Colchester was falling to the Germans.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Felixstowe, England
Gregory Davall threw caution to the winds and strode over to the window, peering out around the blackout curtain and staring away to the south. The noise of combat was growing louder, like distant thunder or fireworks, and he could see flashes and flares in the darkness. The British lines were some miles away, and he couldn’t hope to make out individual details, but he was sure that their captive was right; the German offensive had begun.
Their captive was laughing. “Shut up,” Davall snapped as he pushed the curtain back into place. That explained the surprisingly low levels of German guards, although it didn’t explain, or why this particular German had decided to take the night off. “Why aren’t you out there fighting with your friends?”
Blood was trickling down from where Davall’s hand had split their captive’s lip. “I’m a logistics officer,” their captive said with some dignity, perhaps in response to the unspoken accusation of being a coward. “I organised the attack’s logistics and now they don’t need me anymore, so I came out here with her for a peaceful night.”
Davall glanced in the direction of the fighting. It was eerie; they could hear the noise, but the ground wasn't shaking. The only sign that there was anything wrong was the racket; outside, he suspected that people would be staring into the distance, looking for signs of what was going on. The Germans had their curfew in effect, but even so, the townspeople would be alerted, wondering what was happening in the distance. Would someone try something stupid while the Germans were distracted?
He ground his teeth in rage. He’d waited too long too long to obtain the information he'd wanted. He hadn’t been able to send a warning and so he’d risked revealing Janine’s real role for nothing. He took a tighter grip on his pistol, seriously considering simply shooting the SS man in the head, but refrained. His disappearance would be noted. If Davall shot him, but left Janine alive, a smart SS man might wonder why Janine had been left alive, and come to the right conclusion.
“Guard him,” he said, checking his watch. The Germans wouldn’t be coming for their officer for a few more hours, but there wasn't much darkness left. They needed to get into the forest, change their clothes, and then return to their homes, all before the sun rose. “Remain here and gag him.”
He wanted to be sick as he looked at the German’s hand. He hadn’t wanted to torture the German, and indeed, their field training had said very little about how to torture someone effectively, but there had been no choice…and it had all been for nothing. It wouldn’t be easy to convince the German to hide the fact that they had tortured him…he shook his head at the absurdity of the thought. The German would have to be left alive, but at the risk of revealing that there were at least three insurgents operating within the German-held territory. Perhaps he could be convinced to remain silent…no, that was impossible.
The interior of the cottage was more luxurious than he had expected, someone’s dream idea of a countryside cottage, rather than anything real. It was easy to find the bedroom and he closed the door behind him, hoping that the German’s imagination would fill out all kinds of scenarios for what he could be doing with a nude and vulnerable Janine, rather than the truth. His men had left her in a comfortable position, or at least as comfortable as one could be when tied hand and foot, but her eyes were deeply worried. She knew that she was at risk too.
“Janine,” he whispered, keeping his voice very low. He could have removed the gag, but it was important that they made as little noise as possible. “We got here too late; the attack’s already begun.”
He saw her eyes go wide with fear and bitter understanding.
“We can take you out of here and hide you in the forest, or we can leave you in place,” he said, softly. “Do you want us to take you out of here?”
She shook her head, rubbing it uncomfortably against the bed. Davall leaned closer. “You want us to leave you here?”
She nodded. Davall understood. If she were lucky, she would be taken for nothing more than an innocent bystander in the events that had overtaken the SS man who had paid for her favours. She was likely to suffer for his shame, even if she was taken to be an innocent; a man would sometimes take his shame and humiliation out on the nearest vulnerable woman. He kissed her once on the forehead, winked at the surprise on her face, and then slipped back into the main room. Deininger was glaring at him over his gag, his eyes dark with murderous intentions. It would look very bad when he was caught. Davall briefly considered trying to dress him up in women’s clothes, something that would earn him a hot reception from his comrades, but there was no time.
“We’re going to be going now,” he said, placing his lips as close to the SS man’s ears as he could. The man flinched away from his lips. “If you feel inclined to have hundreds of people hurt or killed because of this, we will find you again and kill you. Bye, bye…”
They slipped out of the cottage and into the darkness. The SS man would probably manage to free himself, given enough time, but Davall guessed that they had at least an hour before the SS man called for help, assuming that he actually did call for help. It would look rather bad on his record and he had a hunch that the remainder of the SS wouldn’t be happy with their comrade, particularly since he hadn’t remained on duty, but had gone off with a prostitute. Maybe he had had permission to go on leave on the eve of the offensive – there was no way to know – but it hardly mattered. The man would look bad and hopefully none of his report would be believed.
We can’t rely on that, Davall thought, as they reached the hidden shack in the wood. They had rigged it up carefully with diabolical ingenuity, in order to prevent the Germans from breaking in and finding the supplies; anyone who tried to enter without taking the right steps would be blown to smithereens by the explosives they’d placed underneath the shack. He watched as McAllister carefully deactivated the explosives, before they slipped into the shack, changed rapidly back into their normal clothes, and closed the shack up again.
The rumbles of thunder from the distance were only growing louder, rising and falling; he guessed he was hearing the sound of the guns, and then the noise of the explosions as the shells crashed to the ground. He took a chance and scrambled up an old tree he knew from his childhood, climbing high enough to gain a better view; the entire horizon looked to be on fire. The flashes of light, each one marking the impact of a shell, were everywhere and the sky was glowing with the light of flares, casting an eerie light over the entire scene. It was almost obscenely pretty, in a way; he could have watched it for hours. That wasn't an option, he knew, and allowed himself to slip back down the tree, walking back to his men.
“We have to split up and get back to our homes,” he said, shortly. They performed quick inspections of each other to ensure that they weren't carrying anything too revealing before they split up and wandered down separate paths, heading back to the town. He ducked, quickly, as the noise of German aircraft roared overhead. He looked up and saw a massive line of them, blotting out the sky as they flew towards the south.
The streets of Felixstowe were deserted when he slipped out of the forest; he didn’t even see any German patrols. It made him wonder if the Germans had pulled out suddenly and sent all their SS men to the front, but that didn’t seem likely. He saw some windows, the ones facing south, half-uncovered, the occupants looking into the distance and wondering if the morning would bring relief or increased torment. The growl of German vehicles rose up suddenly, and he took refuge in someone’s front garden, watching fearfully as the line of German vehicles drove past, heading to the front. The Germans had been building up a massive supply depot some distance from town. He’d thought about attacking it, but with what looked like an entire regiment committed to its defence, he had rapidly dismissed the thought as suicide.
Bastards, he thought, as the first glimmerings of dawn appeared in the distance. He redoubled his pace, slipping f
rom house to house, until he reached his home and slipped around to enter it from the rear. Kate had left the back-door unlocked and he slipped inside, realising that the combat was still audible, even growing louder. He undressed rapidly and slipped upstairs to bed, only to discover that Kate was still awake, staring at nothing.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said by way of explanation. She wore the nightdress her mother had given her on their wedding night, very different from Janine’s easy sexuality, but Davall remembered her without it on many different nights. They had moved from being lovers to being married…and along the line, their passion had grown stronger. “That noise…”
“There’s a war on,” Davall said, as he climbed into bed beside her. It was warm, very warm, but it was easy, somehow, to cuddle up to her. “I think the Germans are launching an assault on our lines.”
Kate’s eyes went very wide. “And what you were doing…?”
“You don’t want to know,” Davall said, and kissed her. She responded to his kiss and they grew in passion as she leaned back, inviting him to straddle her and lift up her gown. A moment later and he was inside her, pushing against her and pushing them both forward…there was a perfect moment of blissful forgetfulness, and then the world came crawling back into his mind. The German assault might fail, and if that happened, the fighting would come back into Felixstowe, and if that happened…
Davall didn’t get any sleep at all that night.
***
It had taken Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger nearly an hour to wiggle free of his bonds. The British insurgents had severely damaged his right hand, but his left was still intact. With a great deal of effort, he had managed to loosen his bonds enough to get his hand free. He would have used handcuffs in their position, although they might have intended him to escape eventually, perhaps in the hopes that he would be merciful to them when they were caught. If that had been their intention, Deininger had no intention of allowing it to work. He intended to hunt them down like dogs or Russians. They would pay for ruining his leave.
His right hand throbbed badly, and he forced himself to concentrate long enough to free his other arm, and then his feet, releasing himself from the chair. The effort of standing up almost made him collapse as his body staggered under the sudden change in position, but he caught hold of the table, still covered in the remains of the food from their meal, and steadied himself. The water jug had remained intact and he drank some of it, using it to clear his parched throat while he considered what to do next.
The novels that were churned out to celebrate the power of the SS man would have had the lone hero – someone based on a mixture of Otto Skorzeny and Hitler himself – carrying out medical aid on his own body, but Deininger knew that he couldn’t do that, certainly not without one of his hands. It would be much safer to ask for help from a trained medical team, which would mean admitting what had happened here…and there was really no choice. He was expected back to work within a couple of days, maybe less if the system failed to hold up under the pressures of the offensive, and they would ask questions if he turned up with a bandaged hand. They were already unhappy about him having taken a few days off to spend them with Janine…
The thought reminded him about her, and he moved as quickly as he could into the bedroom. He saw her there, lying naked on the bed as he had imagined, but then reality intruded upon the idyllic view. She had been left there, tied and gagged, and he felt his anger rising again. All he had wanted was a pleasant few days with a girl. He could have pretended to have a normal life. They had ruined it and ruined her as well. Her position suggested that they had amused themselves with her, hurting her, ruining her…he had known, of course, that she was a prostitute, but it was no longer possible to pretend.
“Don’t worry,” he said, as he looked into her frightened eyes. He staggered over to the bed and sat down beside her, his hand touching her bonds and trying to undo them. It rapidly proved to be almost impossible with his hand, so he staggered back into the kitchen, found his ceremonial dagger, and carefully severed the bonds with that. Her hands looked worse than his, almost black and blue from having her circulation badly interfered with, but he was sure she would recover the full use of her hands. He passed her the knife after she rubbed life back into her hands and she used it to free her legs. A moment later and she had removed the gag, revealing a tear-streaked face.
“Don’t worry,” Deininger repeated and took her in his arms. She shook against him, trying to draw what comfort she could from his embrace, and he put his good arm around her. Her body had been wonderful to his eyes only hours before, now she was a human being in need of comforting. He could have done with some comfort himself, but he put his own concerns aside to comfort her. “It’s all over now.”
She held him away from her as they lay together. One of her hands found its way into his pants. Her voice was teary. “Do you want to…?”
“Not now,” Deininger said, feeling the throbbing from his hand growing. She withdrew her hand, looking almost relieved. The expression on her face almost made Deininger’s heart melt. “I think you’d better call the local command post and get them to send a team up here.”
Her eyes flashed with fear; Deininger interpreted it as her remembering what the SS had been like, back in Occupied France. “Don’t worry,” he said, as he pulled himself to his feet. “They won’t do anything to hurt you, I promise.”
She staggered to her feet and found the telephone; a moment later, she had called the command post and explained what had happened. The operator didn’t believe her and demanded to speak to Deininger; Deininger took the phone and left the operator in no doubt that if he didn’t get a team up to Deininger’s cottage at once, he would be shipped at once to the worst area of Russia and assigned to counter-insurgency duties. Even the worst fanatics tried to avoid those duties there, apart from the ones who weren't quite right in the head; the Russian insurgents were the worst foes the Reich had ever faced. They might not be able to actually defeat the Reich, but they could constantly impede the New Order as it set about trying to rebuild that section of Europe.
The noise of the fighting was growing louder in the distance when the security team arrived with a medic. Deininger had ordered Janine to get dressed, but he was all-too-aware of their hidden disapproval, their sense that he had somehow deserved it, or worse. The medic set his fingers as best as he could, but it would take much more to repair his hand completely…and Deininger knew that he wouldn’t get the priority, not with heavy fighting in the south. They would leave him unhealed until the real soldiers had been given medical aid…
He found it hard to disagree with their priorities, intellectually, but emotionally, with the pain burning through his hand, he hated their cold logic. The medic had given him a shot of something for the pain, but it refused to fade completely, a reminder of just what the insurgents had done to him on a night that should have been perfect. They would pay for the humiliation, he decided.
“The grounds are empty,” the head of the security team said dryly. The SS soldiers had conducted a brief search, but apart from several rabbits, they’d found nothing of interest. The hidden mockery in his voice was easy to hear. “The insurgents seem to have escaped.”
“We’re going to find them,” Deininger said, shortly. He glared around the room until they all nodded their understanding. “We’re going to dissect this town until we find them, understand?”
Chapter Forty
London, England
Winston Churchill approached the Houses of Parliament with more trepidation that he was normally willing to admit to feeling. The population of London was restive; they could hear, in the distance, the sound of guns. The Germans might still be many miles away, but an unopposed charge could bring them to the gates of London in less than a day. The entire governing centre of Britain had been sealed and secured by hundreds of soldiers, including the two who were escorting Churchill personally. The Germans would not be allowed to launch a second surp
rise assault on the very heart of British power.
He allowed himself a brief moment of reflection. He had gone to see the King back in 1940, after becoming Prime Minister for the first time, and again in 1943 when his own party had removed him from power. Then, he had been full of fear for the future and yet convinced that Hitler and his thugs needed to be stopped whatever the price. Almost alone in political Britain, Winston Churchill had known that Hitler could never be reasoned with, never be convinced to accept what he had and seek no more territory; it was, more than ever before, him or the rest of the world. That truth had driven Churchill for years, from his hopes that the Allies might stop him, to his desperate faith in the French Army, to the point where it looked as if German soldiers were going to set foot on Britain itself.
Instead, Hitler had gone east and so pleased the anti-communist side of the British Establishment that it had been surprisingly easy to get them to go along with a peace treaty, even such a grievously flawed treaty that played to Hitler’s advantage. It was something that bothered Churchill during his lone years as an MP and persistent critic of the government. Would it have made any difference if he had fought them instead of standing down? Would the war have raged on until Hitler landed anyway?
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