Carola made a second attempt. “Herr Standartenfuhrer, the Reichsfuhrer forbade the use of heavy tactics against the British,” she said. Her advancement was dependent upon his; it gave her a motive to offer him good advice at all times. “Should you not clear it with him first?”
“The British have managed to humiliate us,” Stahl snarled. He had seen it happen in Norway. Someone humiliated the Reich, and it encouraged dozens of others to try to follow suit. It usually ended with a particular settlement being razed to the ground and was therefore wasteful of resources. “If we don’t hit back at them now, we will have to use heavier tactics later, understand?”
Carola bowed her head and replied. “Of course, Herr Standartenfuhrer.”
“Draw up a list,” Stahl ordered her. “Use the standard criteria, but leave out any wife who is married to someone who was working at the docks when we arrived and wives of the police and local government people; anyone else is fair game. Send that list to Wulfenbach, and he can organise the arrest teams. Once they’re all rounded up, we can make the proclamation about what will happen to them unless the insurgents surrender.”
***
Gregory Davall had slept in despite the rising and falling noise in the distance. there hadn’t really been anything else to do. The Germans had banned the British from going out in the day and it wasn't worth the risk to see what was going on. The battle was being decided far from them and, despite listening to both the BBC and Radio Berlin, there was no way of knowing what was happening. The BBC swore blind that the German attack had been contained; Radio Berlin swore blind that German panzers were driving towards London…and the only thing they agreed on was that there were high losses.
Kate stuck her head into the room and urged him to get out of bed. Davall was tempted to try to pull her back into the bed instead, but with James in the house and wide awake, he knew that Kate would never agree. She was often just as eager to make love as he was, but her sense of proper behaviour would never have allowed her to risk their child catching them in the act. Davall’s father had once told him that he needed to listen to his wife in such matters. Kate, the woman he loved, was often more practical than her husband. She meant the world to him…
So why was Janine’s face floating around in his mind?
He dismissed the vision angrily as he pulled himself out of bed and got dressed. There was no way of knowing how long they would be prisoners in their own home, but James was already bouncing around like…well, like a child demanding entertainment and diversion. He would normally have gone to school or gone to see his friends, but with the Germans keeping everyone indoors, he was trapped with his parents. Davall remembered when he had been that age; he would have considered it a prison sentence, but he didn’t dare allow James to leave the house. It would have been far too dangerous. The Germans might not have shot a little boy, but it would have drawn attention to their house.
The kitchen smelled surprisingly good as Kate fried eggs and bacon for him. She managed a tired smile as she served him, but he could tell that she was worried. The last time James had been confined indoors, he’d accidentally on purpose wreaked havoc with the house’s furnishings. Kate had cleared up the mess, and James hadn’t gotten any supper that night.
Now, James was older, and yet unable to understand the Germans. Their existence meant very little to him, even though they were already altering what he learned in school; one of his new schoolbooks had almost made Davall sick. It contained a story about a Jewish doctor and a German girl, who went by the name of ‘your sister,’ and detailed in terrifyingly sharp prose what had happened to her at the hands of her doctor. There had been a major fuss a few years ago when teenagers had read a book that had been regarded as dubious, but now no one would dare protest…and James could already do the Hitler salute. If he could be altered so much in the space of a few short weeks, what would he be like if the occupation lasted for years?
“Thank you,” he said after finishing his breakfast. He helped Kate with the washing up as his mother had taught him, remembering how she had told him off for refusing to help, a cold lecture that had been somehow worse than a trip over his father’s knee. “Is there anything else you want done around the house?”
Kate smiled, her face crinkling up with laughter…and then there was a knock at the door. Her face went pale instantly; it wasn't a hesitant knock, or a friendly knock, it was the knock of someone standing there with the full weight of authority behind him. Davall knew, instantly, who it was and, composing himself as best as he could, went to the door. Three Germans stood there; an officer and two subordinates, all wearing SS uniforms.
The leader stepped forward. “Mr Gregory Davall?”
“Yes,” Davall said, carefully. “That’s me.”
“We have instructions from the Reichgovernor of this town to take Mrs Kate Davall into custody,” the leader said. Davall didn’t hear his words for a long moment. “You will present her to us at once.”
“No,” Davall said, desperately. He wanted to shout at Kate, ordering her to run and hide, but it was already too late. “You can’t have her…”
The leader swung a punch into Davall’s chest and he folded up, gasping with pain. One of the soldiers stayed and watched him, assault rifle pointed directly at his head, as the other two walked into the house as if they owned the place. He heard, through the pain and the roaring in his ears, Kate’s sudden scream and a cry of pain from James; a moment later, Kate was being hustled back out of the house, her hands cuffed behind her back and tears running down her face. Davall tried to stand up, wanting to kill all the Germans with his bare hands, only to discover a rifle pointed directly into his eyes.
“You will remain in your home until the ban on moving outside your home is lifted,” the German leader said flatly. Davall concentrated on trying to memorise the German’s face, noting the dark eyes and the beetle-brow, promising himself that he would kill him, whatever it took. “Unless the people responsible for the attack on Brigadefuhrer Deininger surrender themselves, the hostages will suffer their punishment.”
“But…that’s not fair,” Davall protested hopelessly. He tried to keep the cold knowledge of what he could offer to save her life from showing on his face. “She doesn’t know anything that you can use!”
“She is a citizen of the Greater German Reich,” the German said flatly. “The lives of everyone in the Reich are dedicated to maintaining the Reich, but someone within this town, someone who has sworn loyalty to the Reich, has decided instead to turn on the Reich. If that person does not surrender, the hostages, including your wife, will carry out their duty to the Reich and die in their place.”
“That’s madness,” Davall said. He was ashamed of his own weakness, his own inability to protect his wife, his own fear for the future. “You can’t…”
“We can, and we will,” the German said. He snapped to attention, arm outstretched in the classic German manner. “Heil Hitler!”
They marched off, leaving Davall alone.
Chapter Forty-Five
London, England
Roger Hollis was dead.
Kim Philby hadn’t known him very well on a personal level, but he had known what Hollis was. He had been the brightest star in the Soviet intelligence network within Britain. Hollis, a young recruit to MI5 who had risen rapidly in the ranks, had been tasked with covering the handful of highly-placed Soviet agents in the British Government. He had no obvious links to Hollis – although Hollis had called him in to give ‘advice’ on the Soviet Union – but his death came as a terrible blow. It was all he could do to get through the day and then return to his apartment, grimly aware that Otto Skorzeny would want all the details.
Philby wondered about it all through the day. Hollis had been bright and very dedicated, determined to do the right thing for communism and the global revolution, and he hadn’t been deterred by the fall of the Soviet Union. That made it fairly certain that Hollis, like Philby, had been tricked into supplyi
ng information to Berlin, information from the heart of MI5. Philby had heard about the unusual streak of luck that the Germans had in clearing out British spies and guessed, now, that that had been something to do with Hollis. If Hollis had realised that they had all been tricked into working for the class enemy…
Well, he couldn’t have gone to the government, any more than Philby himself could. They would both have faced a certain death penalty for their actions. He’d chosen to kill himself instead, which struck Philby as a little ironic, but maybe he had known that Berlin wouldn’t have allowed him to just leave his post. He’d had years in him yet, maybe even a position at the very top, and there was no way that Berlin would have permitted him to leave. If he had, there would have been a quiet disclosure and Hollis would have been dragged to a very quiet prison in chains. He’d chosen a way out that Philby frankly envied. It was tempting to take the same way out himself. Only a reluctance to die and a desperate hope that somehow Berlin would be somewhere new for him to live kept him from complete despair. He had nothing to live for, any longer, but the hope of escape.
He’d used the small café before, a French Restaurant in the heart of London, run by a pair of Frenchwomen who had escaped Occupied France. Their husbands had been in the Free French before that outfit had been disarmed and almost surrendered to the Vichy French by Atlee’s Government. Only hasty action had allowed them to escape to somewhere much safer for them. The Free French were a joke these days, Philby knew, and yet…they clearly had some uses.
The Frenchwomen were his direct link to Moscow, or what he’d thought was Moscow, long ago. Their communist ties were a secret. If that had been known when they had come to Britain, they would likely have been sent back to Vichy France’s tender mercies. Admiral Darlen would not have been pleased to see them.
“My usual, Simone,” he said as the woman approached him. He came in every second week for a drink and a cake. He’d picked up the habit of French Cakes from his time in France, just before German armoured columns had punched through the lines. It still gave him a moment of grim amusement that he had understood what was happening before the French Army. “A cake and a cup of tea.”
The cake was perfection. The tea surprisingly good for such a small place. Philby knew that while the common folk of the country were on rations, those with money could eat anywhere they liked, devouring massive meals that seemed to have no end. He’d taken it as proof that the British system was doomed to fall, but now, with Otto Skorzeny in his living room, he no longer had any grounds for complaint. It no longer seemed important that the Royal Family supplemented their merger rations with grouse shot on their estates or that the aristocracy sent their children to safety in America. He’d been a fool and more than a fool. They would be making up new words for what he had done to the country.
“Thank you,” he said finally. He took the slip of paper placed next to the cake and pocketed it, accepting a kiss from her before slipping back out of the door and into the streets. The air raid sirens howled in the distance, but he ignored them. If there truly was a God, and Kim Philby had long since abandoned any form of religion, he would die tonight, and that would be the end of it. There were no German bombers coming any closer than the docks, where they were dropping mines into the water; they never bombed the city itself. These days, people still ducked into the nearest air raid shelter, but many of them were already emerging, laughing at themselves for getting into such a state.
Philby felt envy for them as he climbed aboard a bus for the ride home. He’d chosen the apartment carefully as somewhere where he could escape quickly if his cover were blown, but he hadn’t realised who he was really working for, or why. If he ran now, his handler back in Berlin would burn him and the British would come for him, hunting him down until he was caught and hung. His mind refused to leave the image of him slowly choking on a noose, hung just perfectly to ensure a long and painful departure, and he felt sick. Berlin was his only hope.
He stepped into his apartment and came face to face with Skorzeny. The SS commando looked terrifyingly big and powerful, or maybe that was just his reputation; even so, he filled the room with his presence. He wore a set of clothes that Philby had brought him, common workman’s clothes, and yet…somehow, he made them seem like a uniform. There could be no doubting what he was and somehow, regardless, he had walked through the streets of London without fear.
“Welcome home,” Skorzeny said without irony. Philby kept his face carefully blank, wishing that he didn’t feel so imperilled in Skorzeny’s presence; he had the sense that each time he turned his back, it might be the last. Skorzeny was intimidation personified; every time he smiled, Philby had the urge to cover his groin and run. “Did you get the information and the orders?”
“Yes, I did,” Philby said. Skorzeny had listened in disbelief as the advancing panzers, far from punching through the British defences, had been balked and then turned back by the British armour. Philby had been both pleased and worried. Pleased because of the expression on Skorzeny’s face, worried because without the panzers coming to rescue them, Skorzeny might try something stupid to escape London, dragging Philby down with him. “Have you made the tea?”
Skorzeny merely held out a hand. Philby passed him the note and went into the kitchen, somehow unsurprised to discover that the commandos, while very neat, hadn’t bothered to make any food. They hadn't even set about preparing a small meal for them. The seven of them ate a great deal of food between them, he had realised, and as his rations were designed for only one person, he was having to use a great deal of ingenuity to gather enough food to feed them all. He had contacts and friends in high places, but with a witch hunt going on for German spies, he didn’t dare do anything that would cause anyone to realise what he was doing.
“Interesting,” Skorzeny said as he came into the kitchen. The team leader showed no sign of recognising Philby’s irritation. “Do you know what they want us to do?”
“No,” Philby said crossly. It had occurred to him that he could have forged information or orders for the commandos, but cracking the code for their communications had proven beyond his abilities. “I cannot read your codes.”
“No,” Skorzeny agreed dryly. His face twisted into a sneer. “I guess they didn’t trust you. Once a traitor, always a traitor.”
Philby had a rare moment of deep insight. Skorzeny acted like a small boy half the time. A small boy with utterly lethal combat skills and a small arsenal of weaponry. He had complete faith in his own abilities and absolutely no conception of what might happen to him if he were caught, or even of his own death in combat. He went to war gladly, with a smile on his face, completely unable to grasp the fact that he might die. His faith in his own invincibility was a powerful asset, the one that had kept him going through his career…and allowed him to become one of the legends of the SS.
“I thought that the idea was security,” he said, refusing to show any offence. They had had some details drummed into their heads a long time before Hitler’s forces had taken Moscow and killed Stalin. “If I am caught, the less I know, the better. What do you have to do, and how does it involve me?”
“It seems that someone in Berlin has decided to toss Winston Churchill down the WC,” Skorzeny said, laughing at his own joke. It wasn't that funny, but Philby risked a laugh anyway, not daring to antagonise the bully too much. “They want us to remove him permanently from office with a shot through the head.”
Philby stared at him. “They want you to kill Churchill?”
“Apparently so,” Skorzeny said, buffing his nails with a toothpick. “I dare say that our esteemed Fuhrer has decided that Mr Churchill is no longer required for the war effort and has ordered him removed. As the best people in the Reich for such missions – I have killed several Russian generals personally – we have been ordered to dispose of him.”
He leered, picking his teeth with one hand. “Or don’t you think that’s a good idea?” He asked, his voice becoming mocking and very c
old. “Are you feeling some tiny trace of loyalty still left in your system?”
Philby frowned at him, thoroughly disgusted.
“Not really,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I just suspect that if we actually kill Churchill, it’s going to be extremely difficult to remain in place and avoid detection.”
Skorzeny quirked an eyebrow. “In the middle of a power struggle over who would succeed Churchill as Prime Minister?”
“We’re not going to fight a civil war over it,” Philby proclaimed. “The handful of possible candidates will either form a compromise government between themselves or one of them will gain enough votes in Parliament to go to the King and receive his blessing to form a new government. Regardless, they’re not going to stop looking for you, and they’ll go through everything – and everyone – with a fine-toothed comb.”
“And maybe they’ll see through your cover at last,” Skorzeny said, a smile forming around his lips. His teeth showed once; they were perfect, of course. “What are you going to do then?”
“I have no idea,” Philby said wilting. He had some plans for escape, but he suspected that the press of events would ensure that they were no longer usable They had partly depended on Hollis, and he was now dead. “What do you want me to do?”
The Invasion of 1950 Page 41
