by Greg Iles
“Games.”
“What’s that?” Churchill asked, cocking his chin and puffing on the cigar. “Stern, isn’t it?”
“I said games. That’s what they play up there.”
McConnell had no doubt Brigadier Smith was on the verge of knifing Stern in the kidneys.
“Mr. Stern,” said Churchill, “they play games at Achnacarry because war is a game. It is a game you play with a smile. If you can’t smile, you grin. And if you can’t grin, you get out of the way until you can!”
He set his cigar in the ashtray and leaned across the desk, his hands splayed on its polished surface. “I asked to see you men for two reasons. Because you are civilians, and because you are not British subjects. You are undertaking a mission of the most hazardous nature. I want to impress upon you the supreme importance of this mission. This mission, gentlemen, must not fail.”
He hiked both trouser legs and sat behind the desk. “I wanted to speak especially to you, Doctor McConnell. I understand you’re a follower of Mr. Gandhi?”
McConnell found himself surprisingly willing to answer. “To a degree, yes.”
“I hope not to the degree that some of your scientific colleagues are. Do you know Professor Bohr?”
“Niels Bohr? The Danish physicist?”
“That’s the man.”
“I know of him.”
“That utopist has the most muddleheaded perspective on war I’ve ever heard. He’s like a bloody child. He sat in front of me and rambled for three quarters of an hour and I still had no idea what he was talking about. I think it all boiled down to resisting violence with humility. At least Gandhi says it in one tenth the time.”
Churchill’s eyes narrowed with incisive curiosity. “What about you, Doctor? Do you believe humility is the best weapon to use against Herr Hitler’s armies?”
McConnell did not answer immediately. The mention of Niels Bohr had distracted him. The renowned physicist was supposed to be in Sweden. How had he “sat in front of” Winston Churchill? This strange revelation dovetailed with the whispered rumors he had heard at Oxford about accelerated research into atomic physics.
“Doctor?” Churchill prompted.
“I think events have gone beyond that now, Mr. Prime Minister. But I also think Hitler could have been stopped with little or no violence years ago.”
“I quite agree. But we live in the present.” His voice rose a semitone. “Duff tells me your father won the Distinguished Service Cross in the Great War. At the St. Mihiel salient.”
“That’s right,” said McConnell, wondering why Churchill’s knowledge of his past should take him by surprise. “Also the Silver Star. Of course, he threw them both into the Potomac River in 1932.”
Churchill tucked his chin into his chest and gave McConnell a froglike stare. “Why the devil did he do that?”
McConnell wasn’t sure the prime minister would like the answer, but he told him. “Remember the Bonus Army Riot in Washington? During the Depression?”
“Veteran’s pensions or something?” rumbled Churchill.
“Exactly. Some men from my father’s old unit had gone up with the vets who were trying to get relief from the government. There were about twenty-five thousand of them, with their families. They called and asked my dad if he would go up and try to give them some medical help. He went. The D.C. police were feeding the vets and their families, but President Hoover had no sympathy. After three months of peaceful demonstration, he called in the army. The army attacked the unarmed crowds with tear gas, bayonets, cavalry, and tanks. Several vets were shot, some infants gassed to death.” McConnell paused. “My father was in that crowd.”
Churchill watched with unblinking eyes. “Do I sense some deeper moral to this story?”
“A footnote. I have since learned the names of some of the officers who attacked that crowd. The troops were led by a man named Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur disobeyed Hoover and went far beyond his original orders. MacArthur’s aide was a Major Dwight Eisenhower. The saber-wielding cavalry were led by Captain George Patton. So, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps you understand why my devotion to the military is less than blind.”
“I do indeed. Politics can be a difficult business, Doctor. I must sadly admit that I have made similar mistakes. But none of that affects the current situation. I don’t have to explain to a man of your gifts the threat facing Christian civilization.”
McConnell had no doubt that Stern had noted the omission of Jews from that formulation.
“For your own reasons, whatever they are, you have agreed to go on this mission. For that I thank you. I am not exaggerating when I say that the liberation of Europe may hang upon it.”
Churchill’s eyes played over McConnell’s face for some moments. Then he took a sheet of notepaper from his desk and lifted a pen from its well. “There is bound to be loss of life during this mission,” he said, writing quickly. “I want you to know that final responsibility rests with me.”
Churchill tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to McConnell, who read it with astonishment.
On my head be these deaths.
W
“I’m half-American myself, you know,” said Churchill. “And I reckon you’re at least half-English, Doctor.”
“What?” McConnell mumbled, still looking at the remarkable note. “What do you mean?”
Churchill clamped his teeth down on his cigar and grinned. “Any man who has survived both Oxford University and Achnacarry Castle has earned his citizenship!”
McConnell heard Brigadier Smith’s feet shifting impatiently on the floor behind him. Then Stern’s German-accented voice cut the air of the study.
“What about my people?” he asked in an accusatory tone. “Is there a place for Jews in your Anglo-American paradise?”
“Hold your tongue!” bellowed Brigadier Smith.
“Let him speak, Duff,” Churchill said. “He has a right to be angry.”
Stern took a step forward. The SD uniform and German accent gave his words a chilling intensity. “I want to know if you will really support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine after the war.”
Churchill punctuated his words with his cigar, using it like a pointer. “I most certainly will, Mr. Stern. But the key phrase in your question was ‘after the war.’ There’s a damned great lot of fighting to be done yet.”
“And I’m ready to do it,” Stern said.
“Are you? Well then. When you get back from this mission, I shall personally see to it that you get a commission in the Jewish Brigade.” He smiled. “You’ll need a different uniform, of course. They wouldn’t like that swastika.”
“There is no Jewish Brigade! It’s been buried in paperwork for years.”
“Not any longer,” said Churchill. “I’ve unburied it. The Jewish Brigade will fight in the liberation. So, are you interested?”
Stern actually snapped to attention.
Churchill beamed. “This is my sort of fellow, Duff. You’ve chosen well, I think.”
“He’ll do,” Smith said grudgingly. “But I’m afraid we really must go. The schedule, you know.”
“H-Hour,” Churchill said with relish. “And right into Germany! What I wouldn’t give to go with you.” He stood up and vigorously shook both McConnell’s and Stern’s hands.
McConnell thought of something else he wanted to ask, but by then the brigadier had whisked them out of the room and along the dim corridor.
The driver of the Humber met them at the outside door.
“Follow him,” Smith said. “I’ll join you in a moment.”
As they passed outside, McConnell looked back. They were exiting from a different door, and above it he saw the words: Pro Patria Omnia. Now he realized what Duff Smith had said to his pilot over Loch Lochy. He had not said to head for “checkers” but Chequers, which was the country residence of the British prime minister. As he followed Stern back to the Lysander, McConnell wondered if Adolf Hitler knew what words were eng
raved above the door of that house, and what they meant.
All for the Fatherland.
Churchill was studiously smoking his cigar when Brigadier Smith returned. Smith took a chair opposite the desk and waited for the inevitable grilling the PM always gave before important operations. Churchill exhaled a great cloud of blue smoke, sniffed, then rested his cigar on the rim of the ashtray.
“This is the only operation I have ever sanctioned that goes directly against the wishes of the Americans,” he said soberly. “I’m still not sure I fancy using an American to do it. Even if he is the right man from a technical standpoint. It could cause problems later.”
“There won’t be any problems, Winston. If this mission succeeds, it succeeds in producing a negative: the nonuse of nerve gas by the Nazis. And if it fails, both Stern and McConnell will in all likelihood be dead.”
“What if it succeeds, but the good doctor decides to unburden himself afterwards? For reasons of conscience.”
Smith peered into the blue eyes, trying to read the subtext of the conversation. At length he said, “This is a dangerous mission. Even if it succeeds, it’s quite possible that McConnell and Stern might not get back alive.”
Churchill steepled his fingers and focused his eyes somewhere in the shadows beyond Smith. “Does anyone know McConnell is going on this mission? Anyone at all?”
“He left two letters with an Oxford don. For his wife and mother. The usual stuff. I confiscated them.”
Churchill sighed heavily. “If Eisenhower or Marshall learn I’ve bypassed them to make a strike of this magnitude—”
“They’ve left you no alternative, Winston! If Eisenhower’s armies fall dead after thirty seconds on the French beaches, Roosevelt and Marshall will scream to high heaven about what should have been done, and Ike will resign, but by then it will be too late.”
Churchill was nodding. “I agree, Duff. The question is, will the mission succeed? Is there a real chance?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about our gas? How long will it remain stable now?”
“It varies from lot to lot. The last two batches from Porton remained stable for ninety-seven hours.”
“What’s that? Four days?”
“Just over that.”
“And it was lethal?”
“Oh, quite, yes. Dispatched two large primates rather handily.”
Churchill winced. “Don’t tell me where you got your test subjects. I don’t want the Royal Society beating down my door. How old is the gas your Achnacarry men took in?”
Smith looked at his watch. “Twenty-six hours and counting.”
“Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?”
“The Raubhammer demonstration is in four days,” said Smith. “If we don’t pull it off by then, we’re probably too late anyway. If the wind is under seven miles per hour when they arrive, Stern will release the gas tonight. If not tonight, then tomorrow.”
Churchill picked up his pen and began doodling on a notepad. “That’s why you want the submarine to stand by for four days. The weather must be right for the attack?”
“That, and the exhibition for Hitler. I want to give them every possible chance to make the attack. As for weather, four miles an hour is optimal wind speed for a gas attack of this type, preferably without rain.”
“Does Stern or McConnell know the gas may not work?”
“Of course not.”
Churchill pulled the heavy pea jacket around his neck. “Duff, if you had to give me a percentage chance of success, what would you say?”
Smith ruminated. “Fifty-fifty for the attack itself. But if the attack is successful, I think there’s a ninety percent chance the bluff will work. Winston, I’m absolutely positive that this nerve gas initiative is an all-Himmler show. Everything points to it. When we hit him discreetly with his own personal ‘miracle weapon,’ we’ll knock his legs right out from under him. As far as he’ll know, we’ve got ten thousand tons of British Sarin ready to drop on Berlin. He’ll have to call off his show.”
“Will he be able to prove we were behind the attack?”
“No. We’re using German cylinders, World War One vintage. But he’ll know who was responsible. I’ll see to that.”
“And if our Sarin doesn’t work?”
Smith shrugged. “Then the bombers go in.”
Churchill made a growling noise in the back of his throat. “What will happen if we have to bomb that camp?”
“That depends on several factors. Again, the weather. How much gas is stored on-site. Our planes will be carrying incendiary bombs, to try to incinerate as much of the gas as possible before it leaves the area. Still, there’s a chance that the nearby villages could be wiped out. We just don’t know enough to predict. If they are wiped out, I’m sure Himmler will simply announce a regrettable industrial accident. Whatever happens, all traces of our mission will be destroyed.”
“What if you don’t hear anything from Stern and McConnell?”
“If I don’t have positive confirmation of success three nights from now, the bombers will go in, no matter what.”
“Do Stern and McConnell know about the bombers?”
“Good God, no.”
Churchill rubbed his forehead with both hands. He had looked vital to McConnell, but Duff Smith knew the prime minister had only just recovered from pneumonia in December, and that after surviving two heart attacks in the same month. The pressures on him were enormous. Yet he insisted on shouldering moral responsibility for every mission.
“They’re civilians, Duff,” Churchill pointed out.
“They’ll sign releases before they leave.”
“That’s not what I meant. You don’t think that with his brother murdered by the SS, you could entrust McConnell with the real purpose of the mission?”
Smith shook his head. “I don’t think Doctor McConnell would kill a human being even to save his own life.”
The telephone on Churchill’s desk rang, but he ignored it. “There is one flaw that could bring disaster, Duff. What if they’re captured and tortured before they can carry out the attack? You gave them L-pills?”
“Stern carries one at all times, if you can believe it. But I wouldn’t trust McConnell to take cyanide even if he had it.” The brigadier felt in his pocket for his pipe. “No need to worry on that score, though. If capture appears imminent, Stern is under orders to shoot the good doctor where he stands.”
Churchill’s phone finally stopped ringing.
“That’s a hard order, Duff. It wouldn’t sit well with a lot of people, on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Smith had anticipated this last spasm of conscience. “There is a precedent, Winston. At Dieppe, when we sent our radar experts to reconnoiter the German radar station, we sent gunmen in behind them — disguised as bodyguards — just in case the Jerries closed in.”
“I don’t see how that makes this situation any better.”
Smith smiled. “One of those bodyguards was an American FBI agent. If the Yanks had no qualms about an FBI man shooting our scientists, I don’t see how they could object to us doing the same.”
Brendan Bracken opened the study door and said, “Hayes Lodge. General Eisenhower is standing by for you.”
Churchill nodded and waved his aide out of the room. “It’s a moot point, Duff, but if any of this ever gets out, who shot whom will be irrelevant. All that matters is secrecy and results. But tell me . . . do you think Stern would really shoot McConnell down in cold blood?”
Duff Smith stood up and patted his khakis flat. “Winston, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind.”
28
The Moon plane dropped out of the dark sky like a nighthawk, swooping through ghostly clouds in a dive McConnell thought would tear off its wings.
“Hold on to your seats!” advised the pilot.
McConnell closed his eyes as the rattling Lysander hurtled toward the earth. The plane was packed full. They had crammed the suitcase containing t
he anti-gas suits and stolen explosives in the small space behind the seats. He held the case with the air cylinders on his lap. He also had his personal bag, which contained food, his Schmeisser, a change of civilian clothes, and some medical supplies.
“Are you going to be sick?” Stern shouted over the roar of the engine.
McConnell opened his eyes. He felt like a man plunging to his death, but Stern’s face was impassive. He wondered if he looked as authentically Nazi as Stern did. He wore a captain’s uniform and carried papers identifying him as an SS physician, but he felt about as German as a Hormel frankfurter. In the dark gray-green SD uniform and cap, with the Iron Cross First Class on his tunic, Stern radiated a sinister authority.
“Damn this plane!” Stern cursed, adjusting the scuffed leather bag and Schmeisser on his lap.
“Bad luck!” yelled the pilot. “Couldn’t be helped!”
McConnell said nothing. The line of pale blue light silhouetting the eastern horizon was comment enough. Dawn was coming, and they had yet to reach the ground. The entire night had been a race against time. After the meeting with Churchill, they’d made a brief hop to a restricted airfield. There Brigadier Smith and an aide had led them aboard a captured Junkers bomber Smith claimed was so secret that they could not be allowed to see its pilot. The Junkers bore all its original Luftwaffe markings, which had made for a dangerous run out of British airspace, but allowed an uneventful trip to neutral Sweden. During the flight, Smith actually ordered the pilot to open the bomb bay so that he could point out German battleships on blockade duty below them.
Their problem began in Sweden. The Lysander detailed to carry them from Sweden to Germany — the plane they were in now — had developed engine trouble on its way back from a mission into Occupied France. And because the tiny black plane had but one engine, they had been forced to wait hours in a freezing shack while its pilot and the mysterious Junkers pilot repaired the problem. By the time they finished, dawn was scarcely an hour away. McConnell had suggested they wait until the next night, but Smith wouldn’t hear of it. He practically shoved them into the Lysander and ordered their pilot not to turn back for any reason.
