by Jan Needle
Malcolm Pithers, who recently published Legacy of the Lens, a thriller about modern Russian oligarchs, said, ‘I was asked about this article many years ago. There have been other occasions on which sensitive cuttings were removed from the files of the Yorkshire Post. I certainly wrote the story for the newspaper’s People column but as far as I can remember we never saw Mr Heal’s papers and no book ever appeared.’
Churchill knew the Russians thought he had lied to Stalin. On April 7, 1945, he wrote to Guy Millard at the Foreign Office: ‘The Russians are still very suspicious of the Hess episode’ and Stalin ‘steadfastly maintains that Hess had been invited over by our Secret Service.’
As Churchill had remarked during the war: ‘There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.’
About the Author
Jan Needle has had more than forty books published, as well as plays, series and serials for TV. Another major strand of his writing is historical naval fiction, including a series of novellas based on Nelson’s life, and another about the adventures of Charlie ‘Craven’ Raven. His last thriller before Death Order – Kicking Off – was described by the Guardian as ‘compelling, vivid, racy … describes with unnerving prescience just what it going on.’ The Times said: ‘Recalls the golden age of British investigative reporting: hard-hitting, crusading, alarming…’
Jan’s website is at www.janneedle.com
Find more of his books at Amazon, Endeavour Press, and Facebook
If you enjoyed reading Death Order you may be interested in Blood Red Sea by Jack Hayes, published by Endeavour Press.
If you enjoyed reading Death Order you may be interested in Blood Red Sea by Jack Hayes also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Blood Red Sea by Jack Hayes
1
The U-boat’s cargo-hold smelled of damp metal, diesel and sweat. The bomb had no smell. It just squatted on rubberised springs in the crypt-like gloom, oblivious to the clank and hum of the submarine’s engines, totally unaware of the awesome hex it had cast on Meyer.
He watched it do nothing at all.
Never had genocide looked more innocuous.
“It is an amazing thing this Jewish science has brought us.”
Meyer’s eyes narrowed as Captain Kranz spoke. He didn’t turn round.
“Yes, Kranz,” he replied. “But it is not Jewish science. This is the child of German ingenuity – born of Heisenberg and Schumann – a monument to the Fuhrer’s vision. It will lay waste to the Godless and ensure victory.”
Captain Kranz hesitated before moving to stand next to Meyer. He removed his cap and lodged it firmly under his arm. They had been friends since they were seven, when Kranz’s family moved to Brandenburg.
“You really think we can turn the tide?” Kranz asked.
His voice was husky, barely audible above the whirr of machinery.
“No. It is never too late,” Meyer said.
“The Allies are at Aachen, Wilfred,” Kranz replied. “We are now fighting on German soil.”
Meyer grimaced.
When they left Germany in mid-September 1944, news of the Allies’ heavy onslaught on the town was just emerging. That was three weeks ago.
Three weeks of radio silence.
By now, the Americans had surely taken the town and were pushing into the Fatherland.
Other than the successful defence of Arnhem, the war had been going badly for too long. Perhaps Kranz was correct. Meyer had caught his friend muttering in the last few weeks that the war was already lost. Each time, Kranz’s comments were veiled in ambiguity – an art form Reich officers had learned quickly in the last few years.
Dissent was dangerous.
“We have our orders, my friend,” Meyer replied. “What else would you have us do?”
Kranz half looked across his shoulder.
His limbs were still powerful and muscular, a vestige of his time rowing for the university in Munich. There, consumed by the new mood of political zeal, they had both joined the charismatic corporal as he sought to revolutionize the country.
“Look, Wilfred, it’s over,” Kranz whispered, with a shake of his head. “Our actions will only prolong the inevitable, leading to more suffering. The Reich – barely 80 million people – is now pitted against Britain, France, America, Russia, Brazil… the whole world! Ten percent of our population are dead. How many more will die if this drags on?”
Meyer nodded slowly.
“You are right my friend.”
Kranz sighed with relief. He mopped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
The rapping of knuckles on metal startled him.
“Sirs?”
The voice at the door was hesitant yet inquisitive. Sergeant Major Kohl. Meyer watched his eyes. How much had he overheard?
“What is it Kohl?”
“We are nearing the island, sir.”
“Then I had best take the helm,” Kranz said, pulling his cap tight over his head.
He stepped towards the door. He flashed a smile at the sergeant, polite but masking concern.
The shot was loud and echoed off the walls.
It was followed by a second.
Then a third.
Kranz arched. His hands reached up as though to relieve an itch from his back. He slowly turned. His face was shocked, his mouth open in a yawning, silent scream. Smoke wafted slowly higher from the end of Meyer’s Luger as though it were a lit cigarette.
Kranz reached out for support from the steel plate around the bulkhead. His lips stuttered as he tried to understand.
“Because we are men of honour and we have orders, my old friend,” Meyer said bluntly.
The pistol barked again.
The lifeless body of Kranz crumpled to the floor.
Swiftly, Meyer holstered his weapon.
“Kohl!”
“Sir?”
“Inform the First Lieutenant that I am assuming command of the vessel. We have a mission to perform. Nothing will stand in our way.”
2
In the headquarters of London’s Special Operations Executive, Captain Maddox slammed the door of the doctor’s office.
“Arsehole,” he muttered.
He itched for a cigarette. Slow, rising, prickles of hot and cold washed across his skin. A nicotine flush? He pushed thoughts that it might be something more serious to the back of his mind as he stalked the crimson-carpeted passageways of 343b Oxford Street. What he needed was conference room three. Smoking was banned inside the building – conference room three was his only hope.
At the start of the war, all windows were nailed shut for ‘security reasons’. Maddox had painstakingly removed the screws from the warped wood of this one pane after breaking into the space last year. It had other advantages too. Room 3 was the usual location for his mission briefings: it allowed him to both defy the smoking ban and do it in the place where he received his orders.
He tried the brass knob to the room and was surprised to find it unlocked. Normally, protocol kept all doors sealed until 15 minutes before meetings started. He pushed inside.
Four Frenchmen huddled conspiratorially on beech chairs. Navy men. Their leader looked up as Maddox crossed the floor, his footsteps clacking across the parquet flooring, making his way toward nicotine salvation.
Maddox recognised the Frenchman’s face. Capitaine de Frigatte Chavasse: the ball breaker of the Levant.
Tremendous.
He leaned on the corner of the birch desk and pushed his head out into the chill air of Oxford Street. A swerving Riley hooted its horn at a van that stopped abruptly. Beyond that, the steady hum of traffic and people tramping along the pavement was subdued by a strong wind whipping between the buildings.
A gust caught the quarter inch of ash tipping the end of his cigarette and lifted it, willo’-the-wisp, into the room. The ash lingered briefly in the air before coming to a rest on the epaulette of Chavasse.
Maddo
x took a long hard drag and leaned forward.
“Chavasse,” he said.
The Frenchman ignored him.
More forcibly, this time, “Chavasse!”
The Capitaine turned his head without moving his shoulders. A snarl of incisor hinted beneath his lips. He had the nose of de Gaulle, hair that shone like freshly polished black boots and a tanned complexion. There was an Arabic quality to his features.
Chavasse swivelled his eyes to their deepest corners and glowered at Maddox. He said nothing. He returned his gaze and continued talking with Aspirants Peuseau and Bertrand and Enseigne Rouens.
The ash remained on the epaulette.
Maddox sucked one last time on the filter and flicked the dying butt out into the city.
A moment later, another man entered the room. Patterson moved alongside Maddox holding a cup of tea and a stale biscuit.
“Chavasse doesn’t seem to like us,” Patterson said. “I don’t know what he’s going to make of it when he realises the Yanks are coming on this jaunt too.”
“You know for a fact the Americans are in?” Maddox replied, turning his back to the room.
Patterson nodded curtly.
“Just picked it up from the boss’ secretary outside. This will be a three-team mission. Most hush-hush. It’s meant to show the Allies can still work together even though the war is nearly won.”
There was steel in his voice: a strength forged from working behind enemy lines as Maddox’s second in command during the last three years of this Godforsaken war.
Two more men joined them, the rest of Maddox’s team: Fallon and Marlowe.
“You’ve heard?” Maddox asked.
“A twelve man operation,” Fallon replied. “Three groups of four. One British, one Free French and one American.”
“It’s asking for trouble,” Marlowe added. “Mixed nationalities on commando squads? It’s a bad idea.”
“It’s worse than that,” Maddox said.
His three teammates stepped in closer.
“The Frenchmen are all navy, we’re army and the Americans are air force.”
Fallon, Marlowe and Patterson exchanged glances.
“Mixing nationalities and services?” Patterson hissed. “What warrants taking that risk?”
Maddox shook his head. There was no target in the world that required such a harlequin crew.
US troops had finally taken Aachen two days ago. It was the first city to fall inside Germany itself. The battle had lasted a month and sucked in valuable reserves from other parts of the front line. Even so – the expectation was that the war would be over in a few months.
He watched his men now as they debated this new information. He’d handpicked each of them when they joined the commandoes. They were soft, idealistic and youthful then. Now, he looked at their hardened features. War ages men.
The main door squeaked.
Three American air force sergeants walked in flanking Lieutenant Schaffer like minders. Six feet tall with a square jaw, Schaffer was every bit the blond, blue-eyed superman the German ancestry of his name indicated.
Nearing thirty, the first lines of age were gently settling into his forehead. A deep furrow was already ploughed into the space between his lower lip and the heavy-set dimple on his chin.
Maddox lit a second cigarette. He felt irritation.
Schaffer swaggered with the gait of a man accustomed to carrying holsters on his hips. Maddox imagined that scarcely a few generations before the American’s ancestors had herded cattle for a living, swinging lassoes above their heads.
But had they been ranchers or rustlers?
“Chavasse, my good friend,” Schaffer gushed in a mid-Western drawl. “How long’s it been? Six months?”
Chavasse flashed a momentary look of puzzlement followed by one of near fear as Schaffer slapped him heartily on the shoulder and simultaneously shook his hand. Schaffer rubbed the palm gripping Chavasse’s shoulder along the blade slowly as he vigorously wagged their hands up and down with the brimming overconfidence of a newly purchased puppy.
“Oui, Lieutenant,’ replied Chavasse. “Six, perhaps, seven months. It is pleasurable to meet you once more. You must excuse me, I have some important details to discuss with my team before the briefing begins.”
“But of course,” Schaffer replied as he withdrew.
He winked at Maddox as he removed his crushing grip from Chavasse’s shoulder. He’d smeared the ash along the length of the Capitaine’s uniform. Schaffer moved away from the French team to shake hands with Maddox. On reflex, Maddox checked his own epaulettes for dandruff and cigarette ends.
“No need to check – your uniform’s spick and span – as I’d expect from the British Army,’ he said as he stepped in.
“That seemed harsh,” Maddox said.
“I take it you haven’t worked with Chavasse before?”
“No.”
“After a few days, you’ll wish you’d done it.”
“Perhaps I did. The ash was mine,” Maddox said, pointing to his cigarette.
Schaffer smiled.
“Another joint Anglo-American operation, then?” he laughed. “Excellent! I can see this little party’s going to be a blast.”
Maddox tossed the finished butt outside. The misshapen frame of the sash window grated as he closed it.
The door slammed and everyone jumped to attention. Maddox watched as an unfamiliar figure strode towards the podium. In his mid-twenties, the man’s face was still mottled with the telltale pink and red bumps of acne.
“At ease, gentlemen,” the new arrival said. “My name is Lieutenant Nelson of intelligence. I am mission liaison for this operation, henceforth to be known by its codename: Arc Light. Please be seated.”
“Fag,” Schaffer muttered as he scraped a chair across the floor.
“As you’ve no doubt surmised from the mixed nationalities in this room, this is to be a joint operation. With victory in sight, the public must know that in triumph the Allies will remain united.”
Nelson’s gaze moved around the room as he spoke. He lingered briefly on Chavasse, a delicate frown forming as he noticed the ash stain around his collar.
“It is easy to be complacent. The enemy looks beaten. But as with any wounded animal when cornered – this may be the most dangerous time. Frankly gentlemen, I cannot stress enough the importance of this mission.”
He paused to pull on a drawstring. It lowered a projector screen just large enough to cover a third of the wall.
Maddox looked around. Mission briefings always gave him the feeling of returning to his schoolboy youth. His eleven fellow soldiers were arranged across three rows of seats with a central divide, like a classroom.
The 60-Watt bulbs dangling on white cords from the ceiling slowly dimmed. The only illumination left was the cone of ghostly bluish light emanating from the projector’s lens.
With a low buzz, followed by an audible click and an image appeared: a coloured animation of a cathedral city in England.
A plane flew high above. It released a single bomb, no more than three feet long, attached to a parachute. One of the Frenchmen sniggered their disdain for this ridiculous notion.
Languid as a feather in flight, the bomb descended towards the houses below.
Then it exploded.
The picture flamed bright and a giant cloud rose up from the city. It was a biblical pillar of fire storming ever higher until, as best as Maddox could estimate, it reached a height of three miles above the ground. The blast ballooned outwards forming a toxic mushroom.
The cartoon cut to the city.
Flames raged everywhere. Buildings were obliterated by gale-force winds.
Maddox recalled anecdotal reports from towns such as Guernica and Dresden that firestorms burned with such ferocity that they created a near vacuum. Houses were destroyed by the wind rushing to fill the void. Civilians who survived the initial blasts died from lack of oxygen.
But those reports involved tens
of thousands of explosives.
Schaffer whistled as the cartoon showed the town once more, completely flattened. Not a building, brick wall, or lamppost was visible. There was simply rubble and dust.
“What the hell are we watching?” Schaffer asked.
Nelson coughed and took a microphone as the cartoon continued its tour of the devastation.
“It is called the ‘atomic device’. The cartoon shows our best estimation of this new weapon. It’s made of a dense, radioactive metal called uranium. One hundred such bombs would be equivalent to all the munitions used in the entire war by everyone up until now.”
A buzz of chatter erupted.
“This is science fiction!” shouted a voice in the darkness.
“I assure you, this is very much science fact,” Nelson said, as he stepped out from behind the podium. “Allied forces are hard at work on a more powerful version of the device using the even denser element plutonium. The Russians, Germans and Japanese are all busy doing the same.”
“Who would need a bigger version?” Maddox said.
Nelson appealed for silence.
The babble hushed.
“A 15 kiloton device, such as this one, would cause total devastation out to a distance of one mile from the drop zone,” said Nelson. “Nothing, not even buildings, would survive. At one mile, there is a rather curious drop off in intensity; structures will begin to survive the initial blast, depending on their construction. From one mile to about four, any person present would die – if not from the initial blast, then from the after-effects of intense exposure to radiation.”
The footage began to weave through the battered ruins of semi-demolished houses. Smoke bloomed from the wreckage.
“From four miles to about eight, there will be limited survivors,” Nelson continued. “Most will likely die of radiation sickness too. To remain alive you would need a special shelter. The minimum recommended at four miles would have walls equivalent to several feet of lead. The densely packed metal screens out the harmful effects of the bomb.”
