'Herr Oberst?' Hofer said politely.
Take this affair. The Fuhrer, whom heaven protect naturally, has a brainstorm and comes up with the comical and absurd suggestion that we should emulate Skorzeny's exploit at Gran Sasso by getting Churchill, although whether alive or dead has not been specified. And the synchronicity rears its ugly head in a routine Abwehr report. A brief mention that Churchill will be spending a week-end no more than seven or eight miles from the coast at a remote country house in as quiet a part of the country as one could wish. You take my meaning? At any other time that report of Mrs. Grey's would have meant nothing.'
'So we do proceed then, Herr Oberst?'
'It would appear that fate has taken a hand, Karl,' Radl said. 'How long did you say Mrs. Grey's reports take to come in through the Spanish diplomatic bag?'
Three days, Herr Oberst, if someone is waiting in Madrid to collect. No more than a week, even if circumstances are difficult.'
'And when is her next radio contact time?'
'This evening, Herr Oberst.'
'Good - send her this message.' Radl looked up at the ceiling again, thinking hard, trying to compress his thoughts. 'Very interested in your visitor of sixth November. Like to drop some friends in to meet him in the hope that they might persuade him to come back with them. Your early comments looked for by usual route with all relevant information.'
'Is that all, Herr Oberst?'
'I think so.'
.
That was Wednesday and it was raining in Berlin, but the following morning when Father Philip Vereker limped out through the lychgate of St Mary's and All the Saints, Studley Constable, and walked down through the village, the sun was shining and it was that most beautiful of all things, a perfect autumn day.
At that time, Philip Vereker was a tall, gaunt young man of thirty, the gauntness emphasized even more by the black cassock. His face was strained and twisted with pain as he limped along, leaning heavily on his stick. He had only been discharged from a military hospital four months earlier.
The younger son of a Harley Street surgeon, he had been a brilliant scholar who at Cambridge had shown every sign of an outstanding future. Then, to his family's dismay, he had decided to train for the priesthood, had gone to the English College in Rome and joined the Society of Jesus.
He had entered the army as a padre in 1940 and had finally been assigned to the Parachute Regiment and had seen action only once in November, 1942, in Tunisia when he had jumped with units of the First Parachute Brigade with orders to seize the airfield at Oudna, ten miles from Tunis. In the end, they had been compelled to make a fighting retreat over fifty miles of open country, strafed from the air every yard of the way and under constant attack from ground forces.
One hundred and eighty made it to safety. Two hundred and sixty didn't. Vereker was one of the lucky ones, in spite of a bullet which had passed straight through his left ankle, chipping bone. By the time he reached a field hospital, sepsis had set in. His left foot was amputated and he was invalided out.
Vereker found it difficult to look pleasant these days. The pain was constant and would not go away, and yet he did manage a smile as he approached Park Cottage and saw Joanna Grey emerge pushing her bicycle, her retriever at her heels.
'How are you, Philip?' she said. 'I haven't seen you for several days.'
She wore a tweed skirt, polo-necked sweater underneath a yellow oilskin coat and a silk scarf was tied around her white hair. She really did look very charming with that South African tan of hers that she never really lost.
'Oh. I'm all right,' Vereker said. 'Dying by inches of boredom more than anything else. One piece of news since I last saw you. My sister, Pamela. Remember me speaking of her? She's ten years younger than me. A corporal in the WAAF.'
'Of course I remember,' Mrs. Grey said. 'What's happened?'
'She's been posted to a bomber station only fifteen miles from here at Pangbourne, so I'll be able to see something of her. She's coming over this week-end. I'll introduce you.'
'I'll look forward to that.' Joanna Grey climbed on to her bike.
'Chess tonight?' he asked hopefully.
'Why not? Come around eight and have supper as well. Must go now.'
She pedalled away along the side of the stream, the retriever, Patch, loping along behind. Her face was serious now. The radio message of the previous evening had come as an enormous shock to her. In fact, she had decoded it three times to make sure she hadn't made an error.
She had hardly slept, certainly not much before five and had lain there listening to the Lancasters setting out across the sea to Europe and then, a few hours later, returning. The strange thing was that after finally dozing off, she had awakened at seven-thirty full of life and vigour.
It was as if for the first time she had a really important task to handle. This - this was so incredible. To kidnap Churchill - snatch him from under the very noses of those who were supposed to be guarding him.
She laughed out loud. Oh, the damned English wouldn't like that. They wouldn't like that one little bit, with the whole world amazed.
As she coasted down the hill to the main road, a horn sounded behind her and a small saloon car passed and drew into the side of the road. The man behind the wheel had a large white moustache and the florid complexion of one who consumes whisky in large quantities daily. He was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant-colonel in the Home Guard.
'Morning, Joanna,' he called jovially.
The meeting could not have been more fortunate. In fact it saved her a visit to Studley Grange later in the day. 'Good morning, Henry,' she said and dismounted from her bike.
He got out of the car. 'We're having a few people on Saturday night. Bridge and so on. Supper afterwards. Nothing very special. Jean thought you might like to join us.'
'That's very kind of her. I'd love to,' Joanna Grey said. 'She must have an awful lot on, getting ready for the big event at the moment.'
Sir Henry looked slightly hunted and dropped his voice a little. 'I say, you haven't mentioned that to anyone else, have you?'
Joanna Grey managed to look suitably shocked. 'Of course not. You did tell me in confidence, remember.'
'Shouldn't have mentioned it at all actually, but then I knew I could trust you, Joanna.' He slipped an arm about her waist. 'Mum's the word on Saturday night, old girl, just for me, eh. Any of that lot get a hint of what's afoot and it will be all over the county.'
'I'd do anything for you, you know that,' she said calmly.
'Would you, Joanna?' His voice thickened and she was aware of his thigh pushed against her, trembling slightly. He pulled away suddenly. 'Well, I'll have to be off. Got an area command meeting in Holt.'
'You must be very excited,' she said, 'at the prospect of having the Prime Minister.'
'Indeed I am. Very great honour.' Sir Henry beamed. 'He's hoping to do a little painting and you know how pretty the views are from the Grange.' He opened the door and got back into the car. 'Where are you off to, by the way?'
She'd been waiting for exactly that question. 'Oh, a little bird watching as usual. I may go down to Cley or the marsh. I haven't made up my mind yet. There are some interesting passage migrants about at the moment.'
'You damn well watch it.' His face was serious. 'And remember what I told you.'
As local Home Guard commander he had plans covering every aspect of coastal defence in the area, including details of all mined beaches and - more importantly - beaches which were only supposedly mined. On one occasion, full of solicitude for her welfare, he had spent two careful hours going over the maps with her, showing her exactly where not to go on her bird-watching expeditions.
'I know the situation changes all the time,' she said. 'Perhaps you could come round to the cottage again with those maps of yours and give me another lesson.'
His eyes were slightly glazed. 'Would you like that?'
'Of course. I'm at home this afternoon, actually.'
'After
lunch,' he said. 'I'll be there about two,' and he released the handbrake and drove rapidly away.
Joanna Grey got back on her bicycle and started to pedal down the hill towards the main road. Patch running behind. Poor Henry. She was really quite fond of him. Just like a child and so easy to handle.
Half-an-hour later, she turned off the coast road and cycled along the top of a dyke through desolate marshes known locally as Hobs End. It was a strange, alien world of sea creeks and mudflats and great pale barriers of reeds higher than a man's head, inhabited only by the birds, curlew and redshank and brent geese coming south from Siberia to winter on the mud flats.
Half-way along the dyke, a cottage crouched behind a mouldering flint wall, sheltered by a few sparse pine trees, It looked substantial enough with outbuildings and a large barn, but the windows were shuttered and there was a general air of desolation about it. This was the marsh warden's house and there had been no warden since 1940.
She moved on to a high ridge lined with pines. She dismounted from her bicycle and leaned it against a tree. There were sand dunes beyond and then a wide, flat beach stretching with the tide out a quarter of a mile towards the sea. In the distance she could see the Point on the other side of the estuary, curving in like a great bent forefinger, enclosing an area of channels and sandbanks and shoals that, on a rising tide, was probably as lethal as anywhere on the Norfolk coast.
She produced her camera and took a great many pictures from various angles. As she finished, the dog brought her a stick to throw, which he laid carefully down between her feet. She crouched and fondled his ears. 'Yes, Patch,' she said softly. 'I really think this will do very well indeed.'
She tossed the stick straight over the line of barbed wire which prevented access to the beach and Patch darted past the post with the notice board that said Beware of mines. Thanks to Henry Willoughby, to her certain knowledge there wasn't a mine on the beach.
To her left was a concrete blockhouse and a machine-gun post, a very definite air of decay to both of them, and in the gap between the pine trees, the tank trap had filled with drifting sand. Three years earlier, after the Dunkirk debacle, there would have been soldiers here. Even a year ago. Home Guard, but not now.
In June, 1940, an area up to twenty miles inland from the Wash to the Rye was declared a Defence Area. There were no restrictions on people living there, but outsiders had to have a good reason for visiting. All that had altered considerably and now, three years later, virtually no one bothered to enforce the regulations for the plain truth was that there was no longer any need.
Joanna Grey bent down to fondle the dog's ears again. 'You know what it is, Patch? The English just don't expect to be invaded any more.'
3
It was the following Tuesday before Joanna Grey's report arrived at the Tirpitz Ufer. Hofer had put a red flag out for it. He took it straight in to Radl who opened it and examined the contents.
There were photos of the marsh at Hobs End and the beach approaches, their position indicated only by a coded map reference. Radl passed the report itself to Hofer.
'Top priority. Get that deciphered and wait while they do it.'
The Abwehr had just started using the new Sonlar coding unit that took care in a matter of minutes of a task that had previously taken hours. The machine had a normal typewriter keyboard. The operator simply copied the coded message, which was automatically deciphered and delivered in a sealed reel. Even the operator did not see the actual message involved.
Hofer was back in the office within twenty minutes and waited in silence while the colonel read the report. Radl looked up with a smile and pushed it across the desk. "Read that, Karl, just you read that. Excellent - really excellent. What a woman.'
He lit one of his cigarettes and waited impatiently for Hofer to finish. Finally the sergeant glanced up. 'It looks quite promising.'
'Promising? Is that the best you can do? Good God, man, it's a definite possibility. A very real possibility.'
He was more excited now than he had been for months, which was bad for him, for his heart, so appallingly strained by his massive injuries. The empty eye socket under the black patch throbbed, the aluminium hand inside the glove seemed to come alive, every tendon taut as a bow string. He fought for breath and slumped into his chair.
Hofer had the Courvoisier bottle out of the bottom drawer in an instant, half-filled a glass and held it to the colonel's lips. Radl swallowed most of it down, coughed heavily, then seemed to get control of himself again.
He smiled wryly. 'I can't afford to do that too often, eh, Karl? Only two more bottles left. It's like liquid gold these days.'
'The Herr Oberst shouldn't excite himself so,' Hofer said and added bluntly. 'You can't afford to.'
Radl swallowed some more of the brandy. 'I know, Karl, I know, but don't you see? It was a joke before - something the Fuhrer threw out in an angry mood on a Wednesday, to be forgotten by Friday. A feasibility study, that was Himmler's suggestion and only because he wanted to make things awkward for the Admiral. The Admiral told me to get something down on paper. Anything, just so long as it showed we were doing our job.'
He got up and walked to the window. 'But now it's different, Karl. It isn't a joke any longer. It could be done.'
Hofer stood stolidly on the other side of the desk, showing no emotion. 'Yes, Herr Oberst, I think it could.'
'And doesn't that prospect move you in any way at all?' Radl shivered. 'God, but it frightens me. Bring me those Admiralty charts and the ordnance survey map.'
Hofer spread them on the desk and Radl found Hobs End and examined it in conjunction with the photos. 'What more could one ask for? A perfect dropping zone for parachutists and that week-end the tide comes in again by dawn and washes away any signs of activity.'
'But even quite a small force would have to be conveyed in a transport type of aircraft or a bomber,' Hofer pointed out. 'Can you imagine a Dornier or a Junkers lasting for long over the Norfolk coast these days, with so many bomber stations protected by regular night fighter patrols?'
'A problem,' Radl said, 'I agree, but hardly insurmountable. According to the Luftwaffe target chart for the area there is no low-level radar on that particular section of coast, which means an approach under six hundred feet would be undetected. But that kind of detail is immaterial at the moment. It can be handled later. A feasibility study, Karl, that's all we need at this stage. You agree that in theory it would be possible to drop a raiding party on that beach?'
Hofer said, 'I accept that as a proposition, but how do we get them out again? By U-boat?'
Radl looked down at the chart for a moment, then shook his head. 'No, not really practical. The raiding party would be too large. I know that they could all be crammed on board somehow, but the rendezvous would need to be some distance off-shore and there would be problems getting so many out there. It needs to be something simpler, more direct. An E-boat, perhaps. There's plenty of E-boat activity in that area in the coastal shipping lanes. I don't see any reason why one couldn't slip in between the beach and the Point. It would be on a rising tide and according to the report, there are no mines in that channel, which would simplify things considerably.'
'One would need Navy advice on that,' Hofer said cautiously. 'Mrs. Grey does say in her report that those are dangerous waters.'
'Which is exactly what good sailors are for. Is there anything else you're not happy with?'
'Forgive me. Herr Oberst, but it would seem to me that there is a time factor involved which could be quite crucial to the success of the entire operation and frankly, I don't see how it could be reconciled.' Hofer pointed to Studley Grange on the ordnance survey map. 'Here is the target, approximately eight miles from the dropping zone. Considering the unfamiliar territory and the darkness, I would say it would take the raiding party two hours to reach it and however brief the visit, it would still take as long for the return journey. My estimate would be an action span of six hours. If one accepts that th
e drop would have to be made around midnight for security reasons, this means that the rendezvous with the E-boat would take place at dawn if not after, which would be completely unacceptable. The E-boat must have at least two hours of darkness to cover her departure.'
Radl had been lying back in the chair, face turned up to the ceiling, eyes closed. 'Very lucidly put, Karl. You're learning.' He sat up. 'You're absolutely right, which is why the drop would have to be made the night before.'
'Herr Oberst?' Hofer said, astonishment on his face. 'I don't understand.'
'It's quite simple. Churchill will arrive at Studley Grange during the afternoon or evening of the sixth and spend the night there. Our party drops in on the previous night, November fifth.'
Hofer frowned, considering the point. 'I can see the advantage, of course, Herr Oberst. The additional time would give them room to manoeuvre in case of any unlooked-for eventuality.'
Jack Higgins - Eagle Has Landed Page 5
