Dominion

by C. J. Sansom

  Kapp turned to him cheerfully. ‘Otherwise, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘First the fingers, then the toes. This little piggy went to market, then this one. None of them stay at home. Then we go for the eyes.’

  ‘We don’t need them alive, you see,’ Gunther continued. ‘And then, if you still don’t talk, it’ll be your turn, though in your case we’d probably combine the physical methods with drugs. We learned a few things from the Russians there. So you see, however brave you are personally, it won’t help in the end. But we’d rather have you fully awake. You’ll talk tomorrow at the latest, you should understand that.’ He looked intently at Drax. ‘There’s no shame in talking to save others. Four people are on the run, four lives. They’ll probably get caught but even if some of them get away the Americans will almost certainly kill them once they’ve got what they want out of Muncaster.’ Drax’s head jerked up at that. Gunther didn’t know what the Americans had planned for them, though he wouldn’t have been surprised if they killed Muncaster, given he had a head full of dangerous knowledge. He could see, though, that the thought hadn’t yet crossed Drax’s mind. ‘Weigh that against your parents being tortured to death.’

  There was silence for several seconds, then Drax said, his voice desperately weary, ‘I don’t know anything. That’s how we do things, on a need-to-know basis only. I haven’t a clue why the Americans want Muncaster, I’ve no idea.’

  Gunther nodded. ‘We know more than you think.’ He took a deep breath. Time for his bluff, while Drax was in a weakened, shocked state. He said, ‘You were planning to leave the country. A submarine, we believe, from the Sussex coast. The coasts are being watched, we’ll pick them up.’

  Gunther saw from Drax’s surprised expression that his guesswork had been right; this was what they were going to do.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Drax looked appalled.

  Gunther didn’t answer, just inclined his head. The Englishman was silent for a moment, then lowered his head and began to cry, weeping like a child, his shoulders shaking, all that proud reserve gone. He had broken. Gessler smirked. Gunther closed his eyes.

  ‘If I tell you the little I know will you let my parents go?’ Drax’s voice was toneless and dead. ‘You seem to know all of it already.’

  ‘Of course. We’ve no further use for them.’

  Drax’s shoulders sagged. ‘I don’t know where we were going to be picked up from, except that the rendezvous is only an hour from here.’

  Gunther considered. An hour to the coast. Central Sussex. A lot of cliffs there, which narrowed down the places they could be picked up from. He said, ‘Thank you.’ He gestured at the wall where the screen had been. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that, I really am.’

  Drax said, ‘All that you know – who told you?’

  ‘I’d worked it out; the look on your face confirmed I was right. And now we can narrow the pickup point down further.’

  Drax’s head fell hopelessly forward, the way people’s often did after they broke. Gunther nodded to Gessler, who followed him and Syme out of the cell, leaving Kapp on guard. They halted a few feet along the corridor. Up ahead a young SS man was sitting at his desk, filling in forms. The telephone on his desk rang and he picked it up.

  Gessler said, ‘Well done, Hoth. That was a masterpiece of interrogation. Admirable. We could turn this round after all.’

  ‘Thank you. I would ask you, please make sure the guards keep a careful eye on him. He’ll be a suicide risk. Guilt will come now.’

  Syme said, ‘You bluffed him. About the submarine.’

  ‘Yes. We can tell our people on the Isle of Wight to look for an American submarine off the Sussex Coast. He’s not sophisticated. People like him are brave, but they have too narrow a focus. Since being captured he was probably thinking only about how to bear great pain himself. He would have held out a long time.’

  Gessler laughed. ‘You had him crying like a child. Like a little girl.’

  Gunther said sadly, ‘My brother used to say that for him that was the hardest thing to see. When grown men cried like children, kneeling beside the graves his men had made them dig.’

  Gessler frowned at the unexpected remark. He said a little stiffly, ‘Well, keep me closely informed.’ He nodded at Syme and walked away down the corridor, boots clacking on the marble. The young SS man had put the phone down and was standing up. His face was very pale. He saluted Gessler, then said something to him in a low voice.

  Gunther turned to Syme. ‘You need to work out the best methods for each individual, you see. I learned that a long time ago.’ He saw that Syme’s face had a film of sweat on it, he was blinking fast. He looked as though he might faint.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Gunther asked, extending an arm.

  ‘Yes,’ Syme said brusquely. ‘I was just expecting something a bit rougher, a bit more – basic. The film – I was a bit taken aback.’

  ‘It was too much for you?’ Odd, Gunther thought, what sensibilities appeared in the unlikeliest people. If they’d beaten Drax up, Syme would probably have been happy to join in.

  ‘’Course not,’ Syme answered sharply. ‘It’s just it was so bloody hot in there, all those people. And the camera, those things generate a lot of heat. A lot of heat,’ he repeated fiercely.

  Sudden footsteps, Gessler was walking quickly towards them, his hands raised, as though he were trying to ward off something terrible. Behind him, at the desk, the boy had put his head in his hands.

  ‘What?’ Gunther asked.

  Gessler’s face was stricken, his lips trembling. ‘It’s the Führer,’ he said. ‘He’s had a heart attack. Our Führer is gone.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  ON SUNDAY, 30 NOVEMBER, Sarah had travelled by train to Brighton. She had been told where she was going the previous evening by Meg, who had returned to Dilys’ with a suitcase of new clothes, some money and new identity papers. Briskly, Meg went through the details of Sarah’s new identity. From now on she would be Mrs Sarah Hardcastle, widow of a London schoolteacher. She would be staying in a Brighton boarding house until David, and some others, were ready to join her. The cover story was that she had wanted to get out of London for a few days following her husband’s death in a car crash earlier that year. Meg didn’t know or wouldn’t say where they would be going after that.

  Dilys had dyed her hair – it was dark red now, the colour surprisingly convincing, the style quite short. By the time Meg left it was late evening and Sarah was very tired. She spent the night on a camp bed in the room where she had met Jackson, and where, Dilys told her, her customers waited. I’ve gone from a suburban lounge to a prostitute’s waiting room, all in a day, Sarah thought. She wanted to laugh hysterically.

  Next morning Dilys walked with Sarah to Piccadilly Circus tube station, Sarah carrying her suitcase and wearing a pair of tough, sensible shoes. In the crowded foyer Dilys hugged her tightly. ‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. She added, ‘Will you be all right? Where are you going to go?’

  ‘A new flat. Good luck, love.’ Then Dilys hugged her again and left. Sarah forced herself to move, she shouldn’t just stand there, she would draw stares. A little group of young Blackshirts, the electric flash of the BUF on their armbands, strolled along on their way to some function; she walked rapidly away to the ticket booth. She caught a tube to Victoria and bought a ticket for the Brighton train. Waiting on the platform, her heart jumped at a glimpse of a patrolling policeman. She was glad to get on the train.

  After the horrible chaos of the last few days the normality of the train journey felt surreal. Sarah stared blankly at the Southern Railway Company crest embossed on the seat opposite her. Someone had left a newspaper there. It was the Guardian, the old liberal newspaper which her father always took. Beaverbrook had bought it last year and now it was laden with right-wing propaganda like all the other papers. An article said there had been an incident in France: Communist agitators from the Resistance had attacked a lorry taking Jews to the internment camp at
Drancy. Some gendarmes had been killed, a couple of Jews too. She wondered how much of it was true; she knew the French Resistance was said to be growing larger and to be even more violent than the British. There was an article too about a senior civil servant, working for the junior health minister, Church, being suspected of having relations with a prostitute, visiting brothels with his cousin, a mental hospital superintendent, Dr Wilson. She was dubious; people said the government often blackened the names of people they wanted rid of by leaking such stories to the press. Either way, he would soon be gone.

  There were few people on the train, and by the time it left Haywards Heath her carriage was almost deserted. Sarah had been to Brighton a few times as a child, on summer day trips with her family, the train full of eager, excited children. At the thought she might never see any of her family again she burst into tears, sat hunched over in the empty carriage sobbing quietly. She knew she should do nothing to draw attention to herself but couldn’t help it.

  She had been told to get a taxi to the hotel. Brighton Station smelt of smoke but when she stepped outside the air was wonderfully clean, bitterly cold with a salty tang. She hailed a taxi and it drove her through dingy streets, then came out into the broad avenue of the Steine. She saw the domed roofs of Brighton Pavilion, George IV’s Indian palace. The taxi drove across the Steine and turned into a side-street of narrow three-storey buildings with flaking paint, hotel signs above the doors, boards with Vacancies in the windows. At the end of the road was the sea, startlingly close.

  The hotel was called Channel View. There was no porter and she dragged her suitcase into a dark, poky vestibule. Behind the little counter sat a small, tired-looking woman in her forties. Sarah put her identity card on the desk. ‘Mrs Hardcastle,’ the woman said, then looked at her anxiously. ‘Come through and meet my husband.’ Her voice had a gentle burr, an almost rural sound. She opened a flap and Sarah followed her into a little office where a plump, balding man in shirt sleeves and waistcoat sat working on some accounts. His wife gave him Sarah’s identity card. He read it, then looked up and studied her.

  ‘You got down here all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You look as though you’ve been crying.’ His tone was reproving.

  ‘Yes. On the train. There was no-one else in the carriage.’

  He looked at her severely. ‘Someone might have come in.’

  Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Two days ago I was a normal housewife. Now I’m on the run, I’ve learned my husband’s a spy, I’ve no home and I don’t know if my family are all right or whether I’ll ever see them again. So yes, I’m sorry, but I had a cry.’

  ‘You didn’t know your husband was working for us?’

  ‘He never told me.’

  ‘Well, that’s often best,’ the man said, his voice less hostile. ‘Your family are all right by the way, we know that. We’ve been watching their houses. Your sister and parents have had Special Branch visits, but that’s all. Your brother-in-law has a lot of Blackshirt friends –’ he looked at her sharply again for a moment – ‘that will have helped.’

  Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘What about my husband?’

  ‘There are delays in London. It may be a few days before he gets here.’

  ‘Then what happens?’ Sarah asked. ‘No-one will tell me.’

  ‘The plan’s to get you out of England. You and your husband, and some friends.’

  ‘How? Where to?’

  The woman said, ‘Somewhere safe, we can’t tell you any more for now. I’m sorry.’ She added, ‘I’m Jane by the way, and this is Bert.’

  Bert handed back her identity card. ‘We’ve got you a room here. You can go for little walks round the town if you like but don’t stray too far. We don’t have many residents this time of year, just a few commercial travellers who come and go. Best if you keep yourself to yourself.’

  ‘I’ve been told to say I wanted to get out of London after my husband died. I can say I don’t like all the fuss about Christmas. It’s true, I hate it.’

  ‘Good,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t get into conversation with the other guests, some of them have a roaming eye.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Mealtimes are on a card in your room.’ Jane gave her a key. ‘There’s hot water on if you want a bath.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. As she went through the door Bert said quietly, ‘Mrs Hardcastle?’

  She turned. ‘Yes?’

  He smiled. ‘Just making sure you remember your new name.’

  The hotel was a strange little place, with narrow corridors, small rooms, threadbare carpets. The bed in Sarah’s room sagged from the hundreds of people who had slept there before. Channel View was probably full in summer, but now the only other guests were a few middle-aged men in shabby suits who nodded to her in the dining room. She nodded back, politely but distantly. The food was awful.

  For the next few days Sarah barely spoke to anyone. Several times when Jane was on her own at reception, Sarah asked if there was any word of when her husband’s group was coming, and always she was told not yet. Jane was pleasant enough but Sarah sensed that Bert was uneasy about her. She wondered if it was because she wasn’t in the Resistance, she was just a spy’s wife, an encumbrance.

  She avoided the communal lounge, only going in to see the news on the old TV. On her first night she wondered whether there might be something about the policeman Meg had killed, half expecting to see her house appear on the screen, but there was nothing. They would hush it up of course. There was only the usual news – there had been a big demonstration in Delhi, the Blackshirt mayor of Walsall had been shot and injured by Resistance terrorists, the Germans were making ‘temporary strategic withdrawals’ on sections of the Central Volga. When the news was on some of the commercial travellers muttered and grunted about Communists and uppity wogs.

  Sarah spent long hours in her room, reading dog-eared romantic novels that guests had left behind in a little bookcase, or sitting looking out of her window, with its view of a yard choked with bins and the backs of neighbouring buildings. During the short December afternoons she went for walks around the almost-empty town, drinking tea in little cafes. Once or twice she saw small groups of Jive Boys on the corners in their long, colourful coats and drainpipe trousers; but they looked listless and pasty, smoking roll-ups. Probably just unemployed lads, she thought, as she steered away from them. Occasionally, on walls, she saw the Resistance logos ‘V’ and ‘R’ painted, just like in London. The weather was sunny but very cold; there was ice on the pond in a little park she walked round. She thought constantly about David, where he could be, what he was doing, when he would get here. She ached with worry and longing but she was also filled with fury about his lies to her, going over his absences in her head. She knew David had loved her once, but then Charlie had died and he had turned aside from their quiet home life together to become a spy. Without a thought of telling her, taking her into his confidence. Making her into what Bert thought she was, an encumbrance. She remembered her desperate jealous anxiety when she thought David was having an affair with Carol. She determined she would never put herself through anything like that again. If David didn’t love her any more they had to part. If they survived this, if they did go on to new lives, she would not cling onto something that was dead. Walking the cold streets, the seagulls making their sad cries above her, she could have cried out, too, with desperation and anger and sorrow at the thought of losing the only man she had ever loved.

  On her sixth night at the boarding house, she saw a thin man in his forties with a big, untidy moustache at the next table, reading the London Evening Standard. The headline caught her eye. ‘Fog Brings London to Standstill’. Hesitantly, she asked the man if she might see the paper when he had finished with it.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. He nodded at the headline. He had friendly brown eyes, like a dog’s. Sarah noticed there was dandruff on his collar. ‘I’ve just come down from the cit
y, it’s brought chaos up there. Worst ever, some say. Lot of people in hospital. Are you from London?’ he added.

  ‘Yes. Just – having a few days away.’ She heard the coolness in her voice.

  The man smiled gently. ‘I’ll leave you the paper when I’m finished.’ He nodded and returned to his meal.

  Later that evening Sarah sought out Bert and Jane in their little office. She said she was worried there was still no news and asked if the smog in London was part of the problem. Jane smiled nervously. ‘I’m sorry, dear. We don’t know any more than you’ve been told. It’s always a worry for us too, the waiting time.’ From the way Jane had spoken, this wasn’t the first time they had helped people get out of England.

  On Sunday she went for another walk, down to the promenade. It was still sunny but very cold, the sea completely still and calm, the promenade deserted apart from a few elderly people walking dogs. The sea looked freezing cold. She walked towards the Palace Pier, past closed booths advertising their summer wares in faded paint.

  She went onto the pier, her shoes clumping on the wooden boards. She passed the carousel and the shuttered freak show, and walked on towards the end of the pier. There was a little breeze out here, cold as a knife, the sound of the sea all around.

  There was only one other person there, leaning over the rail, gazing towards the shore. She recognized the man whose paper she had borrowed at the hotel. There was a battered suitcase at his feet. Hearing her footsteps he looked up, tipping the brim of his bowler hat to her. ‘Out for some sea air?’ he asked.