Carola returned with a map of the area and a set of personnel cards taken from the central registry in the barracks and pointed out a set of houses. Stahl was already starting to dislike Felixstowe and its odd layout, so different from the ordered towns that had been founded in the east. There, the towns were neat and orderly, with everything and everyone in their place.
“There,” she said. “That’s where the four men with the most recent military experience live.”
“Good,” Stahl said, hoping that they would put up a fight. “Let’s move.”
* * *
Gregory Davall had slept in late and risen at eleven o’clock. He ate a small breakfast and a made a quick check through the house for any clues of his night-time activities. The Germans would certainly react, and while he was sure that they couldn’t wipe out all the Grey Wolves, it was quite possible that they would unknowingly sweep up some of the Wolves in a random sweep of the town. He was on the way out of the house when he saw the first German military vehicle. It was an armoured car like the one he’d destroyed, followed by two lorries packed with German soldiers wearing the black uniform of the SS. He froze for a moment, wishing that he’d kept his weapon with him, but then he saw the Germans surrounding one of the houses on the other side of the street.
There was a crash as they broke down the door and ran inside. Moments later, they shoved out Mr Davidson, his grandfather and his twin daughters, both on the verge of adolescence. Davidson’s son was in the army. Davall whispered a silent prayer that he was alive and still fighting, but the Germans didn’t seem interested in the missing son. Rounding up the entire family, securing their hands, and left them kneeling in the middle of the road as they searched the house. Kate came up behind Davall and clutched his arm, watching as the Germans searched the house with a speed and brutality that impressed Davall.
“That’s horrible,” Kate whispered, too quietly for anyone but her husband to hear. He followed her gaze and saw the two crying girls as they knelt in front of the Germans, who kept their guns firmly pointed at the family’s heads. “What did they do?”
Davall knew what was happening, but said nothing as more Germans arrived, securing the area and watching the British civilians. The noise of the search was falling now, but as one of the Germans emerged, the crowd let out a loud gasp. The German was holding a Lee Enfield rifle. Davall suddenly remembered that Davidson had fought in the last war with Germany. Had he kept the weapon, despite the German demand that all weapons be surrendered, or had the Germans planted the weapon somehow?
One of the Germans stepped up to Davidson, waved the weapon under his face, and demanded something. The reply was too quiet to be heard, but the German shouted angrily and waved to two of his soldiers, who grabbed Davidson and his family and forced them into the lorry. The crowd moved forward and the German soldiers levelled their guns. There was a long tense moment before the crowd fell back, glaring malevolently at the Germans in helpless fury. Kate buried her face in Davall’s back as the lorry turned and moved off. Just then three shots brought their attention back to a German who had just fired into the air.
“The Davidson family was caught in breach of three laws relating to Occupied Territory,” the German said, calmly. There was a sense that he was neither aware of, nor cared about, the simmering hatred coming from the crowd. “He possessed a weapon he failed to declare, he listened to anti-German propaganda, and he took part in anti-German activities. As a result of his crimes, he has been charged with treason, third-class, and will be sentenced accordingly after his interrogation. The remaining members of his family will be interrogated and their fates will depend upon the information in their possession.”
He paused to allow that to sink in.
“It is impossible for you to defeat the Greater German Reich,” he said. His tone was absurdly pleasant, without any hatred or rage or even amusement at seeing Britain brought so low. “Accept your place or face the consequences.”
Davall watched as the Germans slowly loaded into their vehicles. They left the Davidson house empty and open for anyone to take what they liked. Some of the townspeople would do that, he knew, and become complicit in the German crimes. Others would try to preserve what they could for when and if the family returned.
He knew what had happened; the Germans had jumped to the wrong conclusion and arrested the wrong family… and it was all his fault. He watched as Kate went back into the house, her face streaked with tears, and then he looked back at where the family had been forced to kneel, remembering, fixing it all in his brain.
The Germans would pay for their treatment of innocent children.
* * *
“I don’t think he knew much,” Wulfenbach said as Stahl examined the body of former Sergeant Davidson. The interrogation had been brutal but the former Sergeant had been tougher than they’d expected. He’d died in the interrogation; Stahl was starting to suspect that they’d only picked up someone who’d kept his army-issue weapon, not a real insurgent at all.
“He’s dead,” Stahl confirmed, irritated. The failure would look very bad, even though it had probably intimidated the real insurgents, assuming that they had watched as the various houses had been searched. Three of them hadn’t had any weapons or anything connecting them to the insurgents. “Have the interrogator disciplined for his failure and have the dead man’s wife and grandfather transferred to a detention camp for the immediate future.”
“Jawohl, Herr Standartenfuhrer,” Wulfenbach said, snapping a perfect salute. His tone became a cross between a leer and a sneer. “What would you like done with the girls?”
Stahl considered it. One of the darker secrets of the Russian insurgency was that some truly horrible things were done to Russian women, in the name of the Reich, and some members of the extermination groups — the Einsatzgruppen — possessed tastes that could never be satisfied in a civilised society. In Russia, no one would have thought anything of him throwing the girls to the men, or at least those who had a taste for such young girls, but Stahl considered himself a civilised man. He had never been forced to use such measures in Norway, and the very thought of it made him sick.
“They’re both of sound racial stock,” he said, after a moment. “The secretaries can look after them for a few days until I can make arrangements to have them shipped back to the continent and given to a foster family to be raised as good German girls. It will give them the chance at a much better life within the Reich than they would have here and eliminate any tendencies they might have to defy us later in their lives.”
Wulfenbach protested.
“There are prostitutes here!” Stahl snapped, remembering that the prostitutes had just switched to servicing the Germans. “This is not Russia, and if anyone breaks the rules on proper conduct towards the local population, I will have him shot, understood?”
Stahl didn’t want to think about what Rommel would do to anyone stupid enough to defy the edict. The Field Marshal, for all of his military competence, had a strange idea of war as a gentlemanly sport. The British admired him as well, something that might have played a role in the Führer’s decision to order Rommel to take command of the invasion force, but that wouldn’t last if the SS carried out some real atrocities without Rommel punishing them for their crimes. If that happened, Himmler would take it out on Stahl, and his career would come to a screeching halt.
“I want additional patrols for the next week or so,” he said, forcing his mind back to the business at hand. He’d done something that would cause ill feeling within the British town, so he was pushed to capitalise on it and prevent the British from using it as either a cause for unrest or simply forgetting that it had ever happened. “I want them to know that we are here and that we are watching them, so have the soldiers politely, but firmly, check everyone’s cards when they meet them. I want them feeling that we are watching them everywhere, understand?”
He issued more orders as he sorted though his thoughts and priorities. He would need more
men, but that would be a problem, even with the expanding shipping capabilities; the army had most of the shipping reserved for their use. They wouldn’t take kindly to a request for more SS security forces, or even a request that a few of their infantry battalions be added to Stahl’s forces for local security. Not with the British Army out there and still very dangerous. It would have to be handled by higher authority, and that meant Berlin… and Himmler.
“Yes, Herr Standartenfuhrer,” Wulfenbach said. He knew nothing of Stahl’s concerns. “I will issue the orders at once.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
London, England
Alex DeRiemer stepped into the underground Cabinet Room and dropped into one of the chairs against the wall as the principles took their seats before the meeting began. His status was uncertain at the moment, much to his concern; Churchill had ordered him to act as a personal assistant, but also to handle some of the intelligence and assessment work for MI6, so that Churchill could have access to up-to-date information. DeRiemer’s correct prediction of a German attack had made an impression on Churchill, but he wasn’t sure if he was actually qualified to do some of the other work that Churchill wanted. The Prime Minister, it seemed, didn’t always trust his own people.
The politics were a tangled web. Churchill had trounced the faction that had wanted to co-exist with Nazi Germany — and Hitler in particular — after the attacks on London and the invasion, and that particular faction was keeping its heads down, well aware that they could be blamed for the invasion. Other groups, however, weren’t too keen on Churchill, such as the party that distrusted him personally, or the clique that wanted to make a compromise peace with Germany. Churchill stood against any such peace and, so far, had the votes in the Houses of Parliament to remain firm in his conviction, but if there was a major disaster, his position could change very rapidly. The question was simple. Did Churchill understand that?
DeRiemer shrugged as the room filled up. Churchill hadn’t hesitated to sack a few dozen people he’d called appeasers, but there were others whose views were more hidden even from Churchill. They watched and waited, hoping for victory, but prepared to sell out for the best terms they could get if the Germans won the war. Somewhere in the darkness, knives were being sharpened; DeRiemer didn’t want to be there when one of the factions finally made its move. It would be disaster.
Churchill tapped the table and the room fell silent. “Stafford, I believe that you were in direct communication with President Taft,” he said. It had been hard for Sir Stafford Cripps, temporary Foreign Secretary, to convince Churchill to leave matters in his hands, rather than talking to the Americans directly. Churchill didn’t like him much, as he had been working to stabilise Churchill’s beloved India before independence, and DeRiemer suspected that the feeling was mutual. “What is the American position on the war?”
“President Taft remains strongly convinced that isolation is the best policy for his country,” Sir Stafford said, his upper-class voice echoing around the room. “Regardless, he has agreed to allow our ships transit through the Panama Canal — which technically he shouldn’t allow as a neutral player in the conflict — and, in addition, the United States Navy will be providing us with some additional escort in the Caribbean, officially because of American concerns about a conflict breaking out there. The French islands remain a constant concern to the Americans, and they have actually considered demanding that the French demilitarise them and submit to American oversight.”
He paused. “He has also agreed to extend us lines of credit regarding the purchase of weapons and ammunition within America itself, and to raise no objection to Americans travelling to Britain and joining our armed forces,” Sir Stafford continued. “There are actually several hundred volunteer units being formed now, although those units are of questionable quality, and there may actually be several hundred thousand Americans coming to join the defences. We have a particularly high rate of volunteers from the American Jewish Community, which is the most vocal in support of us and against the Germans.”
The American Jews had made the Germans an offer back in 1944; they’d offered to pay a bounty for Jews if they were allowed to leave the Reich and travel to America. The Nazis had driven a hard bargain, but in the end, several hundred thousand Jews, many of them Russian or French, had been permitted to leave the Reich with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Their tales of horror, from the concentration camps to the massive slave labour gangs as the Germans built their empire, had shocked America; it had provided most of the impetus to keep the United States Navy strong and active.
“Regardless, unless the Germans do something very stupid, I don’t think that the Americans as a whole will join the war,” Sir Stafford concluded. “I do not believe that Taft would seek to ask Congress for a declaration of war, unless the Germans actually attacked an American ship or American interests in a blatant act of war, and even if he did, it would be hard to convince the American people to support the war.”
Churchill’s great face scowled and DeRiemer could almost follow his thoughts. In 1941, there had been rumours that Japan considered attacking the United States and Hitler might have been dragged in, as an ally of Japan. The thought of the vast, largely unrealised, potential of the American industrial machine was enough to make any British statesman salivate. If Japan had attacked the Americans, they would have joined the war and it would have been over. Instead, Japan had struck north, taken a terrible beating from the Russians, and lost all enthusiasm for further military adventures. The Japanese were locked in a permanent struggle with China, trying to subdue the ruins of the Chinese state. They wouldn’t come boiling out of their Home Islands towards British or American territory now.
Sir Stafford coughed. “The good news is that both Canada and Australia have pledged their support, and the first army units should be on their way within the week, but it will be several weeks before we get anyone from Australia now that we cannot use the Suez Canal,” he said. “I have suggested that the Australian troop ships meet up with the Eastern Fleet and allow them to escort them to Britain, while the Royal Canadian Navy and the remains of Home Fleet will be providing cover for the Canadians. It will take longer to add Canadian air units to our order of battle here, but they have been pledged and we will have them here as soon as they can be shipped across the Atlantic.”
Admiral Cunningham coughed. “We can expect the Germans to make an attempt at sinking them,” he said. “It would be an easy way to remove the Canadians from the balance sheet, and it will take the Canadians far too long to build up a replacement army, assuming that they actually can build up a second force. Canada doesn’t allow conscripts to serve overseas against their will, so the Germans will certainly try to influence Canadian public opinion through slaughtering their soldiers.”
“True enough,” Churchill said. “Sir Stafford, what is your opinion of South Africa’s stance?”
“They’re conflicted,” Sir Stafford admitted. “They have quite a large German element within their population, mainly Germans who were considered too unsuitable for the Reich and exiled to South Africa, and that population is not keen on fighting the Reich. They also have their own internal troubles with their black population. Smuts believes that he can hold the state together, but he may not be able to secure a declaration of war. They’ll give us what support they can, short of war, but they may never join the war formally.”
“I see,” Churchill rumbled, his face unreadable. He’d been in South Africa during the Boer War, DeRiemer remembered; what was he thinking now? Did he remember how the Boers had resisted the British Empire and held out long enough to earn the respect and admiration of the world? “Christopher, how do we stand for war stocks?”
Christopher Parkinson, the Minister for Industrial Production, stood up. He produced a vast sheet of notes and glanced down at it from time to time as he talked. He had the incredibly dry voice of the committed bureaucrat and a face like a pinched rat; he wouldn’t have
been given a Cabinet post normally, DeRiemer knew, but his senior had been killed by the German raid. Churchill was given no option but to promote him, but it was only a temporary promotion. Parkinson lacked the ability to inspire or lead anyone.
“The reserve of war stocks has been badly eaten by the war,” Parkinson said, his voice as dull as ditch-water. “We built up a massive reserve for the expected war, but the fighting has drained it faster than we predicted, with the net result that we are experiencing shortages in some areas, mainly heavy artillery shells and bombs. Our factories were switched over to war production by order of the Prime Minister the day after the war began, but it will take time to adjust everything to producing war stocks, even though we had plans for a rapid conversion worked out over the years. The Germans have not yet begun to bomb factories, although we expect that will change in the very near future, but the damage they have caused to the transport network is causing shortages and bottlenecks right across the country.”
He paused long enough to wipe his spectacles. “The other major shortage is petroleum,” he said. “The Germans hit one of the main fuel dumps at Scapa Flow and burned most of it off before the fire could be extinguished, while one other fuel deport has actually fallen into German hands. Again, the damage to the transport network has had a major effect on our ability to supply fuel to where it’s needed, although we have had some success in commandeering supplies from petrol stations and some civilian industries that are not war-essential.
“Regardless, oil remains one of our major weaknesses,” he continued. “We normally get oil supplies from Iraq and America, but with the Iranians spoiling for an attack into Iraq, we may lose those oil terminals soon. Once that happens, we will be dependent upon oil coming from America, while German submarines will certainly try to hammer those links. Overall, Prime Minister, we may have enough fuel supplies for six months, but frankly I feel that that is far too optimistic.
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