Last Man to Die

by Michael Dobbs

  It was 10 April. Russians less than eighty miles east of Berlin, their advance troops already ripping through the outskirts of Vienna. To the west the Americans, Canadians and British, swarming across their bridgeheads on the Rhine, their vanguard almost as close to Berlin as the Red Army and making faster headway. The great Reich which had once stretched from the edges of Moscow to the Atlantic and from the northern tip of Norway as far as Africa, now reduced to a narrow ribbon a few dozen miles across as the vast armies of their enemies pressed in on all sides. For a man whose task it was to manufacture propaganda, all that recent weeks had given him by way of raw material were bricks of straw.

  But now! A saga of German courage, of triumph against seemingly insuperable odds, an epic example of endurance which showed that all was not lost, that victory could still be theirs! All they needed was time, a little more sacrifice from the German people, another burst of national resistance. If only Germany could hold on a few weeks longer, Stalin would go too far as he had always done, the West would begin to understand how wrong they had been to trust him, and how much greater was the menace of Bolshevism than any posed by Nazism. Then, perhaps, they could come down from their Alpine fastness …

  If only Germany could hold on a little longer. If only the Fuehrer could hold on. And with the inspiration of Hencke’s example, they both might.

  He brushed aside the fine layer of dust that had already settled on the cable, savouring once more the most encouraging news he had received in months. More dust began instantly to fall. The Americans and British were bombing the capital around the clock, the last hope of German resistance in the air had already been blasted from the sky or reduced to matchwood on pulverized airfields, and even the bits of Berlin that had not suffered direct hits were being slowly shaken to pieces. It was April, yet scarcely a tree in the city bore any leaf, as if a Valkyrian whirlwind had stripped them bare. The skies above the capital were beginning to fill with the yellow, acrid smoke of cordite, soot and dust which turned day into night and the eternal hope of spring into darkest autumn. Goebbels fanned the flames of hope amongst all who would listen, but he knew the odds lay heavily against him.

  And all because of one man. Winston Bloody Churchill! The evil old drunkard who, if only he hadn’t been so monumentally stubborn and short-sighted, could have brought the war to an end less than a year after it started with Britain and its empire still intact, and Germany straddled across Europe. They could have shared the world between them. But in his whisky-sodden blindness he had thrown away the historical destiny of their two great nations, had bled them both dry, Winston Bloody Churchill, who had been biting their backsides for years. Well, perhaps it was time for him to take some of his own medicine. And the poison was here, in Goebbels’ hand.

  He knew he couldn’t wait until Hencke was back. Hencke might never get back or, if he did, it might all be too late. Goebbels needed something now, not next week. So he would announce Hencke’s survival and escape to Ireland, and humiliate Churchill in his bare-faced lie, and hope to cause so much confusion that the world would never again believe a thing that the British leader told them, even if he had Hencke, his grandmother and his entire fornicating family on public display in London Zoo.

  The lights flickered and dimmed as the blast from a nearby explosion momentarily disturbed the smooth running of the generator. Another cloud of dust descended from the ceiling and fell around Goebbels. But in the half light, he didn’t seem to mind. For the first time in days, he was smiling.

  ‘I did warn you.’

  The old, baleful eyes turned, admonishing, but said nothing. Cazolet was right, after all. Damn him.

  ‘Don’t feel too depressed,’ the younger man continued, adopting a more generous tack. ‘It’s not the first time Berlin Radio has accused you of lying.’

  ‘The great British public expect their politicians to lie,’ Churchill responded mournfully.

  ‘So …?’

  ‘But not to get caught.’

  ‘They can’t blame you.’

  ‘Willie, he is part of the biggest escape of the war. In response we are forced to launch a nationwide manhunt. Then, with all eyes upon us, we announce his death. Yet within days Goebbels is able to tell the whole world I was lying. If he ever has the proof, if in spite of it all Hencke turns up in Berlin, we shall never hear the end of it. At best I shall look incompetent, as though I am losing my grip. At worst it will look as if I have been deliberately deceiving both our electors and our allies to cover up my own inadequacies. Sacrificing the truth for my own squalid personal purposes – that’s what they will say.’

  ‘What does one man matter? The whole world is changing, victory is within our grasp … Hencke is a mere drop in the great oceans swirling around us.’

  The Old Man looked up sharply. ‘Willie, you do not yet understand.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t. I’ve always felt you had some sort of mystical attachment to this man, admiration for him, even. Solidarity amongst escapees.’

  ‘He is a brave man. And far from being a drop in the ocean he is of overwhelming significance.’

  ‘As you said, I do not yet understand.’

  Churchill shook his head sorrowfully, his fleshy jowls quivering in agitation. ‘It was all so simple when it started. Hencke seemed just another escaping soldier, of little consequence, the merest flicker of a candle in the darkening night of German defeat. But …’ He sighed deeply. ‘He has changed, beyond anything we could have expected. He is no longer anonymous. Eisenhower chose to turn him into a token of his victory over me, now Goebbels has embraced him as a symbol of ultimate resistance. In every broadcast Berlin Radio makes he will try to humiliate and destroy me through Hencke.’

  ‘Surely not …’ Cazolet felt sure that Churchill was going too far in personalizing events, but the Old Man raised his voice to shout him down.

  ‘Hencke is a remarkable man, a prize in anyone’s army. Unique. Powerful. He has outwitted an entire nation.’ Animation had sparked within the Old Man, as if he were caught personally in the excitement of Hencke’s adventure; he waved away the smoke that was clinging around his forehead in order to see Cazolet more clearly. ‘If he makes it back to Berlin, the only German soldier to do so throughout the course of this entire bloody war, Hencke becomes a mighty weapon. It has been inevitable since the moment he escaped.’

  ‘Then let us pray he never makes it back.’

  Churchill glowered. ‘Goebbels has stacked the odds so fearfully against him.’

  ‘Goebbels …?’ Cazolet was growing impatient. Churchill talked in such riddles, making no sense that Cazolet could discern.

  ‘In order to use him as a weapon against me, Goebbels has betrayed him. He should never have told us that Hencke was in Ireland.’

  ‘But we can’t touch him in Ireland. Can we?’

  ‘Already he will have been smuggled out of Dublin, to somewhere safe, somewhere beyond our reach. But …’ The lower lip quivered, the moist end of the Havana forgotten. ‘To accommodate his disastrous timetable Goebbels has to get him from Ireland back to Germany in a fearful hurry. He cannot be smuggled through Spain or some third country – it would take too long. He cannot be flown there, for we have total mastery of the skies. They have no ships left afloat which could make the journey. No. There is only one way. By submarine!’

  Cazolet was nodding slowly; this much he could understand.

  ‘And there is only one route, Willie! To run the gauntlet of the English Channel, so full as it is of our frigates and patrol boats, would be suicide. A twenty-mile stretch of water without so much as a friendly rock behind which to hide. He couldn’t escape detection if he tried to swim through! No, Willie, no. He must go the long way round, beyond Scotland and down through the North Sea. There he might hope to hide in the depths, to escape our attentions. Nearly two hundred thousand square miles of dark water. There he might stand a chance.’ Churchill had seemed caught up in Hencke’s challenge himself, his cigar sta
bbing the air to leave a trail of smoky exclamation marks, but in an instant his demeanour changed. It was as if a string had been cut. He slumped back in his chair. ‘And it is there they shall stop him. Because of Goebbels’ precipitateness and stupidity. The Navy are already moving everything they have to throw a gate across the North Sea so solid that even the fishes will have trouble penetrating it.’ The voice brimmed with anguish. ‘They will leave nothing to chance, Willie.’

  After many years spent so close to the Old Man, Cazolet was accustomed to the sharply swinging emotions, his sudden tempers too, but never had he seen his mood change so quickly. One moment Churchill had been lost in self-pity, the next caught in the thrill of trying to outwit Goebbels and even his own sea defences, yet now he was shedding tears.

  ‘Goebbels has sacrificed him, to get at me. He could have waited, got Hencke back home before making his wretched announcement, keep us unawares. But he couldn’t wait to humiliate me. Goebbels has betrayed him with the kiss of Judas. And so we must betray him also and nail him to a hard cross on which only brave men perish.’ His bottom lip quivered, the head fell forward, the tears began to fall into his lap, tears of sorrow, of pity, and of guilt. ‘We move great armies around the chessboard of war, knowing the battle will result in tens of thousands of deaths. When I went to thank the troops on the night before they left for the Normandy beaches, they cheered, even with the knowledge that many of them were shortly to die as a result of my orders. There will be death warrants to be issued even after this war is over, and I shall not shrink from signing them. The game of war brings death, and the devil has ensured that this has been a hellishly long game. But to conspire in the destruction of this one brave man, whose only crime has been to love his country and to show the most peculiar courage, to order him cast over like a pawn, is almost more than I can bear. For he is no ordinary man. The whole world has betrayed him, poor, poor man. And now it is our turn.’

  ‘How on earth can you betray a murdering bloody German?’ Cazolet burst out in alarm, for the first time beginning to wonder whether the older man’s logic, like his emotions, was beginning to succumb to the strain.

  Churchill reached over to grab the knee of his young companion, beseeching his understanding. ‘He is not just another bloody German! Haven’t you realized yet? He is … Berlin! My victory! Or was, until Eisenhower intervened.’ He sobbed, his voice subdued in recognition of his own defeat. ‘The Alps … the idea was always ridiculous, so far-fetched … I wanted to make sure. But now I am no more than a spectator in this game. Berlin is gone, and all I have done is ensure the needless death of one brave man.’

  The sun was setting, a vivid cusp on the horizon, by the time they reached their destination. They had been travelling since morning, just the two of them in a battered Bedford farm truck, for the last three hours bumping along unmade tracks as they scurried as rapidly as the conditions would allow beside the bleak coastline of western Ireland. They had passed barely a dozen cottages and several of those had stood abandoned and roofless, their bare chimney stacks standing like gravestones, memorials to a past, better life. The way of life in this part of Ireland had scarcely changed since the Famine, she had explained, except to get worse. The scenery was green yet barren, and the rugged basalt coastline stood out like the craters of the moon as it was caught by the embers of the dying sun.

  She parked the truck on the cliffs above a broad bay; there was no cover to hide the vehicle, no tree, no bush, only bare grassy slopes. Out to sea the final rays of the sun kissed the tops of low islands that guarded the entrance to the bay and kept its waters calm and smooth. All was still, the only sound the lapping of the tide and the mewing of gulls as they cartwheeled overhead and plunged into the sea in search of sprats. They trod carefully down a rocky path which he would never have spotted had he not been walking on it. They held each other’s hands tightly. She led the way, while he acted as a great anchor to guard against the boulders and stones trying to trip them and send them stumbling, until they had clambered down to the narrow shingle beach below. The tide lapped gently across the stones.

  ‘What do we do now?’ he asked.

  She checked her watch. ‘We wait.’

  They were the only words exchanged. They knew these would be their last moments yet neither could find the things to say. They stood side by side looking out to sea, still holding hands, losing themselves in colours which in the final struggle of day were swirling turbulently above the horizon. She felt the elements mimicking the turmoil inside her, happy that he was almost safe, feeling desolate that his salvation would make her miserable for the rest of her life. She thought once more of that night in Liverpool when, for a fleeting moment, she felt she had got close to him. But the feeling had never returned.

  Then it began. The sea before them which had been peaceful and at rest started to lift and part, a fermenting brew of waves and foam which rippled out and filled the bay.

  ‘Your lift,’ she said simply.

  They watched as through the clinging beds of kelp rose the profile of a conning tower, its U-boat insignia still identifiable in the last light of day, and already there were men scuttling across the upper deck, manning the anti-aircraft guns and launching a small collapsible rowing boat. It was soon approaching the shore, its crew alert and wary. Hencke and Sinead had only moments left together.

  ‘Thanks,’ he whispered. He was still looking out to sea rather than at her.

  ‘No thanks needed. I love you.’

  ‘Please, don’t. Don’t love me.’

  ‘But I do, Peter Hencke.’

  ‘You mustn’t, Sinead. There’s no future for us.’ Still he could not look at her.

  The rowing boat was already beginning to scrape its way onto the beach, with two armed sailors jumping out and taking guard against unforeseen danger.

  ‘Kill hope, Peter, and you kill the heart. Don’t take that from me.’

  ‘I know what you mean. Believe me. But I’m not coming back.’

  ‘The war will be over eventually …’

  ‘Not even then. Not for me. I’m sorry.’

  She wanted to scream at him, to demand that he open the doors inside which he kept so tightly bolted, that he owed her more than ‘I’m sorry’ after all she’d done, that the least he could give her was an explanation, but an officer was scrambling up the shingle towards them and was almost upon them.

  ‘Captain Eling,’ he introduced himself with a salute. ‘My compliments! Please come with me.’

  She tried once more but the captain was glancing around anxiously.

  ‘Please. We must leave. Immediately.’

  Only then did Hencke look directly at her, with that light in his eyes turned from defiance to a soft glow of comfort. ‘I shall remember you, always.’

  ‘Pity we can’t live on memories.’

  ‘But at least we can live with them, which is more than many will be able to say after this madness is over.’

  ‘What will you remember?’

  He smiled, and perhaps for the first time she felt the doors inside opening a little. ‘Someone who took my despair and gave me hope. Someone with whom I shared a special kind of love. Someone who, in a different world, could have become my dearest friend. And who knows, perhaps in the next world it might be.’

  ‘Then there’s no need to be sorry, is there.’

  ‘No regrets?’

  Hesitantly, reluctantly almost, she shook her head.

  ‘I’m very glad to have met you, Sinead No-Name.’ And with that his hands slipped from hers and he was gone.

  He didn’t look back all the time the boat slapped through the water on its way out to the waiting submarine. As they approached, in the gathering dusk, he could see the crew lined up along the hull, watching him. He heard no one give an order but as they drew near the men and officers raised their arms in salute. The final red and purple glow was fading into a dark sky and the submarine stood in silhouette, the last rays of day glinting off the conni
ng tower and bringing an edge of fire to the dull and battered metalwork, making him feel as though he were in the midst of a timeless ceremony of champions, like a warrior being greeted on arrival in Valhalla.

  He turned to the captain in puzzlement. ‘Why?’

  The captain paused to consider his answer. He had several weeks’ growth of beard, his white officer’s cap was crumpled and the eyes beneath appeared haunted and exhausted. His face bore the marks of many missions. ‘Because we understand the meaning of duty, and know what it’s like to risk everything to get home. A submariner is never captured, he never has the option like so many others nowadays of sitting safely on his ass and waiting in comfort for the end of the war. A submariner knows only one thing – to fight or to die. In our book, Hencke, you’re one of us.’ The captain’s hand came to touch the peak of his cap and offer his own respectful salute, one fighting man to another.

  ‘They sent an entire submarine crew – just for one man?’

  ‘Three crews of three submarines. Out there are two more U-boats. Me to take you. The other two to act as decoys. We have to assume that the whole British anti-submarine effort is waiting for us out there. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.’

  ‘Decoys? You mean like decoy ducks?’

  The captain gave a thin, humourless grin. ‘Something like that. Decoys who will fly off in opposite directions and hope to drag the British after them. Disperse their effort, create a hole in their defences through which we might sneak undetected.’

  ‘But that’s no better than …’

  ‘War is a dangerous profession. We’re used to it. At least with you aboard we’ll be heading back home. If we have a choice, I’d rather be heading home, not buried along with the worms three miles down in some mud hole in the middle of the Atlantic. Feels better the closer you get to home, if you know what I mean.’ He sniffed the salt air with the intensity of a man taking his last breath.