Death Order

by Jan Needle

  Formally, all four shook hands. Then the Germans turned and walked across the empty concrete to the rumbling Dornier. No Englishman had approached it. The fliers clambered in.

  ‘Paul Rosenberger and Heinrich Schmitt,’ said Foley. ‘They fly from Aalborg. Another part of the pattern, I would guess.’

  Shortly, the grumble of the engines became a roar, then an ear-splitting crackle that preceded the take-off run. It changed as the Dornier accelerated away from them, and took on a rhythmic throbbing as it left the ground.

  Two minutes later, on the concrete of a Royal Air Force aerodrome, the engines of the German bomber were dying on the light west wind. As shadowy men in overalls began to douse the flares, Carrington and Foley turned silently away.

  The photographs in the Leica were the only pictures of the flier that were ever taken on British soil.

  Sixteen

  Edward’s second flight to Stockholm was the most difficult of his life. The courier service from Leuchars had become increasingly dogged by attacks from ME109s, which appeared at times to have advance intelligence of when the planes would leave and land. His own flight was put off three times, and when he did go it was in the belly of a Mosquito, lying on a blanket and wrapped in a heavy coat. The unarmed plane flew very fast and very high, and when they landed, he was tinged with blue at his extremities, and could not hear his own teeth chattering because of the engine-thunder that still rang inside his skull. The XU man who met him was sympathetic, but could not help much. The heater of the van they drove in was hardly worth the noise it made, and no coffee was available. It was light when they reached their destination, a small house some miles outside Stockholm, but his condition was hardly any better. He had to be helped into the house.

  Inside the kitchen it was warm, and smiling Scandinavians gave him hot blankets and drinks to revive him. The pain of returning circulation was violent, and for half an hour he bit his lips and clenched the muscles that still worked to keep himself from moaning. After the first ministrations, the Swedes discreetly left him to his agonies. It was an hour later that he heard light footsteps and watched the handle turn. It was Hannele.

  At first. Edward could hardly take it in. He made to stand, but yelped at the stabbing in his knees. Hannele, who had not yet apparently decided on an expression, smiled. She walked across the room and pressed his shoulder.

  ‘Sit,’ she said. ‘Oh Edward, how you do suffer for your country! Sit awhile.’

  She turned to the stove and checked the damper. It was very warm now in the room. She pulled a wooden chair across in front of him and sat sideways on it, leaning on the back, looking at him. She had a long, loose dark brown skirt on, and a cotton shirt and waistcoat.

  ‘You’re different,’ she said. ‘Your eyes are different. Your cheeks are hollow. You’re going grey.’

  Her smile had gone, but she was kindly, almost motherly. Edward realized that there would be no fourth time, whatever her message might have said.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked. ‘Twenty-one? Twenty-two? You seem much older, much much older. I don’t mean you’re not beautiful, you’re more beautiful than ever. Ah well.’

  ‘I’m twenty-two. I feel a hundred. Edward, why is your country so resistant, why are you so stubborn? We expected a response. We hoped for wonderful things. Why is it taking so long?’

  He was puzzled, honestly.

  ‘But the real Hess did not come. It caused great embarrassment. Problems. Well, to be frank, fury. Winston Churchill, like Queen Victoria, was not amused. Why didn’t he come? It was a stupid trick. He’s lucky the other man wasn’t put against a wall and shot.’

  ‘He was afraid,’ said Hannele. ‘He was afraid of Winston Churchill. I’ve told you before, we see things differently over here. It takes two sides to make war. Also to make peace. Herr Hess does not trust Churchill.’

  ‘You sound like a German. You say “we”. Surely Churchill is the only hope?’

  Hannele Malling’s eyes were downcast. She was very calm.

  ‘Herr Hess was afraid of other people, too. Goering could have shot him from the skies. Heydrich could have shot him in the head. The deception was meant to facilitate the end result. We thought that that was understood. We indicated that the night the flight was made would be the climax of the air-raids, that after that they’d stop. That was to be Herr Hess’s pledge of his intent. His parole, as he calls it. We had acknowledgement.’

  Oh God, thought Carrington. Could that be true? He had heard nothing of this. But the air-raids had been biggest on that night. And afterwards they had ceased. Churchill had been a hundred miles from danger, weekending in the country. Had it all been done by arrangement? And acknowledged?

  ‘Goering,’ he said. ‘That means Goering must have been in on it? And you mention Reinhard Heydrich. Surely he…?’

  ‘You must ask Herr Hess. I do not know the details. Reichsmarschall Goering taps all the telephones, so he knows everything. Heydrich just knows everything. You must ask Herr Hess.’

  ‘Is that possible? Where is Hess? Can I see him?’

  ‘Yes, you can see him, Edward. There have been many wild geese chased, that is not how we like to go on. Herr Hess is in Sweden. He is on a yacht, we can go there by a launch. If he is satisfied with you, with your parole, he will go to England with you. He is prepared to die to end this war. Well, we all are, I suppose. You too.’

  He had not looked at it like that before.

  ‘Let’s hope it won’t be necessary,’ he said.

  Even before Carrington had left for Sweden, he’d known that the contents of the package from the Dornier had clinched the matter beyond doubt. Churchill had been enraged still further, and Foley had received the flak. That mild man, a touch of his native Somerset showing through, had been quite knocked sideways, so he said, to learn that he was held responsible for ramifications to the matter that other men had deliberately kept from him. The upshot was that Hauptmann Alfred Horn – if that was indeed his name – had been transferred next morning from the Tower to a miserable country house near Aldershot called Mytchett Place, where he was being held under extremely heavy guard.

  ‘He’s been designated Z,’ said Foley. ‘And Mytchett’s called Camp Z from now on. He’s an unforgiving devil, Churchill, isn’t he?’

  Carrington did not understand.

  ‘Ah,’ said Foley. ‘Maybe you’ve never heard of Plan Z? That’s what Chamberlain called his famous flight to Munich, back in thirty-eight. Another airborne bid for peace that Churchill disapproved of, likewise doomed to failure. A nasty sense of humour, as I said.’

  Nastier still, from Foley’s point of view, was that he had been told to go and live at Mytchett Place as well. He and two other MI6 men were to stay with ‘Z’, night and day, and secretly record everything that he said. Distasteful and a total waste of time. The flier had been briefed to say a few things like a parrot, but had no deeper understanding of war, or peace, or politics than that bird.

  ‘So why?’ asked Edward. ‘What good will it do, you being there?’

  ‘Could it be a punishment? For transgressions that I didn’t know I’d made? Because I believed that something fine might come of it? Churchill said in the House that the whole thing baffled his imagination, which I don’t believe. But for my part, all right, I’m baffled. Cadogan says we’re to question this man till he’s dry, question him to death if necessary, but I’ve already spoken to him for hours. There’s nothing there, he’s a husk. They’ve got the spare uniform somewhere, although I’ve never seen it. “C” talks of seeing what can be salvaged, seeing if this man could still be turned, to follow the original score. I don’t know, Edward. I’ve had my orders. I’m going to the country for a while, to merry Mytchett Place. To see what happens.’

  ‘And I’m off to Sweden. To try to meet up with the real thing. What if I bring him back? What price your daft imposter then? We’ll have the real Hess.’

  They were drinking filthy ersatz coffee in a Cornerho
use. Inevitably, Foley was offering his pouch. It was declined.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We might have two to play with.’

  His blunt fingers had rapidly stuffed the pipe. The vesta scratched, and clouds of smoke billowed.

  ‘Then again,’ he added, ‘maybe we won’t.’

  His voice had become very quiet, the pipe-stem in his mouth.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Foley blew the match out.

  ‘Intelligence can be overvalued, can’t it? It can be a positive embarrassment.’

  Edward did not think he understood. But Foley’s mind, he saw, was no longer with him. He did not ask.

  They went to the fjord in the same old van, driven by the same large XU driver. In a small harbour below an empty summer house they were greeted by a seaman, who had been sitting warming his hands on the engine of a small black motorboat, incongruously called Shirley. It was a sunny day, the light lovely on the sparkling green water, and the sea was calm. In another time it would have been a delight, the twenty-minute trip along the craggy shore, the petrol motor almost purring. But neither Hannele nor Edward felt like talking, and the seaman stared ahead, keeping close inshore, avoiding hidden rocks. Finally they rounded a headland and saw a steam yacht, white and magnificent, in the middle of a deep, high-sided gut. Hannele touched his hand.

  ‘There. Like Napoleon on St Helena. He lives in splendid isolation and dreams great dreams.’

  But there was no one visible, no brooding figure on the afterdeck. Only some sailors in blue jerseys who appeared as the Shirley chugged alongside the boarding pontoon. Hannele and Edward were handed off, and entered the opulent interior through a doorway cut in the yacht’s side. Hannele introduced him to two officers in some sort of private uniform, and they were conducted to a stateroom. A minute later a tall, stooped man came in and looked at them. His eyes were deep-set and almost feverish, shining out from under craggy brows. His face was pale, intensely strained, unhappy. It was Rudolf Hess.

  Hannele introduced them, and they shook hands. Then she said: ‘I shall leave you now.’

  ‘Why?’ said Edward.

  ‘Herr Hess requires it.’

  Herr Hess, it seemed to Edward, was not in a good state. He offered him a chair and also sat, but after ten seconds was on his feet again. There was a clock in the stateroom, and he had a watch. He must have looked at both of them a dozen times in the first two minutes.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I have been away from Germany for almost two weeks. I thought by now I should be at home, I thought by now I should have secured peace, or died honourably in the attempt. How is my Hauptmann? It was not my intention that he should die. He has been very brave. Four months ago, you know, he could not even fly an aeroplane. I trained him myself. Do you fly? A twin-engined fighter is a beast, I told Messerschmitt he should go back to the drawing board. A beast.’

  ‘He is safe still. You had the letter. But will you tell me why this happened, please? I have come to take you back to England, if that is what you want. But it caused confusion. We were considerably confused.’

  Hess was a big man, but the way he shrugged his shoulders was expressive. The emotion was distaste.

  ‘I do not believe that,’ he said simply. ‘But I cannot talk to you. My business is with your greatest men. We must bring peace before everything is lost.’

  Edward, as instructed, said: ‘My job is to find out what you have to say. My instruction is to find out if you mean to seek a peace sincerely, and if so, what are your terms. Until you have indicated that, there is little I can do.’

  Rudolf Hess sat down, and lowered his head wearily onto one hand. He was dressed in jodhpurs of field grey, and polished boots. His shirt was crisp and newly ironed. But his frame spoke tiredness, mighty tiredness.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘nothing will be done. To ask a man who has risked his life and that of his loyal deputies, who has abandoned home and wife and a boy of three years old … to demand proof of sincerity … no. Nothing will be done. It is your word that is needed, not mine. Your parole. Your Mr Churchill’s. No, no more. Either I go to England with your word, or I go back to Germany. I would rather die like a dog than be forced to grovel like one in the name of peace.’

  ‘You had the package,’ said Edward. ‘If that was not sufficient…’

  He stopped. He felt a fool, a charlatan.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘what is your offer? Could you not give me an outline? The broadest framework?’

  Rudolf Hess stood up. His eyes were black, deep under the eyebrows.

  ‘You had better go,’ he said.

  They jumped less than a week later, at Luton Hoo on 28 May 1941, under cover of a supposed air-raid jointly organized by XU and some elements of the Luftwaffe. The RAF were expecting them, and a motorised ack-ack unit had been called in with their Scammells and their diesel generators and their giant mobile searchlights to blaze away with 3.7 inch AA guns at what they tentatively registered as about a dozen Heinkels flying very high, too high to be in danger. On the German side a few bombs were dropped to keep up the pretence, but they were left strictly alone by fighter aircraft.

  In fact the ack-ack unit, who thought, or hoped, they might be protecting the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, in residence at Windsor Castle, almost missed the fun entirely, having been told the raid would be at 2 a.m. The intelligence officers, having failed to allow for Double Summertime, which had been introduced the night after the first ‘Hess’ flight, were on the point of standing down the op just as the bombers droned into hearing.

  Two, maybe three, parachutists were dubiously reported to have been sighted, but they were never heard of again. In fact, the intelligence officers were ordered afterwards to forget the thing had ever happened.

  In the days since they had first met, Hess had unbent a little with Edward Carrington, but his decision not to discuss detail had remained unchanged. Edward had made the necessary signals, and received the necessary instructions. It was decided not to try to smuggle Hess out on the courier run, although the idea of making him do a parachute drop at his age seemed risky and wrong-headed to the Englishman, if not malicious. Hess, however, took it with equanimity, and laughed at Edward’s own unease. It was all in the knees, he said, and he had liked to ski in better times. On the day, they were brought ashore on the Shirley and driven to the house. They were given a meal, and Hess took an hour’s sleep. Carrington and Hannele found themselves alone.

  ‘I’m tired of saying goodbye to you, my Edward,’ she said. She moved close to him and touched his cheek. ‘It’s a pity that this war has spoiled things.’

  ‘You don’t call me Carruthers anymore. I knew I’d missed my chance when that happened. I have a woman now, in London.’

  ‘The same one? Yes, you were always such a faithful man. You could never have stood me, Edward. I’ve had to sleep with so many since this began. It feels like whoring sometimes, only I don’t do it for myself, except once or twice to save my life.’

  Despite himself, he felt the knife. It showed. She stroked his cheek.

  ‘Typical Englishman,’ she said. ‘I suffer, and you complain. You boys.’

  She was like a big sister. Smaller than him, pale and thin, younger. She was like an older, bigger sister.

  ‘Typical woman,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind about the orgasm, do you? The one we never had together.’

  ‘Of course not. I never minded. But I still see you by the bed that time. I still remember taking off your underclothes. Maybe one day.’

  They kissed for a long time, and indeed there was still longing there, in both of them, a kind of hopeless longing. Soon after that, they parted.

  In the Heinkel, despite the enormous noise, Hess and Edward exchanged a few shouted words from time to time, their faces pressed close together.

  ‘As things got worse and worse for you, I knew I had to come,’ roared Hess. ‘I had to come before two great nations died. We suffer similarly. Two corrup
t and mighty egos.’

  That was what it sounded like, but he was not sure. No point in asking for repeats.

  Hess yelled: ‘Soon we turn to Russia. We should do it arm-in-arm. There are other men who should lead us. No one is invincible.’

  The engines battered onwards. Soon they must be over England. Hess moved his head in close again.

  ‘Churchill cannot stand the thought of peace, that’s understood. The loss of face! But when he hears what I am offering! This time he will change his mind! This time.’

  It was Edward’s first parachute drop except in training, and it hurt. He lay on the grass of Bedfordshire, shaken to his very bones. Out of the darkness he saw men coming, stealthily. A mile away the searchlights and the ack-ack tore the sky. He wondered where Hess was.

  Later he saw Foley, pipe glowing, looking like a farmer back from market. Edward was hobbling to a Humber and the little man detached himself from it and came to him.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Edward. ‘I’m glad to see you. Where’s Hess?’

  ‘He’s gone to London in the other car. He did a better jump than you, boy. Well done, by the way. You’ve played a great game.’

  Carrington rubbed his aching elbows. There was something about the way that Foley spoke.

  ‘Gone to London where? Are we following?’

  The tobacco glowed like burning thatch.

  ‘Not our show for the moment. We’ll hear about it. He’s gone to the Reform Club, I believe.’

  ‘The Reform Club? Whatever for?’

  ‘We’ve got some rooms there. Come on, climb aboard. I’ll take you home.’

  Carrington pulled the door open with a heart like lead. He remembered what Foley had told him once about the Carlton Club. But the Carlton Club had now been bombed.

  After they had driven for a while, Edward said: ‘Aren’t we involved at all? Is that the end of Hess for us?’

  ‘I told you. We’ll get our orders in the morning. I’m seeing “C” at nine. With a bit of luck I should get three hours sleep. I’ll ring you when I know.’