Death Order

by Jan Needle

  It was getting chilly in the room. There would be no pub tonight. Jane threw some small sticks on the fire.

  ‘So did that end it?’ asked Bill. ‘A general strike?’

  ‘The Poles ended it. The Poles were the world’s great spies. Stalin made a military mistake, the Poles knew about it, and they crushed the Red Army at Warsaw. Two months later the Russians signed an armistice, and that was it. Do you wonder Mr Churchill was so furiously vocal when Hitler invaded Poland, then gave half of it to Uncle Joe? Do you wonder that Stalin never believed him, no matter how publicly and often he pledged support? Do you wonder why the Russians thought Hess had come to make a peace pact against them?’

  The sticks flared. Jane poked them, moved them round. She fed on a few bigger ones.

  Bill said: ‘Was that why he came? To try and make us team up against the Russians? If Churchill really hated them as much as you say he did, wouldn’t he have found that quite attractive as a proposition?’

  Edward shivered slightly.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He hated both of them, can’t you understand that? He hated Germany for what she’d done, he feared her because of our naked empire, and he rated Hitler with the devil or below; there’s no doubt that his loathing and disgust were genuine. The peace plot was a blind, a cover, I’ve already told you. Churchill let it build, let Morton and his sidekicks smear well-meaning men because it was a useful smokescreen, not even Hamilton escaped unblemished, although he was allowed a libel action to try and clear his name. No, Churchill’s dream was much more ambitious, it was enormous, grandiose. If he’d learned any lesson from his Private War, it was how power could be drained even from the mightiest. Stalin and Trotsky’s “syphilitic drunks” had exhausted the massed White armies, and thousands upon thousands of troops from America and Germany, France and Britain. Then the Poles had mopped up the Red Army like a sponge. When Churchill became leader of Britain at war – he called it his destiny, remember, the day his whole life had been leading up to – he was longing for the conflict that he knew would come. One day both the powers that he hated would be finished. They would drain each other, bleed each other white, destroy each other, and Britain would be victorious, our Empire would dominate the world again. It was a chimera, a romantic nonsense, but it was entirely typical of the man.’

  ‘So you’re saying,’ said Bill, ‘that quite simply he was prepared to tolerate any carnage, any form of bloodbath, to achieve his dream? Any sacrifice. Doesn’t that make him a monster, too?’

  Edward licked his lips. He touched his glass, thought better of it.

  ‘Hannele once said she feared the British because we’d never suffered war,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have the least idea of what she meant. I don’t think Churchill would have either, he thought we were a race of noble island warriors. He wasn’t a monster, he wasn’t insane, he just didn’t know. He once said, as a young man, that being under fire was quite wonderful, as long as you weren’t hit. He never visualized the savagery that stalked that savage continent, he never knew that millions upon millions would tear each other to pieces with their bare hands. He saw war as cleansing, beautiful in its terror. He was shot at, but he was never hit.’

  ‘And he lost his Empire,’ said Jane, quietly. ‘To boot.’

  ‘We lost everything. The trouble was, that by early 1941 we were almost beaten and we were bankrupt. America was sending us materials, Lend Lease was gearing up, but the real terms were secret and they were going to cost us everything if the war went on for long enough. Churchill’s dream by now was just a gigantic, appalling gamble. He needed more from FDR than honest brokering – or smiling usury, some might say – he needed soldiers, corpses and commitment. Nobody knows even now just how far he went to drag America into the fight – whether he kept our intelligence on Pearl Harbour a secret from Roosevelt or if they did that in cahoots – but when it happened he slept “the sleep of the relieved and sane”! In the meantime it was Russia still, only Russia, the two great enemies had to go to war. And at last, he heard. The boys at Bletchley Park began to pick it up, and the signs got stronger. It was going to happen. He’d found his Holy Grail. Hitler was going to turn on Russia.’

  He touched his glass once more, and this time wet his lips. His face was slightly grey.

  ‘Then Hess came. I brought him. He confirmed the invasion plan, Operation Barbarossa – Hitler was going to beard the Reds. And he offered us peace, he named his terms. They were extraordinary. They would have killed the dream. So instead, Hess had to die. A lot of other people, too. An awful lot of people.’

  He stopped. Jane rose and put her arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Aunt Erica said—’ she began, then looked stricken. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. She mentioned Dresden.’

  Edward Carrington gave a small, bleak smile.

  ‘Yes. Hannele Malling was one who died,’ he said. ‘I guess that’s what you were going to say. I’m tired now. I need my bed. Mine and Erica’s. Good night.’

  In bed, Edward thought of Hannele. Of the last time he had seen her. She had been in Oslo for XU, and he had been in Sweden on direct orders from Morton seeking information about Hess’s links with Hermann Goering and Reinhard Heydrich. His colleagues in Stockholm had been dubious about the questions, about the wisdom of even asking them, but Carrington had had no choice. A meeting had been set up with Hannele at the main station in Gothenburg, near the border. Her train had come from Oslo, a wartime journey of about ten hours, and she was waiting for him in one of the small cubicles provided at the station for people with cross-border trains to catch, or business. Brynulf Ottar had given him instructions.

  It was October, 1941, and Gothenburg was bathed in autumn light, beautiful but very cold. The smell from the river seared his nostrils, clean and icy, and he was happy to be seeing her again. Despite his relationship with Erica, despite the muted sadness of their last meeting, Hannele still occupied a corner of his emotions. For want of a better word, he told himself as he approached the station buildings, I still love her. It was a romantic notion, and it occurred to him that Fröken Malling might not be so starry-eyed. She had helped set up the Hess initiative, had brought it to fruition, but had never learned, nor ever would do probably, what had gone wrong. He cleared the thought from his head. That was romantic, too. Hannele understood reality.

  Carrington worked out which was the cubicle he wanted before he got too close, then approached with the firm step of a bona fide ticket-holder. He expected it to be locked, but just in case, he turned the handle. Perhaps he could surprise her. Perhaps – oh fantasy! – she would be waiting for him in bed, pale and naked, vivacious as he remembered her. The handle turned and the door moved inwards, easily.

  For a moment, blinking the sunshine from his eyes, he could see nothing. The cubicle was very small, and windowless. He made out a wash-basin in a corner, a suitcase open on the floor in front of him, its contents jumbled, a narrow bed. He blinked again. Hannele was on the bed, not naked, fully clothed. She was lying neatly on her back, her head on one side, her eyes open. The pillow and the blanket were stained in blood, thick, dull red. Her throat was open to the spine.

  Edward shivered violently, and Erica mumbled something. He folded himself into her, putting an arm across her waist, soaking up the warmth of her body and her flannelette nightdress. There was not enough warmth, there had never been enough in Erica to warm him, and they had both known it, always. He tried to go to sleep.

  Four

  Four of them flew into Tegel Airport on the day, and one of them was Wiley. They were smart in casual trousers and light jackets, and even Peter-Joe looked like a tourist or perhaps a businessman, come to relax in West Berlin’s nightspots for a day or two. Not even Silversmith knew that they were being watched, that the cameras of the DGSE – the French external secret service – were recording them. In July, before the monthly meeting of the four controlling powers in Spandau Jail, Russia had tried to put on the agenda the question of releasin
g Number Seven, but had been overruled by Britain. The Russians, who had approached the prisoner’s family earlier in the year and had dropped hints to the West German government in Bonn, had suggested angrily afterwards that they might release him unilaterally, come September. But August was America’s month, and the French were cynical…

  Bill was cynical as well, but by now he was resigned. Peter-Joe had kidnapped Johnnie, when he’d gone on a picnic with Aunt Erica and a Land Rover full of jolly ancients to a famous waterfall some miles from Garrigill. Even as Jane had blundered, white-faced, into the sunshine from the telephone Bill had known what she would say, and had tried to reassure her. Johnnie had been desperate to go, and Bill had wrongly guessed the risk. But his son was not in danger, it was not his son they wanted, and once they’d been located, the ending was inevitable anyway. He had met the other three in London and worked intensively as part of the team for more than a week. Before that, Bill had been closeted with Silversmith, and – for brief meetings – with higher officers of the SIS. He had seen his wife in hospital, and been reunited with his son. His rage, his hatred, his frustration had been modified by his own will. It was either accept inevitability, or be lost. Silversmith, within his own lights, had been sympathetic.

  ‘For my money, Bill,’ he had said, as they had driven away from the psychiatric hospital near Southampton, ‘they should have dropped the whole idea of using you before it came to this. I think it borders on the wicked.’

  He was driving, and Bill studied the firm, bland face with its tonsure like an amiable monk’s. There was no trace of irony, or mockery; Silversmith thought it ‘bordered on the wicked’. Liz in the hospital, pale and drugged, hardly recognizing him. Johnnie, tight-faced and terrified, wondering at the realities of his father’s job and life. Bill wondered if they had told the child why they were so determined they would have him. To kill a man of ninety-three.

  ‘I’m surprised you trust me,’ he replied. ‘If I had any sense I’d kill somebody. One of you lot. All of you.’

  ‘Nah. That’s not sense. And it’s not a case of trust, you know the score. They wanted you to do the job originally because they wouldn’t let you go, you were backsliding, they hate that sort of thing. But they might have been persuaded, you never know, do you? Then we found out who you’d started talking to. It wasn’t very clever, was it, it notched the stakes up just a little bit.’

  Bill said nothing. He had denied that Edward Carrington had even mentioned Rudolf Hess. The niece had been his interest, no one else. No one had believed him.

  ‘They’d have gone the whole hog, you know. Done a damage to the boy, like I told you on the phone. They’d have taken him away from you. But now you’ll do the job, won’t you? The teeth all drawn. You won’t be telling any dirty secrets.’

  ‘I hope they rot in hell,’ said Bill. ‘The lot of them.’

  The fourth member of the Spandau team was Alan Frost, a tall, tired man he’d met before, with a top-hole accent and awful eyes. He talked to Silversmith whenever possible, ignoring the other two, which worried neither of them. Silversmith explained as much as he intended to divulge to all of them equally, and was not drawn by hints of intellectual comradeship. Bill’s interest in the operation – even the question why – was almost dead. Peter-Joe had theories, and Alan Frost thought he had facts. Silversmith said it was irrelevant.

  They walked round the perimeter of the prison two or three times – more for the exercise than any operational reason – and studied plans and photographs of the interior with a CIA man with an office over a bread shop. He was introduced as Joe, and said he was a ‘facilitator’, nothing more. He had arranged their clothes for the day, had warned key personnel to expect them, to ignore them, to forget them. Silversmith had told them that the Americans wanted to have no knowledge, officially, of the details, and would deny everything if things went wrong. Joe would not be there to let them in, that was another’s job, and a third agent would let them out again. It was a British show that the CIA, the ‘cousins’, were reluctant helpers in, because the Russkis were in control next month and SIS had done the usual deals. Joe smiled wanly: ‘That’s what buddies are for,’ he said. ‘Ain’t it?’

  They arrived at Tegel on August 11, and they stayed two days in West Berlin. Then they went to Hanover, to the Holiday Inn, and went interminably over the details, and drank beer, and swam. Alan Frost turned out to be very hot on prostitutes, and Peter-Joe exercised his ape-like charm to inveigle Fräuleins to his table and, he claimed, his bed. Bill, when not ‘on duty’, walked Hanover, or lay in his room, and thought of Jane, and Liz, and Johnnie, and Rudolf Hess.

  ‘It’s going to be a doddle killing him,’ said Peter-Joe one night. ‘Old ones die quite easily, like in the movies, I’m looking forward to it. Evil bastard, if anyone deserves it he does. I wonder why now, though? He’s been inside for forty fucking years, or something. He invented the Final Solution, you know. Now he’s getting his.’

  Bollocks, thought Bill Wiley. All their facts are bollocks. It was forty-seven years, and the Final Solution was after Hess had gone, something even they couldn’t pin on him. He said nothing. Alan Frost, who had graced them with his presence even though Silversmith was away that evening, had wrinkled his nose at the reference to the killing.

  ‘He’s a victim of glasnost,’ he said. ‘Gorbachev has finally decided there’s absolutely no point in keeping a man of ninety-three in jail. He told the Germans back in April, I read it in Bild. Our government said No Dice.’

  ‘That fucking Gorbachev,’ said Peter-Joe, cheerfully. ‘It’s time some bugger topped him, he sticks his nose in everything, what’s it got to do with him? So go on, though. What’s Hess got to tell that’s so earth-shattering?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Frost. ‘That’s not for us to wonder, is it? There’s too many people speculating, maybe that’s the reason in itself. Some people take any opportunity to stir up trouble for their country. They’ll soon forget him, once he’s hanged himself.’

  Bill drained his beer. He was not staying for another. Peter-Joe raised a finger for the waiter.

  ‘He’s had a good innings, anyway,’ he said. ‘I can’t see me making it to ninety-three. Maybe I should go back to prison food, like him. Or give up shagging.’

  Bill had told Jane, before he left Cumbria, what exactly he would have to do, and that there was no way of escaping it. Silversmith had rung him up, even before Erica had returned from the picnic, and Bill had been told to present himself in London the next morning. Nothing else, no time to talk, no reassurances except that Johnnie would be safe. Jane had offered to drive him there, but he had declined. She could drive him to Penrith, and he would take a train. He would stay in a hotel.

  As they drove down the giddyingly beautiful double bends of Hartside, Bill answered questions, asked in horror, with the truth. He told her things he had admitted to nobody before, that he presented even to himself obliquely. He tried to explain to her – and to himself – the process by which he had been changed.

  ‘I told you once I’d only killed people who deserved it, didn’t I?’ he said. ‘In bed at your place, or was it walking home from Edward’s? Another world. Another bloody world, and now I’ve lost it.’

  Jane changed gear, concentrating as the bends rushed at them, her tongue between her lips.

  ‘I’ve killed a few by accident, as well,’ he said. ‘And I’ve done my share of murdering innocents. Last year I shot a man who’d come out of a corner bank in Belfast. Him and two friends. I was in a Q-car with two others, and we were waiting for them. They were carrying replicas. We knew that they were replicas. We’d watched them pick them from a hiding place in the local churchyard, and we’d checked them out the day before. A revolver, an automatic, and an Uzi. A machine-gun. Small one.’

  ‘I know.’ Jane’s voice was flat. ‘I’ve read about them. They’re Israeli, aren’t they?’

  Bill did not reply. Although his eyes were looking across the Eden Valley, h
e saw the crowded streets of Belfast. The three men, masked, running from the bank. He saw himself opening his car door and putting a bullet into the first man’s chest. The other two stopping, turning, diving for the steps back into the building. He heard cars screeching to a stop, heard screams, saw people start to run. Beside him he heard the barking of an Ingram, and watched a scarlet scarf bloom on the back of an Irish neck. He saw himself run across the road, oblivious to passers-by, traffic, anything, and fire several times into the chest and stomach of the man he had first shot. Another Ingram finished off the hoodlum on the steps, and the third was on his knees, his face upturned, as an automatic magazine was emptied into his thorax and his neck.

  ‘We killed them in cold blood,’ he said. ‘Just like we’re meant to do. Just like we do to terrorists. They’d struck it lucky three weeks before. They’d stolen a Q-car, an unmarked Army car, they didn’t know that, they’d just nicked some random wheels. The boot was full of our gear. Brownings, Ingrams, Uzis, a Sterling. They must have shit themselves. They must have shit themselves on the spot, they must have known that they were dead. One rang us up, immediately, disguised his voice and everything, poor sod, he told us where to get the stuff, it was a terrible mistake. It was. You’re not allowed to make mistakes like that in Ireland, are you? Our lads collected the gear, then put the word out. Big money information. We found them, then we watched them. And they died.’

  They were on a straight stretch, one of the few. Jane risked a glance at him, her face white and sickened.

  ‘Bill,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We don’t know how to get out of it, do we? Those of us who want to. We don’t know what to do. The thing that finishes me, the aspect that destroys me, is that it’s what we’re there for. When we killed these three guys the consensus was immediate. They were carrying things that looked like guns, and they had the luck to meet a group of undercover men. Inquiry? No need. Name the soldiers, question them, check their motives? No. What for? We’d murdered three petty criminals in a public place, we’d risked the lives of innocent passers-by, and no one gave a toss. We were a death squad. I know the names of more than a hundred guys who’ve been employed on death squads in Northern Ireland in the last ten years. And no one cares. I couldn’t take it any more. We’re licensed to kill. We’re murder squads, and we’re working for democracy. We’re killing it.’