by Follett, Ken
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE - INITIATION
CHAPTER ONE - June 22, 1911
PART ONE - THE DARKENING SKY
CHAPTER TWO - January 1914
CHAPTER THREE - February 1914
CHAPTER FOUR - March 1914
CHAPTER FIVE - April 1914
CHAPTER SIX - June 1914
CHAPTER SEVEN - Early July 1914
CHAPTER EIGHT - Mid-July 1914
CHAPTER NINE - Late July 1914
CHAPTER TEN - August 1-3, 1914
CHAPTER ELEVEN - August 4, 1914
PART TWO - THE WAR of GIANTS
CHAPTER TWELVE - Early to Late August 1914
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - September to December 1914
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - February 1915
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - June to September1915
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - June 1916
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - July 1, 1916
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Late July 1916
CHAPTER NINETEEN - July to October 1916
CHAPTER TWENTY - November to December 1916
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - December 1916
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - January and February 1917
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - March 1917
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - April 1917
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - May and June 1917
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Mid-June 1917
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - June to September 1917
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - October and November 1917
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - March 1918
CHAPTER THIRTY - Late March and April 1918
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - May to September 1918
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - October 1918
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - November 11, 1918
PART THREE - THE WORLD MADE NEW
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - November to December 1918
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - December 1918 to February 1919
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - March to April 1919
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - May and June 1919
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - August to October 1919
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - January 1920
CHAPTER FORTY - February to December 1920
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - November 11-12, 1923
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - December 1923 to January 1924
Historical Characters
Acknowledgements
Also by Ken Follett
The Modigliani Scandal
Paper Money
Eye of the Needle
Triple
The Key to Rebecca
The Man from St. Petersburg
On Wings of Eagles
Lie Down with Lions
The Pillars of the Earth
Night over Water
A Dangerous Fortune
A Place Called Freedom
The Third Twin
The Hammer of Eden
Code to Zero
Jackdaws
Hornet Flight
Whiteout
World Without End
DUTTON
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Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, October 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Ken Follett
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Follett, Ken.
Fall of giants : book one of the century trilogy / by Ken Follett.
p. cm.—(Century ; bk. 1)
eISBN : 978-1-101-44355-2
1. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR6056.O45F35 2010
823’.914—dc22 2010009279
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
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To the memory of my parents,
Martin and Veenie Follett.
Cast of Characters
American
DEWAR FAMILY
Senator Cameron Dewar
Ursula Dewar, his wife
Gus Dewar, their son
VYALOV FAMILY
Josef Vyalov, businessman
Lena Vyalov, his wife
Olga Vyalov, their daughter
OTHERS
Rosa Hellman, journalist
Chuck Dixon, school friend of Gus’s
Marga, nightclub singer
Nick Forman, thief
Ilya, thug
Theo, thug
Norman Niall, crooked accountant
Brian Hall, union leader
REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth president
William Jennings Bryan, secretary of state
Joseph Daniels, secretary of the navy
English and Scottish
FITZHERBERT FAMILY
Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz
Princess Elizaveta, called Bea, his wife
Lady Maud Fitzherbert, his sister
Lady Hermia, called Aunt Herm, their poor aunt
The Duchess of Sussex, their rich aunt
Gelert, Pyrenean mountain dog
Grout, Fitz’s butler
Sanderson, Maud’s maid
OTHERS
Mildred Perkins, Ethel Williams’s lodger
Bernie Leckwith, secretary of the Aldgate branch of the Independent Labour Party
Bing Westhampton, Fitz’s friend
Marquis of Lowther, “Lowthie,” rejected suitor of Maud
Albert Solman, Fitz’s man of business
Dr. Greenward, volunteer at the baby clinic
Lord “Johnny” Remarc, junior War Office minister
Colonel Hervey, aide to Sir John French
Lieutenant Murray, aide to Fitz
Mannie Litov, factory owner
Jock Reid, treasurer of the Aldgate Independent Labour Party
Jayne McCulley, soldier’s wife
REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTER
S
King George V
Queen Mary
Mansfield Smith-Cumming, called “C,” head of the Foreign Section of the Secret Service Bureau (later MI6)
Sir Edward Grey, M.P., foreign secretary
Sir William Tyrrell, private secretary to Grey
Frances Stevenson, mistress of Lloyd George
Winston Churchill, M.P.
H. H. Asquith, M.P., prime minister
Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force
French
Gini, a bar girl
Colonel Dupuys, aide to General Galliéni
General Lourceau, aide to General Joffre
REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
General Joffre, commander in chief of French forces
General Galliéni, commander of the Paris garrison
German and Austrian
VON ULRICH FAMILY
Otto von Ulrich, diplomat
Susanne von Ulrich, his wife
Walter von Ulrich, their son, military attaché at the German embassy in London
Greta von Ulrich, their daughter
Graf (Count) Robert von Ulrich, Walter’s second cousin, military attaché at the Austrian embassy in London
OTHERS
Gottfried von Kessel, cultural attaché at the German embassy in London
Monika von der Helbard, Greta’s best friend
REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
Prince Karl Lichnowsky, German ambassador to London
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg
General of Infantry Erich Ludendorff
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, German chancellor
Arthur Zimmermann, German foreign minister
Russian
PESHKOV FAMILY
Grigori Peshkov, metalworker
Lev Peshkov, horse wrangler
PUTILOV MACHINE WORKS
Konstantin, lathe operator, chairman of the Bolshevik discussion group
Isaak, captain of the football team
Varya, female laborer, Konstantin’s mother
Serge Kanin, supervisor of the casting section
Count Maklakov, director
OTHERS
Mikhail Pinsky, police officer
Ilya Kozlov, his sidekick
Nina, maid to Princess Bea
Prince Andrei, Bea’s brother
Katerina, a peasant girl new to the city
Mishka, bar owner
Trofim, gangster
Fyodor, corrupt cop
Spirya, passenger on the Angel Gabriel
Yakov, passenger on the Angel Gabriel
Anton, clerk at the Russian embassy in London, also a spy for Germany
David, Jewish soldier
Sergeant Gavrik
Lieutenant Tomchak
REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Party
Leon Trotsky
Welsh
WILLIAMS FAMILY
David Williams, union organizer
Cara Williams, his wife
Ethel Williams, their daughter
Billy Williams, their son
Gramper, Cara’s father
GRIFFITHS FAMILY
Len Griffiths, atheist and Marxist
Mrs. Griffiths
Tommy Griffiths, their son, Billy Williams’s best friend
PONTI FAMILY
Mrs. Minnie Ponti
Giuseppe “Joey” Ponti, her son
Giovanni “Johnny” Ponti, his younger brother
MINERS
David Crampton, “Dai Crybaby”
Harry “Suet” Hewitt
John Jones the Shop
Dai Chops, the butcher’s son
Pat Pope, Main Level onsetter
Micky Pope, Pat’s son
Dai Ponies, horse wrangler
Bert Morgan
MINE MANAGEMENT
Perceval Jones, chairman of Celtic Minerals
Maldwyn Morgan, colliery manager
Rhys Price, colliery manager’s deputy
Arthur “Spotty” Llewellyn, colliery clerk
STAFF AT TŶ GWYN
Peel, butler
Mrs. Jevons, housekeeper
Morrison, footman
OTHERS
Dai Muck, sanitary worker
Mrs. Dai Ponies
Mrs. Roley Hughes
Mrs. Hywel Jones
Private George Barrow, B Company
Private Robin Mortimer, cashiered officer, B Company
Private Owen Bevin, B Company
Sergeant Elijah “Prophet” Jones, B Company
Second Lieutenant James Carlton-Smith, B Company
Captain Gwyn Evans, A Company
Second Lieutenant Roland Morgan, A Company
REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
David Lloyd George, Liberal member of Parliament
PROLOGUE
INITIATION
CHAPTER ONE
June 22, 1911
On the day King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London, Billy Williams went down the pit in Aberowen, South Wales.
The twenty-second of June, 1911, was Billy’s thirteenth birthday. He was woken by his father. Da’s technique for waking people was more effective than it was kind. He patted Billy’s cheek, in a regular rhythm, firmly and insistently. Billy was in a deep sleep, and for a second he tried to ignore it, but the patting went on relentlessly. Momentarily he felt angry; but then he remembered that he had to get up, he even wanted to get up, and he opened his eyes and sat upright with a jerk.
“Four o’clock,” Da said, then he left the room, his boots banging on the wooden staircase as he went down.
Today Billy would begin his working life by becoming an apprentice collier, as most of the men in town had done at his age. He wished he felt more like a miner. But he was determined not to make a fool of himself. David Crampton had cried on his first day down the pit, and they still called him Dai Crybaby, even though he was twenty-five and the star of the town’s rugby team.
It was the day after midsummer, and a bright early light came through the small window. Billy looked at his grandfather, lying beside him. Gramper’s eyes were open. He was always awake, whenever Billy got up; he said old people did not sleep much.
Billy got out of bed. He was wearing only his underdrawers. In cold weather he wore his shirt to bed, but Britain was enjoying a hot summer, and the nights were mild. He pulled the pot from under the bed and took off the lid.
There was no change in the size of his penis, which he called his peter. It was still the childish stub it had always been. He had hoped it might have started to grow on the night before his birthday, or perhaps that he might see just one black hair sprouting somewhere near it, but he was disappointed. His best friend, Tommy Griffiths, who had been born on the same day, was different: he had a cracked voice and a dark fuzz on his upper lip, and his peter was like a man’s. It was humiliating.
As Billy was using the pot, he looked out of the window. All he could see was the slag heap, a slate-gray mountain of tailings, waste from the coal mine, mostly shale and sandstone. This was how the world appeared on the second day of Creation, Billy thought, before God said: “Let the earth bring forth grass.” A gentle breeze wafted fine black dust off the slag onto the rows of houses.
Inside the room there was even less to look at. This was the back bedroom, a narrow space just big enough for the single bed, a chest of drawers, and Gramper’s old trunk. On the wall was an embroidered sampler that read:BELIEVE ON THE
LORD JESUS CHRIST
AND THOU SHALT
BE SAVED
There was no mirror.
One door led to the top of the stairs, the other to the front bedroom, which could be accessed only through this one. It was larger and had space for two beds. Da and Mam slept there, and Billy’s sisters had too, years ago. The eldest, Ethel, had now left home, and the other three had died, one from measles, one from whooping co
ugh, and one from diphtheria. There had been an older brother, too, who had shared Billy’s bed before Gramper came. Wesley had been his name, and he had been killed underground by a runaway dram, one of the wheeled tubs that carried coal.
Billy pulled on his shirt. It was the one he had worn to school yesterday. Today was Thursday, and he changed his shirt only on Sunday. However, he did have a new pair of trousers, his first long ones, made of the thick water-repellent cotton called moleskin. They were the symbol of entry into the world of men, and he pulled them on proudly, enjoying the heavy masculine feel of the fabric. He put on a thick leather belt and the boots he had inherited from Wesley, then he went downstairs.
Most of the ground floor was taken up by the living room, fifteen feet square, with a table in the middle and a fireplace to one side, and a homemade rug on the stone floor. Da was sitting at the table reading an old copy of the Daily Mail, a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of his long, sharp nose. Mam was making tea. She put down the steaming kettle, kissed Billy’s forehead, and said: “How’s my little man on his birthday?”
Billy did not reply. The “little” was wounding, because he was little, and the “man” was just as hurtful because he was not a man. He went into the scullery at the back of the house. He dipped a tin bowl into the water barrel, washed his face and hands, and poured the water away in the shallow stone sink. The scullery had a copper with a fire grate underneath, but it was used only on bath night, which was Saturday.
