s question. You’re always so impatient. In life you have to choose the right tense. Helped? A little. Is it helping. Yes, definitely.’
‘And tomorrow?’
‘Back here. You must see this building in daylight. Then maybe you’ll understand.’
They settled down in silence to listen to the plainsong. Dieter quickly lost track of time. The bats came and went overhead, curious, noisy, mapping this huge space with their tiny squeaks. God’s radar, Dieter thought, aware of Beata’s hand closing softly on his.
It was mid-evening by the time they finally left the church. The singers had long extinguished their candles and vanished into the darkness, leaving Dieter and Beata alone with the bats. When Merz asked whether anyone ever locked the place up, Beata said she didn’t know. Just now, for the first time in her life, she’d put worries like that behind her. If God willed someone to turn a key in the door, then so be it. If they had to spend all night here, she’d be more than content.
As it turned out, the door remained open and it was Dieter who suggested they eat in a small, half-timbered tavern he’d noticed during the drive though Bad Stiffelstein. The place was empty, but a log fire added to the snugness of the dining room and the owner, a big woman with an Austrian accent, was able to offer them freshly caught trout from a local stream as well as schnitzel or goulash. They both settled on the fish and Beata insisted on buying a pricey bottle of French Chablis to toast Dieter’s arrival. It wasn’t until they’d finished the trout that she mentioned Georg.
‘Have you seen him at all?’ she asked. ‘Have you paid him a visit at that new place?’
Dieter nodded. Then he described his lunchtime fly-by, a surprise get-well card for a bunch of flyers with far too much time on their hands.
‘And you think Georg was there? On that terrace?’
‘He might have been. I can’t say for sure. But if he wasn’t, I’m guessing the rest will tell him. He only knows one pilot who’d take that plane so close.’
‘So close to what?’
‘Them.’
‘So it was dangerous? What you did?’
‘It left no margin for error. One pass. One opportunity. In my business you have to get it exactly right. And I did.’
Beata nodded. She had a smear of butter at one corner of her mouth. Dieter proffered a napkin.
‘It’s yours.’ She ignored the napkin. ‘These days we waste nothing. Am I right?’
Dieter shot her a look. This wasn’t a Beata he recognised.
‘Lick it off,’ she said.
Dieter moistened a fingertip and reached out. The butter was skin temperature, and slightly salty. Delicious. He eyed the menu.
‘Dessert?’
Beata shook her head.
‘You’re staying tonight?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Have you booked a room at the hotel yet?’
‘No.’
‘Good. I have a double bed. Do you mind sharing? Under the circumstances, it might be a kindness.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m trying to spare your blushes. Papa is right. You’re a gentle man. I need some of that.’
They drove to the hotel. It was bigger than Dieter had expected, a sombre building in reddish brick that dominated the town square, and the night porter barely lifted his head as they walked through the reception area towards the lift.
‘Top floor,’ Beata murmured. ‘I wanted a view of the shrine but apparently it’s too far away.’
The room was generous, if a little cold. There was a scatter of clothes on the floor and the bed was unmade. Another mystery. When Dieter asked why the hotel didn’t stretch to a chambermaid, Beata told him she’d asked for complete privacy. No interruptions. No phone calls. No room service.
‘Why?’
‘Because I needed time to think. Time to be me again.’
‘So who were you before?’
‘Frau Messner.’
‘And that’s over?’
‘Yes. My father told me about the Russian woman, the film star. When he called her a whore I told him he’d got the wrong person. If he was looking for someone to blame, he should start with his son-in-law. You know something about Georg? Something I’d never realised? Beneath all the bluster, all the certainties, he was a weak man. I can pardon lots of things, truly, but not weakness.’
‘And your father?’
‘He agreed. I’m not even sure he ever liked Georg.’
Dieter nodded. They were sitting side by side on the bed, chaste, companionable. They might have been brother and sister.
‘And now? Here?’ Dieter nodded down at the bed. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to be held. I want to be talked to. Whatever else happens doesn’t matter.’
‘But it might. Have you thought about that?’
She studied him a moment. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, far from it. She wasn’t even pretty. Her face was long. Her hair was lank. She didn’t smile a great deal. And her teeth, like her husband’s, needed a little attention. But Dieter had always liked her intelligence, and the way she listened so attentively to other people’s stories, and that affection – since Georg’s accident – had been thickened by something close to admiration. No one deserved the scene that Goebbels had stage-managed at the Charité, and Merz knew very few people who could have weathered the past few weeks with such grace and fortitude.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You deserve someone much stronger than Georg.’
She looked at him a moment and then smiled before kissing him lightly on the lips.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘That needn’t be you.’
*
It was early afternoon before Moncrieff finally made it back to St James’s Street. The morning express from Poole had broken down in Southampton and hours passed before a relief engine appeared. The train had come to rest half a mile from the city centre. Staring out at the wreckage left by the last major bombing raid – tottering walls supported by baulks of timber, kids scavenging for coal in the mountains of rubble – Moncrieff could think only of the warmth and the colour he’d left back in Lisbon. Anyone with any kind of choice, he told himself, would gladly abandon scenes like these for the promise of sunshine and the blessings of peace. Another small victory, perhaps, for Agent Souk.
‘So how was he?’
The question came from Ursula Barton. Within minutes of stepping into the building, Moncrieff had been summoned to her office. They had just half an hour before she was due to conference with ‘B’ Section’s Director on the secure transatlantic line. Liddell knew that Moncrieff was due back from Portugal and was bound to demand a proper briefing.
‘Souk’s in rude health. Lisbon suits him. He loves it down there.’ Moncrieff produced a file and slipped a sheet of paper across the desk. Ursula picked it up.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a bill for two. Hesketh and Albrecht Haushofer. They dined together the evening before I arrived.’
‘Ninety-three US dollars?’ She looked up, appalled. ‘Doesn’t the bloody man know there’s a war on? How can I ever justify a sum like this?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea. We asked Souk to pass on the letter and that’s exactly what he did. Afterwards he poured a great deal of wine down young Albrecht’s throat and listened carefully to what he had to say.’
Moncrieff summarised the main points. Top-level negotiations leading to a peace treaty. Venue to be decided. The English to turn their backs on Europe and attend to their precious empire. Leaving the Germans with a free hand everywhere else.
‘Like Russia?’
‘That would seem a reasonable presumption.’
‘They really mean to invade?’
‘I gather they do.’
‘Do you know when?’
‘Haushofer thinks the eighteenth or the twenty-fifth of May. That’s according to Souk.’
‘And the Germans think we’d simply stand aside? Has this man Haushofer ever heard of Churchill? Oldish chap? Drinks a fair amount? Fine radio voice? Big popular following? And Prime Minister, to boot? Does he feature anywhere in these people’s calculations?’
‘Only in the most negative sense. They refuse to believe he speaks for England.’
‘Then who does? In their view?’
‘The King. He’s the top of the pile. Then they have a long list of trusties who see no point in continuing a war we can’t possibly win.’
‘Is this you speaking, Tam? Or them?’
Moncrieff blinked. His relationship with this woman was based on total candour but she’d seldom been so aggressive.
‘Them. I’m simply the messenger, as you doubtless know.’
Moncrieff held her icy gaze. Sometimes he hated this war. Southampton, he thought. And the sight of kids hunting desperately for lumps of coal.
Ursula was making notes prior to her imminent conversation with Guy Liddell.
‘Anything else I should know?’ Her head was down. She was still writing.
‘Yes. It’s a postscript really. Make of it what you will.’
‘Postscript?’ She sounded irritated. ‘What on earth does that mean?’
Moncrieff described his flight back from Lisbon, his companion in the adjoining seat, the crossword clues, the shared Laphroaig, and then the message he’d been waiting to deliver since the moment they’d taken off.
‘MI6, you say?’ Ursula at last looked up. ‘And this new friend of yours has a name?’
‘Philby.’
‘And he has an interest in Souk?’
‘Had, I think. Past tense.’
‘So why warn you off?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘But they hate us. You know that. If Souk’s such a waste of time, why bother marking our card? They love it when we foul up. A word in the right ear and we’re the talk of clubland. Again.’
Moncrieff nodded. He’d seen the gleam in Ursula’s eyes. She knew MI6. She’d worked for them in The Hague. She knew how arrogant they could be, how careless, and he rather suspected she knew a great deal more.
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