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Night of the Fox
Jack Higgins


A classic thriller featuring the most daring escape of the Second World War, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Eagle Has Landed.American Colonel Hugh Kelso is washed ashore on German-held Jersey in Spring 1944, with top-secret D-Day plans in his possession. To get him back, the most daring escape of the Second World War must be planned and executed.Harry Martineau, bilingual philosophy professor turned assassin, and Sarah Drayton, a beautiful, half-French Jersey native, are selected to carry out the mission, and set off to steal the most precious Allied asset from under the noses of the Nazis…



























Copyright (#ulink_b2d91436-b527-5a35-98a8-3a1c7f619cde)


This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Jack Higgins 1986

Jack Higgins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content or written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007234806

Ebook Edition © December 2012 ISBN: 9780007290444

Version: 2017-10-17


Table of Contents

Title Page (#u0bdc0938-fb47-5e70-86f5-acee7a2ff562)

Copyright (#uaa85de9f-1077-52c3-a7e7-af18b4686ecb)

Publisher’s Note (#u8c85b24a-1738-50c2-a2c3-3a64c66e3b43)

Dedication (#u39a3e3f3-5f65-5c4c-9e31-26991320ead2)

Chapter 1 (#u0b8896e9-d773-50e5-accc-55e28f4c0e1a)

London: 1944 (#u3e0744ae-1540-5229-8cae-5739d23d2c7c)

Chapter 2 (#uc1e95977-3cd8-59f4-ade3-742427ff9b71)

Chapter 3 (#ueaf5ed01-d3e8-5f4b-a024-0cd80c834507)

Chapter 4 (#u3f44e409-c6eb-500a-a079-3c20cea6fc16)

Chapter 5 (#ua920a2e1-cbd1-5e4a-8774-a97b353a0911)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Jersey: 1985 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Jack Higgins (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Publisher’s Note (#ulink_0ae3b102-fc3b-5ca3-8fab-1b918db60c3c)


NIGHT OF THE FOX was first published in the UK by Collins in 1986. It was later published in paperback by Penguin but has been out of print for several years.

In 2012, it seemed to the author and his publishers that it was a pity to leave such a wonderful story languishing on his shelves. So we are delighted to be able to bring back NIGHT OF THE FOX for the pleasure of the vast majority of us who never had a chance to read the earlier editions.


For Vivienne Mylne


The German Occupation of the British Channel Islands during the Second World War is a matter of fact. Although mention is made of certain political and military leaders within the historical context of the period, it must be stressed that this is a work of fiction, nor is any reference intended to living persons.




1 (#ulink_0e512f6f-4642-517b-a437-2f603cb9e2be)


The Romans used to think that the souls of the departed stayed near their tombs. It was easy to believe that on a cold March morning, with a sky so black that it was as if night was about to fall.

I stood in the granite archway and looked in at the graveyard. The notice board said Parish Church of St Brelade and the place was crammed with headstones and tombs, and here and there a granite cross reared up. There was a winged angel on the far side, I noticed that, and then thunder rumbled on the horizon and rain swept in across the bay.

The porter at the hotel had given me an umbrella and I put it up and ventured in. On Sunday in Boston I’d never heard of the British Channel Islands off the coast of France or the Island of Jersey. Now it was Thursday and here I was having traveled halfway round the world to seek the final answer to something that had taken three years out of my life.

The church was very old and built of granite. I moved toward it through the tombstones, pausing to look out over the bay. The tide was out and there was a fine sweep of golden sands extending to a concrete seawall and I could see my hotel.

I heard voices and, turning, saw two men in cloth caps, sacks over their shoulders, crouching under a cypress tree by the far wall of the graveyard. They stood up and moved away, laughing together as if at some joke, and I noticed they were carrying spades. They disappeared around the back of the church and I crossed to the wall.

There was a freshly dug grave, covered with a tarpaulin although the tree gave it some protection from the rain. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so excited. It was as if it had been waiting for me and I turned and moved through the headstones to the entrance of the church, opened the door and went inside.

I’d expected a place of darkness and gloom, but the lights were on and it was really very beautiful, the vaulted ceiling unusual in that it was constructed of granite, no evidence of wooden beams there at all. I walked toward the altar and stood for a moment, looking around me, aware of the quiet. There was the click of a door opening and closing. A man approached.

He had white hair and eyes of the palest blue. He wore a black cassock and carried a raincoat over one arm. His voice was dry and very old and there was a hint of Irish to it when he spoke. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Are you the rector?’

‘Oh, no.’ He smiled good-humoredly. ‘They put me out to grass a long time ago. My name is Cullen. Canon Donald Cullen. You’re an American?’

‘That’s right.’ I shook hands. He had a surprisingly firm grip. ‘Alan Stacey.’

‘Your first visit to Jersey?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Until a few days ago I never knew the place existed. Like most Americans, I’d only heard of New Jersey.’

He smiled. We moved toward the door and he carried on, ‘You’ve chosen a bad time of the year for your first visit. Jersey can be one of the most desirable places on earth, but not usually during March.’

‘I didn’t have much choice,’ I said. ‘You’re burying someone here today. Harry Martineau.’

He had started to pull on his raincoat and paused in surprise. ‘That’s right. I’m performing the ceremony myself, as a matter of fact. Two o’clock this afternoon. Are you a relative?’

‘Not exactly, although I sometimes feel as if I am. I’m an assistant professor of philosophy at Harvard. I’ve been working on a biography of Martineau for the past three years.’

‘I see.’ He opened the door and we went out into the porch.

‘Do you know much about him?’ I asked.

‘Very little, besides the extraordinary way he met his end.’

‘And the even more extraordinary circumstance of his last rites,’ I said. ‘After all, Canon, it isn’t often you get to bury a man forty years after his death.’

The bungalow was at the other end of St Brelade’s Bay, close to L’Horizon Hotel where I was staying. It was small and unpretentious, but the living room was surprisingly large, comfortable and cluttered, two walls lined with books. Sliding windows opened to a terrace and a small garden, the bay beyond. The tide was rushing in, the wind lifting the sea into whitecaps, and rain rattled against the window.

My host came in from the kitchen and put a tray on a small table by the fire. ‘I hope you don’t mind tea.’

‘Tea will be fine.’

‘My wife was the coffee drinker in the family, but she died three years ago. I could never abide the stuff myself.’

He filled my cup and pushed it toward me as I sat down on the other side of the table from him. The silence hung between us. He raised his cup and drank very precisely, waiting.

‘You’re very comfortable here,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do very well. Lonely, of course. The great weakness of all human beings, Professor Stacey, is that we all need somebody.’ He refilled his cup. ‘I spent three years in Jersey as a boy and grew to love the place very much.’

‘That would be easy enough.’ I looked out at the bay. ‘It’s very beautiful.’

‘I returned on holiday on many occasions. When I retired, I was a canon of Winchester Cathedral. Our only son moved to Australia many years ago, so …’ He shrugged. ‘Jersey seemed an obvious choice as my wife had owned this bungalow for many years. A legacy from an uncle.’

‘That must have been convenient.’

‘Yes, especially with the housing laws the way they are here.’ He put down his cup, took out a pipe and started to fill it from a worn leather pouch. ‘So,’ he said briskly. ‘Now you know all about me. What about you and friend Martineau?’

‘Do you know much about him?’

‘I’d never heard of the man until a few days ago when my good friend, Dr Drayton, came to see me, explained the circumstances in which the body had been recovered and told me it was being shipped from London for burial here.’

‘You’re aware of the manner of his death?’

‘In a plane crash in 1945.’

‘January 1945, to be precise. The RAF had a unit called the Enemy Aircraft Flight during the Second World War. They operated captured German planes to evaluate performance and so on.’

‘I see.’

‘Harry Martineau worked for the Ministry of Economic Warfare. In January 1945, he went missing when traveling as an observer in an Arado 96, a German two-seater training plane being operated by the Enemy Aircraft Flight. It was always believed to have gone down in the sea.’

‘And?’

‘Two weeks ago it was found during excavations in an Essex marsh. Work on the building site was halted while an RAF unit recovered what was left.’

‘And Martineau and the pilot were still inside?’

‘What was left of them. For some reason the authorities kept a low profile on the affair. News didn’t filter through to me until last weekend. I caught the first plane out. Arrived in London on Monday morning.’

He nodded. ‘You say you’ve been working on a biography of him. What makes him so special? As I told you, I’d never even heard his name before.’

‘Nor had the general public,’ I said. ‘But in the thirties, in academic circles …’ I shrugged. ‘Bertrand Russell considered him one of the most brilliant and innovative minds in his field.’

‘Which was?’

‘Moral philosophy.’

‘An interesting study,’ the canon said.

‘For a fascinating man. He was born in Boston. His father was in shipping. Wealthy, but not outrageously so. His mother, although born in New York, was of German parentage. Her father taught for some years at Columbia then returned to Germany in 1925 as professor of surgery at Dresden University.’ I got up and walked to the window, thinking about it as I peered out. ‘Martineau went to Harvard, did a doctorate at Heidelberg, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, a Fellow of Trinity College and Croxley Professor of Moral Philosophy by the age of thirty-eight.’

‘A remarkable achievement,’ Cullen said.

I turned. ‘But you don’t understand. Here was a man who was questioning everything. Turning his whole field upside down. And then the Second World War broke out and the rest is silence. Until now, that is.’

‘Silence?’

‘Oh, he left Oxford, we know that. Worked for the Ministry of Defence and then the Ministry of Economic Warfare, as I told you. Many academics did that. But the tragedy was that he seems to have stopped working altogether in his chosen field. No more papers and the book he’d been writing for years was left unfinished. We’ve got the manuscript at Harvard. Not a line written after September nineteen thirty-nine.’

‘How very strange.’

I went back and sat down. ‘We have all his papers in the Harvard Library. What really intrigued me on going through them was a personal thing.’

‘And what was that?’

‘When I finished high school at eighteen, instead of going straight to Harvard I joined the Marines. Did a year in Vietnam until a bullet in the left kneecap sent me home for good. Martineau did the same sort of thing. Joined the American Expeditionary Force in the last few months of the First World War, underage, I might say, and served as an infantry private in the trenches in Flanders. I was fascinated by the fact that in turning from what we’d gone through, we’d both sought another answer in the same way.’

‘From the hell of war to the cool recesses of the mind.’ Canon Cullen knocked out his pipe in the hearth. ‘I can’t remember who said that. Some war poet or other.’

‘God save me from those,’ I said. ‘Nam cost me a permanently stiff left leg, three years in the hands of psychiatrists and a failed marriage.’

The clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve. Cullen got up, moved to the sideboard and poured whisky from a cut glass decanter into two glasses. He brought them back and handed me one. ‘I was in Burma during the war myself, which was bad enough.’ He sipped a little whisky and put down his glass on the hearth. ‘And so, Professor, what about the rest?’

‘The rest?’

‘Priests are supposed to be ingenuous souls who know nothing of the reality of life,’ he said in that dry, precise voice. ‘Rubbish, of course. Our business is confession, human pain, misery. I know people, Professor, after fifty-two years as an ordained priest, and one learns to know when they are not telling you everything.’ He put a match to his pipe and puffed away. ‘Which applies to you, my friend, unless I’m very much mistaken.’

I took a deep breath. ‘He was in uniform when they found him.’

He frowned. ‘But you said he was working for the Ministry of Economic Warfare.’

‘German Luftwaffe uniform,’ I said. ‘Both he and the pilot.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘I have a friend from the Vietnam days in the Marines called Tony Bianco. He’s with the CIA at our embassy in London. They get to know things, these people. I had problems with the Ministry of Defence the other day. They were giving very little away about Martineau and that plane.’

‘Your friend checked up for you?’

‘And found out something else. The newspaper report about that Arado being from the Enemy Aircraft Flight. That’s suspect, too.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they always carried RAF rondels. And according to Bianco’s informant, this one still had Luftwaffe markings.’

‘And you say you couldn’t get any more information from official sources?’

‘None at all. Ridiculous though it may seem, Martineau and that flight are still covered by some wartime security classification.’

The old man frowned. ‘After forty years?’

‘There’s more,’ I said. ‘I had this kind of problem last year when I was researching. Ran into roadblocks, if you know what I mean. I discovered that Martineau was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in January 1944. One of those awards that appears in the list without explanation. No information about what he’d done to earn it.’

‘But that’s a military award and a very high one at that. Martineau was a civilian.’

‘Apparently civilians have qualified on rare occasions, but it all begins to fit with a story I heard when researching at Oxford three years ago. Max Kubel, the nuclear physicist, was a professor at Oxford for many years and a friend of Martineau’s.’

‘Now I have heard about him,’ Cullen said. ‘He was a German Jew, was he not, who managed to get out before the Nazis could send him to a concentration camp?’

‘He died in nineteen seventy-three,’ I said. ‘But I managed to interview the old man who’d been his manservant at his Oxford college for more than thirty years. He told me that during the big German offensive in nineteen forty that led to Dunkirk, Kubel was held by the Gestapo under house arrest at Freiburg, just across the German border from France. An SS officer arrived with an escort to take him to Berlin.’

‘So?’

‘The old boy, Howard his name was, said that Kubel told him years ago that the SS officer was Martineau.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘Not at the time. He was ninety-one and senile, but one has to remember Martineau’s background. Quite obviously he could have passed for a German any time he wanted. He not only had the language but had the family background.’

Cullen nodded. ‘So, in view of more recent developments you’re prepared to give more credence to that story?’

‘I don’t know what to think anymore.’ I shrugged. ‘Nothing makes any sense. Martineau and Jersey, for example. To the best of my knowledge he never visited the place and he died five months before it was freed from Nazi occupation.’ I swallowed the rest of my whisky. ‘Martineau has no living relatives, I know that because he never married, so who the hell is this Dr Drayton of yours? I know one thing. He must have one hell of a pull with the Ministry of Defence to get them to release the body to him.’

‘You’re absolutely right.’ Canon Cullen poured me another Scotch whisky. ‘In all respects, but one.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘Dr Drayton,’ he said, ‘is not a he, but a she. Dr Sarah Drayton, to be precise.’ He raised his glass to toast me.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

Cullen sounded even more Irish as he lifted his voice bravely against the heavy rain. He wore a dark cloak over his vestments and one of the funeral men stood beside him holding an umbrella. There was only one mourner, Sarah Drayton, standing on the other side of the open grave, an undertaker behind her with another umbrella.

She looked perhaps forty-eight or fifty although, as I discovered later, she was sixty, small and with a figure still trim in the black two-piece suit and hat. Her hair was short, expertly cut and iron gray. She was not in any way conventionally beautiful, with a mouth that was rather too large and hazel eyes above wide cheekbones. It was a face of considerable character with an impression of someone who had seen the best and worst that life had to offer, and there was an extraordinary stillness to her. If I had seen her only in passing, I’d have turned for a second look. She was that sort of woman.

She ignored me completely and I stayed back under what shelter the trees provided, getting thoroughly damp in spite of my umbrella. Cullen concluded the service, then moved toward her and spoke briefly. She kissed him on the cheek and he turned and moved away toward the church, followed by the funeral men.

She stayed there for a while at the graveside and the two gravediggers waited respectfully a few yards away. She still ignored me as I moved forward, picked up a little damp soil and threw it down on the coffin.

‘Dr Drayton?’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to intrude. My name is Alan Stacey. I wonder if I might have a few words? I’m not a reporter, by the way.’

Her voice was deeper than I had expected, calm and beautifully modulated. She said, without looking at me, ‘I know very well who you are, Professor Stacey. I’ve been expecting you at any time these past three years.’ She turned and smiled and suddenly looked absolutely enchanting and about twenty years of age. ‘We really should get out of this rain before it does us both a mischief. That’s sound medical advice and for free. My car is in the road outside. I think you’d better come back for a drink.’

The house was no more than five minutes away, reached by a narrow country lane along which she drove expertly at considerable speed. It stood in about an acre of well-tended garden surrounded by beech trees through which one could see the bay far below. It was Victorian from the look of it, with long narrow windows and green shutters at the front and a portico at the entrance. The door was opened instantly as we went up the steps by a tall, somber-looking man in a black alpaca jacket. He had silver hair and wore steel-rimmed glasses.

‘Ah, Vito,’ she said as he took her coat. ‘This is Professor Stacey.’

‘Professore.’ He bowed slightly.

‘We’ll have coffee in the library later,’ she said. ‘I’ll see to the drinks.’

‘Of course, Contessa.’

He turned away and paused and spoke to her in Italian. She shook her head and answered fluently in the same language. He went through a door at the rear of the hall.

‘Contessa?’ I asked.

‘Oh, don’t listen to Vito.’ She dismissed my query politely, but firmly. ‘He’s a terrible snob. This way.’

The hall was cool and pleasant. Black and white tiled floor, a curving staircase and two or three oil paintings on the wall. Eighteenth-century seascapes. She opened a double mahogany door and led the way into a large library. The walls were lined with books, and French windows looked out to the garden. There was an Adam fireplace with a fire burning brightly in the basket grate and a grand piano, the top crammed with photos, mostly in silver frames.

‘Scotch all right for you?’ she asked

‘Fine.’

She crossed to a sideboard and busied herself at the drinks tray. ‘How did you know who I was?’ I asked. ‘Canon Cullen?’

‘I’ve known about you since you started work on Harry.’ She handed me a glass.

‘Who told you?’

‘Oh, friends,’ she said. ‘From the old days. The kind who get to know things.’

It made me think of Tony Bianco, my CIA contact at the embassy, and I was immediately excited. ‘Nobody seems to want to answer any of my questions at the Ministry of Defence.’

‘I don’t suppose they would.’

‘And yet they release the body to you. You must have influence?’

‘You could say that.’ She took a cigarette from a silver box, lit it and sat in a wing chair by the fire, crossing slim legs. ‘Have you ever heard of SOE, Professor?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Special Operations Executive. Set up by British Intelligence in 1940 on Churchill’s instructions to coordinate resistance and the underground movement in Europe.’

‘“Set Europe ablaze,” that’s what the old man ordered.’ Sarah Drayton flicked ash in the fire. ‘I worked for them.’

I was astonished. ‘But you can’t have been more than a child.’

‘Nineteen,’ she said. ‘In 1944.’

‘And Martineau?’

‘Look on the piano,’ she said. ‘The end photo in the silver frame.’

I crossed to the piano and picked the photo up and her face jumped out at me, strangely unchanged except in one respect. Her hair was startlingly blond and marcelled – that’s the term I think they used to use. She wore a little black hat and one of those coats from the wartime period with big shoulders and tight at the waist. She also wore silk stockings and high-heeled shoes and clutched a black patent-leather bag.

The man standing next to her was of medium height and wore a leather military trenchcoat over a tweed suit, hands thrust deep into the pockets. His face was shadowed by a dark slouch hat and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. The eyes were dark, no expression to them at all, and his smile had a kind of ruthless charm. He looked a thoroughly dangerous man.

Sarah Drayton got up and joined me. ‘Not much like the Croxley Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford there, is he?’

‘Where was it taken?’ I asked.

‘In Jersey. Not too far from here. May nineteen forty-four. The tenth, I think.’

‘But I’ve been in Jersey long enough to know that it was occupied by the Germans at that time,’ I said.

‘Very much so.’

‘And Martineau was here? With you?’

She crossed to a Georgian desk, opened a drawer and took out a small folder. When she opened it I saw at once that it contained several old photographs. She passed one to me. ‘This one I don’t keep on top of the piano for obvious reasons.’

She was dressed pretty much as she had. been in the other photo and Martineau wore the same leather trenchcoat. The only difference was the SS uniform underneath, the silver death’s-head badge in his cap. ‘Standartenführer Max Vogel,’ she said. ‘Colonel, to you. He looks rather dashing, doesn’t he?’ She smiled as she took it from me. ‘He had a weakness for uniforms, Harry.’

‘Dear God,’ I said. ‘What is all this?’

She didn’t answer, but simply passed me another photo. It was faded slightly, but still perfectly clear. A group of German officers. In front of them stood two men on their own. One was Martineau in the SS uniform, but it was the other who took my breath away. One of the best-known faces of the Second World War. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. The Desert Fox himself.

I said, ‘Was that taken here too?’

‘Oh yes.’ She put the photos back in the desk and picked up my glass. ‘I think you could do with another drink.’

‘Yes, I believe I could.’

She got me one, handed the glass to me, and we moved to the fire. She took a cigarette from the box. ‘I should stop, I suppose. Too late now. Another bad habit Harry taught me.’

‘Do I get an explanation?’

‘Why not?’ she said, and turned as rain drummed against the French windows. ‘I can’t think of anything better to do on an afternoon like this, can you?’



LONDON (#ulink_9055505a-e07f-56a2-9b1c-09f8deb936a8)




2 (#ulink_2128f48e-51ea-57ee-bab0-03ee893518d9)


It started, if one can ever be certain where anything starts, with a telephone call received by Brigadier Dougal Munro at his flat in Haston Place, ten minutes’ walk from the London headquarters of SOE in Baker Street. As head of Section D at SOE he had two phones by his bed, one routed straight through to his office. It was this that brought him awake at four o’clock on the morning of April 28, 1944.

He listened, face grave, then swore softly. ‘I’ll be right over. One thing, check if Eisenhower is in town.’

Within five minutes he was letting himself out of the front door, shivering in the damp cold, lighting the first cigarette of the day as he hurried along the deserted street. He was at that time sixty-five, a squat, powerful-looking man with white hair, his round, ugly face set off by steel-rimmed spectacles. He wore an old Burberry raincoat and carried an umbrella.

There was very little of the military in either his bearing or his appearance, which was hardly surprising. His rank of brigadier was simply to give him the necessary authority in certain quarters. Until 1939, Dougal Munro had been an archaeologist by profession. An Egyptologist, to be more precise, and fellow of All Souls at Oxford. For three years now, head of Section D at SOE. What was commonly referred to in the trade as the dirty tricks department.

He turned in at the entrance of Baker Street, nodded to the night guard and went straight upstairs. When he went into his office, Captain Jack Carter, his night duty officer, was seated behind his desk. Carter had a false leg, a legacy of Dunkirk. He reached for his stick and started to get up.

‘No, stay where you are, Jack,’ Munro told him. ‘Is there any tea?’

‘Thermos flask on the map table, sir.’

Munro unscrewed the flask, poured a cup and drank. ‘God, that’s foul, but at least it’s hot. Right, get on with it.’

Carter now got up and limped across. There was a map of the southwest of England on the table, concentrating mainly on Devon, Cornwall and the general area of the English Channel.

‘Exercise Tiger, sir,’ he said. ‘You remember the details?’

‘Simulated landings for Overlord.’

‘That’s right. Here in Lyme Bay in Devon there’s a place called Slapton Sands. It bears enough similarities to the beach we’ve designated Utah in the Normandy landings to make it invaluable for training purposes. Most of the young Americans going in have no combat experience.’

‘I know that, Jack,’ Munro said. ‘Go on.’

‘Last night’s convoy consisted of eight landing craft. Five from Plymouth and three from Brixham. Under naval escort, of course. They were to do a practice beach landing at Slapton.’

There was a pause. Munro said, ‘Tell me the worst.’

‘They were attacked at sea by German E-boats, we think the Fifth and Ninth Schnellboote Flotillas from Cherbourg.’

‘And the damage?’

‘Two landing craft sunk for certain. Others torpedoed and damaged.’

‘And the butcher’s bill?’

‘Difficult to be accurate at the moment. Around two hundred sailors and four hundred and fifty soldiers.’

Munro said. ‘Are you trying to tell me we lost six hundred and fifty American servicemen last night? Six hundred and fifty and we haven’t even started the invasion of Europe?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Munro walked restlessly across the room and stood at the window. ‘Has Eisenhower been told?’

‘He’s in town, sir, at Hayes Lodge. He wants to see you at breakfast. Eight o’clock.’

‘And he’ll want the facts.’ Munro turned and went to his desk.

‘Were there any Bigots among those officers lost?’

‘Three, sir.’

‘Dear God, I warned them. I warned them about this,’ Munro said. ‘No Bigot to in any way undertake hazardous duty.’

Some months previously it had become regrettably clear that there were serious breaches of security, in some cases by high-ranking American officers, in connection with the projected invasion of Europe. The Bigot procedure had been brought in as an answer to the situation. It was an intelligence classification above Most Secret. Bigots knew what others did not – the details of the Allied invasion of Europe.

‘The three are missing so far,’ Carter said. ‘I’ve got their files.’

He laid them on the desk and Munro examined them quickly. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘Unbelievably stupid. Take this man, Colonel Hugh Kelso.’

‘The engineering officer?’ Carter said. ‘He’s already visited two of the Normandy beaches by night, courtesy of Four Commando, to check on the suitability of the terrain for vehicles.’

‘Sword Beach and Utah Beach.’ Munro groaned. ‘For God’s sake, Jack, what if he was picked up by one of those E-boats? He could be in enemy hands right now. And they’ll make him talk if they want to, you know that.’

‘I don’t think it’s likely that any of those missing were picked up by the Germans, sir. The captain of the destroyer Saladin, which was one of the escorts, said the E-boats attacked at a range of fifteen hundred meters, then got the hell out of it fast. Typical hit and run. A lot of darkness and confusion on both sides. And the weather isn’t too good. Wind force five to six and freshening, but I’m informed that the way the currents are in Lyme Bay, most of the bodies will come ashore. Already started.’

‘Most, Jack, most.’ Munro tapped the map on the table. ‘The Germans know we’re coming. They’re expecting the invasion. They’re ready for it. Hitler’s put Rommel himself in charge of all coastal fortifications. But they don’t know where and they don’t know when.’ He shook his head, staring down at the map. ‘Wouldn’t it be ironic if the greatest invasion in history had to be called off because one man with all the right information fell into the wrong hands.’

‘Not likely, sir, believe me,’ Carter said gently. ‘This Colonel Kelso will come in on the tide with the rest of them.’

‘God help me, but I pray that he does, Jack. I pray that he does,’ Dougal Munro said fervently.

But at that precise moment, Colonel Hugh Kelso was very much alive, more afraid than he had ever been in his life, cold and wet and in terrible pain. He lay huddled in the bottom of a life raft in several inches of water about a mile offshore from the Devon coast, a contrary current carrying him fast toward Start Point on the southernmost tip of Lyme Bay, and beyond Start Point were the open waters of the English Channel.

Kelso was forty-two, married with two daughters. A civil engineer, he had been managing director of the family firm of construction engineers in New York for several years and had a high reputation in the field. Which was why he’d been drafted into the Engineering Corps in 1942 with the immediate rank of major. His experience with the engineering problems involved in beach landings on various islands in the South Pacific had earned him a promotion and a transfer to SHAEF Headquarters in England to work on the preparation for the invasion of Europe.

He’d taken part in Exercise Tiger on the request of the commanding officer for one reason only. The American 1st Engineer Special Brigade was one of the units assigned to take the beach designated as Utah during the coming Normandy landings, and Hugh Kelso had actually visited Utah Beach six weeks previously, under cover of darkness, guarded by British commandos. Slapton Sands was as close to the terrain as they could get. It had seemed sensible to seek his opinion, which was why he’d sailed on LST 31 from Plymouth.

Like everyone on board, Kelso had been taken totally by surprise by the attack. A considerable number of flares had been noticed in the distance which had been assumed to be from British MTBs. And then the first torpedo had struck and the night had become a living hell of burning oil and screaming men. Although Kelso didn’t know it then, 413 men were killed from LST 31 alone. In his own case, he was blown off his feet by the force of the explosion and slammed against a rail, toppling into the water. His life jacket kept him afloat, of course, but he lost consciousness, coming to his senses to find himself being towed through the icy water.

The flames were a hundred yards away and in the reflected light he was aware only of an oil-soaked face.

‘You’re okay, sir. Just hang on. There’s a life raft here.’

The life raft loomed out of the darkness. It was the new model of inflatable developed from Pacific experience. A round, fat orange sphere riding high in the water and intended to carry as many as ten men. There was a canopy on top to protect the occupants from wind and weather, the entrance flap standing open.

‘I’ll get you in, sir, then I’ll go back for some more. Come on, up you go.’

Kelso felt weak, but his unknown friend was strong and muscular. He pushed hard, shoving Kelso in headfirst through the flap. And then Kelso was aware of the pain in his right leg, like a living thing and worse than anything he had ever known. He screamed and fainted.

When he came to, he was numb with cold and it took him a few moments to work out where he was. There was no sign of his unknown friend. He felt around in the darkness, then peered out through the open flap. Spray dashed in his face. There was no light anywhere, only the dark and the wind and the sound of the sea running. He checked the luminous dial of his waterproof watch. It was almost five o’clock and then he remembered that these life rafts carried an emergency kit. As he turned to feel for it, the pain started in his leg again. He gritted his teeth as his hands found the emergency kit box and got the lid open.

There was a waterproof flashlight in a clip on the inside of the lid and he switched it on. He was alone, as he had thought, in the orange cave, about a foot of water slopping around him. His uniform trousers were badly torn below the right knee, and when he put his hand inside gingerly he could feel the raised edges of bone in several places.

There was a Very pistol in the box and he fingered it for a moment. It seemed the obvious thing to send up one of its parachute distress flares, but then he paused, trying to make his tired brain think straight. What if the German naval units that had attacked them were still in the area? What if it was the enemy that picked him up? He couldn’t take that chance. He was, after all, a Bigot. In a matter of weeks an armada of six thousand ships would sail across the narrow waters of the English Channel and Kelso knew time and place. No, better to wait until dawn.

The leg was really hurting now and he rummaged in the box and found the medical kit with its morphine ampules. He jabbed one in his leg and, after a moment’s hesitation, used another. Then he found the bailer and wearily started to throw water out through the open flap. God, but he was tired. Too much morphine perhaps, but at least the pain had dulled and he dropped the bailer and pulled the plastic zip at the entrance and leaned back and was suddenly asleep.

On his right, a few hundred yards away, was Start Point. For a while he seemed to be drifting toward the rocks and then a contrary current pulled him away. Ten minutes later, the life raft passed that final point of land and a freshening wind drove it out into the cold waters of the English Channel.

Eisenhower was seated in the Regency bow window of the library at Hayes Lodge having breakfast of poached eggs, toast and coffee when the young aide showed Dougal Munro in.

‘Leave us, Captain,’ the general said and the aide withdrew. ‘Difficult to smile this morning, Brigadier.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Have you eaten?’

‘I haven’t eaten breakfast for years, General.’

For a moment, Eisenhower’s face was illuminated by that famous and inimitable smile. ‘Which shows you aren’t an old military hand. You prefer tea, don’t you?’

‘Yes, General.’

‘You’ll find it on the sideboard behind you – special order. Help yourself, then tell me what you know of this wretched business. My own people have already given me their version, but I’ve always had considerable respect for your people at SOE, you know that.’

Munro helped himself to the tea and sat in the window seat and gave Eisenhower a brief resume of the night’s events.

‘But surely the naval escorts should have been able to prevent such a thing happening,’ the general said. ‘On the other hand, I hear the weather wasn’t too good. It’s past belief. I visited Slapton myself only three days ago to see how the exercises were going. Went down by special train with Tedder and Omar Bradley.’

‘Most of the crews of your LSTs are new to those waters, and the English Channel at the best of times can be difficult.’ Munro shrugged. ‘We’ve had torpedo boats from the Royal Navy hanging around off Cherbourg regularly during these exercises because Cherbourg, as the General knows, is the most important E-boat base on the French coast. There was a sea mist and the Germans obviously slipped out with their silencers on and probably with their radar sets switched off. They do more than forty knots, those things. Nothing afloat that’s faster and they boxed rather cleverly on their approach. Fired off parachute flares so the people in the convoy assumed they were ours.’

‘Goddammit, you never assume anything in this game. I’m tired of telling people that.’ Eisenhower poured another coffee, stood up and went to the fire. ‘Bodies coming ashore by the hundred, so they tell me.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Needless to say, this whole thing stays under wraps. We’re going to arrange for some kind of mass grave down there in Devon for the time being. At least it’s a defense area under military rule, which should help. If this got out, so close to the invasion, it could have a terrible effect on morale.’

‘I agree.’ Munro hesitated and said carefully, ‘There is the question of the Bigots, General.’

‘Who should never have been there in the first place. No one knows the regulations on Bigots better than you.’

‘It could be worse, sir. There were three in all. Two of the bodies have already been recovered. The third, this man.’ Munro took a file from his briefcase and pushed it across. ‘Is still missing.’

Eisenhower read the file quickly. ‘Colonel Hugh Kelso.’ His face darkened. ‘But I know Kelso personally. He checked out two beaches in Normandy only weeks ago.’

‘Utah and Sword. On those occasions he had commandos nursing him and he also had an L pill with him, just in case he was caught. As the General knows, the cyanide in those things kills instantaneously.’

Eisenhower pushed the file across. ‘He knows, Brigadier, both when we’re going and where. The implications are past belief.’

‘We’ve men on the beaches around Slapton looking for him now, General. I’ve little reason to doubt that his body will turn up with the rest of them.’

‘Don’t try to make me feel good,’ Eisenhower told him sharply. ‘Some of those bodies will never come in on the tide. I know that and so do you, and if Kelso is one of them, we can never be certain that he wasn’t picked up by the enemy.’

‘That’s true, General,’ Munro admitted because there wasn’t really anything else he could say.

Eisenhower walked to the window. Rain dashed against the pane. ‘What a day,’ he said morosely. ‘One thing’s for sure. I can only think of one man who’ll have a smile on his face this morning.’

At that very moment Adolf Hitler was reading a report on the Slapton Sands affair in the map room of his underground headquarters known as Wolf’s Lair, near Rastenburg, deep in the forests of East Prussia.

Most of those important in the Nazi hierarchy were present. Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS and Chief of both State and Secret Police, Josef Goebbels, Reichsminister for Propaganda, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Secretary to the Führer among other things, and Oberführer Rattenhuber, Himmler’s Chief of Security and Commander of the SS guard at Rastenburg.

Hitler almost danced with delight and crumpled the thin paper of the message in one hand. ‘So, our Navy can still strike, and hard, right in the enemy’s own backyard! Three ships sunk, and hundreds of casualties.’ His eyes sparked. ‘A bad morning for General Eisenhower, gentlemen.’

There was general enthusiasm. ‘Good news indeed, my Führer,’ Goebbels said and delivered his usual high laugh.

Bormann, who had been the first to see the message, said quietly, ‘If we can do this to them off the coast of Devon, my Führer, all things are possible off the coast of France.’

‘They won’t even get ashore,’ Himmler put in.

‘Probably not,’ Hitler said, in high good humor. ‘But now, gentlemen, to the purpose of our meeting.’ They grouped around the circular table and he tapped the large-scale map of France. ‘The Westwall proceeds, I think.’ He turned to Bormann. ‘The report on Army Group B which I asked for? Has it arrived?’

Bormann turned inquiringly to Rattenhuber who said, ‘I’ve just had a report from the airfield. The courier, a Captain Koenig, landed five minutes ago. He’s on his way.’

‘Good.’ Hitler seemed abstracted now, as if somehow alone as he stared down at the map. ‘So, gentlemen, where do we start?’

On December 26, 1943, a remarkable and gifted young German officer, Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, reported for a meeting at Rastenburg with a time bomb in his briefcase. Unfortunately, the meeting did not take place, as the Führer had already departed for Bavaria for the Christmas holiday. In spite of having lost his left eye and right hand in action, von Stauffenberg was Chief of Staff to General Olbricht of the General Army Office and the center of a conspiracy of army generals whose aim was to assassinate the Führer and save Germany from disaster.

His own abortive attempt at Christmas 1943 was only one of many that had failed. Yet there was no shortage of volunteers to the cause, as witness Captain Karl Koenig traveling in the rear of the military car from the airfield to Wolf’s Lair on that gray April morning with the papers from Berlin that Hitler had requested. He was in a highly nervous state, which was hardly surprising when one considered the time bomb carefully placed in the false bottom of the briefcase. He had told the pilot at Rastenburg airfield to be ready for a quick turnaround and his fingers trembled as he lit a cigarette.

The SS driver and guard in front stared woodenly ahead, and as time passed, Koenig’s nervousness increased. There were minefields on either side in the gloomy woods, electric fences, guards patrolling everywhere with savage dogs and three gates to pass through to reach the inner compound. Still, time to arm the bomb. Once done, it would give him exactly thirty minutes, they had told him.

He reached for the lock on the left-hand strap of the briefcase and depressed it. There was an immediate and very powerful explosion which killed Koenig and the two guards instantly and blew the car apart.

Hitler was beside himself with rage, pacing up and down in the map room. ‘Again and yet again they try.’ He turned on Rattenhuber. ‘And you, Oberführer? What about you? Sworn to protect my personal safety.’

‘My Führer,’ Rattenhuber stammered. ‘What can I say?’

‘Nothing!’ Hitler stormed and turned on the rest of them. ‘You say nothing of use to me – not any of you.’

In the shocked silence, it was Himmler who spoke, his voice dry and precise. ‘That there has been negligence here is true, my Führer, but surely we see further proof, in the failure of this dastardly attempt, of the certainty of your own destiny. Further proof of Germany’s inevitable victory under your inspired guidance.’

Hitler’s eyes blazed, his head went back. ‘As always, Reichsführer, you see. The only one who does.’ He turned on the others. ‘Get out, all of you. I wish to talk to the Reichsführer alone.’

They went without a murmur, Goebbels the last one to leave. Hitler stood staring down at the map desk, hands clasped behind him. ‘In what way may I serve my Führer?’ Himmler asked.

‘There is a plot, am I not right?’ Hitler said. ‘A general conspiracy to destroy me, and this Captain Koenig was simply an agent?’

‘Not so much a general conspiracy as a conspiracy of generals, my Führer.’

Hitler turned sharply. ‘Are you certain?’

‘Oh, yes, but proof – that is something else.’

Hitler nodded. ‘Koenig was an aide of General Olbricht. Is Olbricht one of those you suspect?’ Himmler nodded. ‘And the others?’

‘Generals Stieff, Wagner, von Hase, Lindemann. Several more, all being closely watched.’

Hitler stayed remarkably cool. ‘Traitors each and every one. No firing squad. A noose each when the time comes. No one higher, though? It would seem our field marshals are loyal at least.’

‘I wish I could confirm that, my Führer, but there is one who is heavily suspect. I would be failing in my duty not to tell you.’

‘Then tell me.’

‘Rommel.’

Hitler smiled a ghastly smile that was almost one of triumph, turned and walked away and turned again, still smiling. ‘I think I expected it. Yes, I’m sure I did. So, the Desert Fox wishes to play games.’

‘I’m almost certain of it.’

‘The people’s hero,’ Hitler said. ‘We must handle him carefully, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Or outfox him, my Führer,’ Himmler said softly.

‘Outfox him. Outfox the Desert Fox.’ Hitler smiled delightedly. ‘Yes, I like that, Reichsführer. I like that very much indeed.’

Hugh Kelso slept until noon and when he awakened, he was sick. He turned over in the violently pitching life raft and pulled down the zip of the entrance flap. His heart sank. There was nothing but sea, the life raft twisting and turning on the angry waves. The sky was black, heavy with rain and the wind was gusting 5 or 6, he could tell that. Worst of all, there wasn’t a hint of land anywhere. He was well out in the English Channel, so much was obvious. If he drifted straight across, wasn’t picked up at all, he’d hit the coast of France, possibly the Cherbourg Peninsula. Below that, in the Gulf of St Malo, were the Channel Islands. Alderney, Guernsey and Jersey. He didn’t know much about them except that they were British and occupied by the enemy. He was not likely to be carried as far south as that, though.

He got the Very light out, and fired an orange distress flare. There was seldom any German naval traffic in the Channel during daylight. They tended to keep to the inshore run behind their minefields. He fired another flare and then water cascaded in through the flap and he hurriedly zipped it up. There were some field rations in the emergency kit. He tried to eat one of the dried fruit blocks and was violently sick and his leg was on fire again. Hurriedly, he got another morphine ampule and injected himself. After a while, he pillowed his head on his hands and slept again.

Outside, the sea lifted as the afternoon wore on. It started to get dark soon after five o’clock. By that time the wind was blowing sou’westerly, turning him away from the French coast and the Cherbourg Peninsula so that by six o’clock he was ten miles to the west of the Casquets Light off the island of Alderney. And then the wind veered again, pushing him down along the outer edge of the Gulf of St Malo toward Guernsey.

Kelso was aware of none of these things. He awakened around seven o’clock with a high temperature, washed his face with a little water to cool it, was sick again and dropped into something approaching a coma.

In London, Dougal Munro was working at his desk, the slight scratching of his pen the only sound in the quiet of the room. There was a knock at the door and Jack Carter limped in with a folder in one hand. He put it down in front of Munro.

‘Latest list from Slapton, sir.’

‘Anything on Kelso?’

‘Not a thing, sir, but they’ve got every available ship out there in the bay looking for the missing bodies.’

Dougal Munro got up and moved to the window. The wind moaned outside, hurling rain against the pane. He shook his head and said softly, ‘God help sailors at sea on a night like this.’




3 (#ulink_3a15d21d-37e6-5d4f-8881-6bef895b0ecf)


As commander of Army Group B, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was responsible for the Atlantic Wall defenses, his sole task to defeat any Allied attempt to land in northern France. Since taking command in January of 1944 he had strengthened the coastal defenses to an incredible degree, tramping the beaches, visiting every strongpoint, impressing his own energetic presence on everyone from divisional commanders to the lowliest private.

His headquarters seemed permanently on the move so that no one could be sure where he was from one day to the next. He had an uncomfortable habit of turning up in his familiar black Mercedes accompanied only by his driver and his most trusted aide from Afrika Korps days, Major Konrad Hofer.

On the evening of that fateful day at about the time Hugh Kelso was somewhere in the general area of the Casquets Light, west of Alderney, the field marshal was sitting down to an early dinner with the officers of the 21st Parachute Regiment in a chateau at Campeaux some ten miles from St Lo in Normandy.

His primary reason for being there was sound enough. The High Command, and the Führer himself, believed that the invasion, when it came, would take place in the area of the Pas de Calais. Rommel disagreed and had made it clear that if he were Eisenhower, he would strike for Normandy. None of this had done anything for his popularity among the people who counted at OKW, High Command of the Armed Forces, in Berlin. Rommel didn’t give a damn about that anymore. The war was lost. The only thing that was uncertain was how long it would take.

Which brought him to the second reason for being in Normandy. He was involved in a dangerous game and it paid to keep on the move, for since taking command of Army Group B he had renewed old friendships with General von Stulpnagel, military governor of France, and General Alexander von Falkenhausen. Both were involved, with von Stauffenberg, in the conspiracy against Hitler. It had not taken them long to bring Rommel around to their point of view.

They had all been aware of the projected assassination attempt at Rastenburg that morning. Rommel had sent Konrad Hofer by air to Berlin the previous day to await events at General Olbricht’s headquarters, but there had been no news at all. Not a hint of anything untoward on the radio.

Now, in the mess, Colonel Halder, commanding the regiment, stood to offer the loyal toast. ‘Gentlemen – to our Führer and total victory.’

‘So many young men,’ Rommel thought to himself, ‘and what for?’ But he raised his glass and drank with them.

‘And now, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, who does our mess so much honor tonight.’

They drained their glasses, then applauded him, cheering wildly, and Rommel was immensely touched. Colonel Halder said, ‘The men have arranged a little entertainment in your honor, Field Marshal. We were hoping you might be willing to attend.’

‘But of course.’ Rommel held out his glass for more champagne. ‘Delighted.’

The door opened at the back of the mess and Konrad Hofer entered. He looked tired and badly needed a shave, his field gray greatcoat buttoned up to his neck.

‘Ah, Konrad, there you are,’ Rommel called. ‘Come and have a glass of champagne. You look as if you could do with it.’

‘I’ve just flown in from Berlin, Field Marshal. Landed at St Lo.’

‘Good flight?’

‘Terrible, actually.’ Hofer swallowed the champagne gratefully.

‘My dear boy, come and have a shower and we’ll see if they can manage you a sandwich.’ Rommel turned to Colonel Halder. ‘See if you can delay this little show the men are putting on for half an hour.’

‘No problem, Field Marshal.’

‘Good – we’ll see you later then.’ Rommel picked up a fresh bottle of champagne and two glasses and walked out followed by Hofer.

As soon as the bedroom door was closed, Hofer turned in agitation. ‘It was the worst kind of mess. All that fool Koenig managed to do was blow himself up outside the main gate.’

‘That seems rather careless of him,’ Rommel said dryly. ‘Now calm yourself, Konrad. Have another glass of champagne and get under the shower and just take it slowly.’

Hofer went into the bathroom and Rommel straightened his uniform, examining himself in the mirror. He was fifty-three at that time, of medium height, stocky and thick-set with strong features, and there was a power to the man, a force, that was almost electric. His uniform was simple enough, his only decorations the Pour le Mérite, the famous Blue Max, won as a young infantry officer in the First World War, and the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, both of which hung around his neck. On the other hand, one hardly needed anything else if one had those.

Hofer emerged in a bathrobe toweling his hair. ‘Olbricht and a few more up there are in a blue funk and I don’t blame them. I mean the Gestapo or the SD could be on to this at any time.’

‘Yes,’ Rommel conceded. ‘Himmler may have started life as a chicken farmer, but whatever else you may say about him he’s no fool. How was von Stauffenberg?’

‘As determined as ever. He suggests you meet with Generals von Stulpnagel and Falkenhausen within the next few days.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Hofer was back in the bathroom pulling on his uniform again. ‘I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. If Himmler does have his suspicions about you, you could be under close surveillance already.’

‘Oh, I’ll think of something,’ Rommel said. ‘Now hurry up. The men are laying on a little show for me and I don’t want to disappoint them.’

The show was presented in the main hall of the chateau. A small stage had been rigged at one end with some makeshift curtains. Rommel, Hofer and the regimental officers sat down in chairs provided at the front; the men stood in the hall behind them or sat on the grand staircase.

A young corporal came on, bowed and sat down at the grand piano and played a selection of light music. There was polite applause. Then he moved into the song of the Fallschirmjäger, the paratroopers’ own song, sung everywhere from Stalingrad to North Africa. The curtains parted to reveal the regimental choir singing lustily. There was a cheer from the back of the hall and everyone started to join in, including the officers. Without pause, the choir moved straight into several choruses of We March Against England, an unfortunate choice, Rommel told himself. It was interesting to note that no one tried singing the Horst Wessel. The curtain came down to a storm of cheering and several instrumentalists came on, grouped themselves around the pianist and played two or three jazz numbers. When they were finished, the lights went down and there was a pause.

‘What’s happening?’ Rommel demanded.

‘Wait and see, Herr Field Marshal. Something special, I assure you.’

The pianist started to play the song that was most popular of all with the German forces, Lili Marlene. The curtains parted to reveal only a pool of light on a stool in the center of the stage from a crude spotlight. Suddenly, Marlene Dietrich stepped into the light straight out of Blue Angel, or so it seemed. Top hat, black stockings and suspenders. She sat on the stool to a chorus of wolf whistles from the men and then she started to sing Lili Marlene, and that haunting, bittersweet melody reduced the audience to total silence.

A man, of course, Rommel could see that, but a brilliant impersonation and he joined in the applause enthusiastically. ‘Who on earth is that?’ he asked Colonel Halder.

‘Our orderly room corporal, Berger. Apparently he used to be some sort of cabaret performer.’

‘Brilliant,’ Rommel said. ‘Is there more?’

‘Oh, yes, Herr Field Marshal. Something very special.’

The instrumentalists returned and the choir joined them in a few more numbers. There was another pause when they departed and then a steady, muted drum roll. The curtain rose to reveal subdued lighting. As the choir started to sing the song of the Afrika Korps from the side of the stage, Rommel walked on. And it was quite unmistakably he. The cap with the desert goggles, the white scarf carelessly knotted at the neck, the old leather greatcoat, the field marshal’s baton in one gloved hand, the other arrogantly on the hip. The voice, when he spoke, was perfect as he delivered a few lines of his famous battlefield speech before El Alamein.

‘I know I haven’t offered you much. Sand, heat and scorpions, but we’ve shared them together. One more push and it’s Cairo, and if we fail … well, we tried – together.’

There was total silence from the body of the hall as Colonel Halder glanced anxiously at Rommel. ‘Field Marshal, I hope you’re not offended.’

‘Offended? I think he’s marvelous,’ Rommel said and jumped to his feet. ‘Bravo!’ he called and started to clap and behind him, the entire audience joined in with the chorus of the Afrika Korps song, cheering wildly.

In the makeshift dressing room next to the kitchen, Erich Berger slumped into a chair and stared at himself in the mirror. His heart was beating and he was sweating. A hell of a thing for any actor to perform in front of the man he was taking off, and such a man. A name to conjure with. The most popular soldier in Germany.

‘Not bad, Heini,’ he said softly. ‘Mazel tov.’ He took a bottle of schnapps from the drawer, drew the cork and swallowed some.

A Yiddish phrase on the lips of a corporal in a German Fallschirmjäger regiment might have seemed strange to anyone who had overheard. His secret was that he wasn’t Erich Berger at all, but Heini Baum, Jewish actor and cabaret performer from Berlin and proud of it.

His story was surprisingly simple. He had performed with success in cabaret all over Europe. He had never married. To be frank, his inclinations ran more toward men than women. He had persisted in living in Berlin, even as the Nazis came to power, because his aging parents had always lived there and would not believe that anything terrible could ever happen. Which it did, of course, though not for a long time. As an entertainer, Baum was of use to the Reich. He still had to wear his Star of David on his coat, but a series of special permits kept him afloat and his parents with him, while all around them their friends were taken away.

And then there was the fateful night in 1940 when he had arrived at the end of his street, coming home from cabaret, in time to see the Gestapo taking his mother and father from their house. He had turned and run, like the coward he was, pausing only in a side street to tear the Star of David from his coat. He was forty-four years of age and looked ten years younger on a good day. Nowhere to go, for his papers told the world he was a Jew.

So, he’d caught a train to Kiel with the wild idea that he might be able to get a ship from there to somewhere – anywhere. He’d arrived just after one of the first of the devastating RAF raids on that city, had stumbled through the chaos and flames of the city center, searching for shelter as the RAF came back for a second go. Lurching down into a cellar, he’d found a man and a woman and a twelve-year-old girl dead, all from the same family he learned when he examined their identity cards. Erich Berger, his wife and daughter. And one thing more. In Berger’s pocket were his call-up papers, ordering him to report the following week.

What better hiding place could a Jew who was afraid to be a Jew find? Sure, he was ten years older than Berger, but it wouldn’t show. To change the photos on the two identity cards was simple enough so that the body he dragged out to leave in the rubble of the street to be found later was that of Heini Baum, Jew of Berlin. It had been necessary to obliterate most of the dead man’s face with a brick, just to help things along, but after what he’d been through that part was easy.

How ironic that it was the paratroops he’d been inducted into. He’d been everywhere. Crete, Stalingrad, North Africa, a nice flashy hero in his Luftwaffe blouse and baggy paratroopers’ pants and jump boots, with the Iron Cross Second and First Class to prove it. He took another pull at the schnapps bottle, and behind him the door opened and Rommel, Colonel Halder and Hofer entered.

It was midnight and Hugh Kelso had never been happier, up at Cape Cod at the summer bungalow, sitting on the veranda in the swing seat, reading a book, a cool glass to his hand and Jane, his wife, was calling, on her way up from the beach, her face shaded by a sun hat, the good legs tanned under the old cotton dress, and the girls in swimming suits and carrying buckets and spades, voices faint on the warm afternoon air. Everyone so happy. So very happy. He didn’t feel cold anymore, didn’t really feel anything. He reached out to take Jane’s hand as she came up the steps to the veranda and the voices faded and he came awake, shaking all over.

It was pitch dark and the sea wasn’t as rough, and yet he seemed to be moving very fast. He pulled down the zip on the flap with stiff fingers and peered out. Only a slight phosphorescence as the water turned over and a vast darkness. His eyes were weary, sore from the salt water. For a wild moment he thought he saw a light out there. He shook his head, closed then opened his eyes again. A mistake, of course. Only the never-ending night. He zipped up the flap, lay back and closed his eyes, trying to think of Jane and his two daughters. Perhaps they would come back again?

Although he didn’t know it, he had already drifted something like seventy miles since leaving Lyme Bay on the Devon coast and his eyes had not deceived him. What he had just seen through the darkness was a momentary flash of light as a sentry at the German guard post on Pleinmont Point on the southwest corner of the island of Guernsey had opened a door to go out on duty. To the southeast, perhaps thirty miles away, was Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands. It was in this general direction that the freshening wind bore him as he slept on.

Rommel leaned on the mantelpiece and stirred the fire with his boot. ‘So, the others would like me to talk with von Stulpnagel and Falkenhausen?’

‘Yes, Herr Field Marshal,’ Hofer said. ‘But as you point out, one must take things very carefully at the moment. For such a meeting, secrecy would be essential.’

‘And opportunity,’ Rommel said. ‘Secrecy and opportunity.’ The clock on the mantelpiece chimed twice and he laughed. ‘Two o’clock in the morning. The best time for crazy ideas.’

‘What are you suggesting, Herr Field Marshal?’

‘Quite simple, really. What is it now, Saturday? What if we arranged a meeting next week at some agreed rendezvous with von Stulpnagel and Falkenhausen while I was actually supposed to be somewhere else? Jersey, for example?’

‘The Channel Islands?’ Hofer looked bewildered.

‘The Führer himself suggested not two months ago that I inspect the fortifications there. You know my feelings about the military importance of the islands. The Allies will never attempt a landing. It would cause too many civilian casualties. British civilian casualties, I might add.’

‘And yet they tie up the 319 Infantry Division,’ Hofer said. ‘Six thousand troops in Jersey alone. Ten thousand service personnel in all, if you include Luftwaffe and Navy people.’

‘And yet we’ve poured so much into them, Konrad, because the Führer wants to hang onto the only piece of British territory we’ve ever occupied. The strongest fortifications in the world. The same number of strongpoints and batteries as we have to defend the entire European coast from Dieppe to St Nazaire.’ He turned and smiled. ‘The Führer is right. As commander of the Atlantic Wall, I should certainly inspect such an important part of it.’

Hofer nodded. ‘I see that, Herr Field Marshal, but what I don’t see is how you can be in two places at once. Meeting with Falkenhausen and Stulpnagel in France and inspecting fortifications in Jersey.’

‘But you saw me in two places earlier this evening.’ Rommel said calmly, ‘both in the audience and on stage at the same time.’

The room was so quiet that Hofer could hear the clock ticking. ‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Why not? Friend Berger even fooled me when he came on stage. The voice, the appearance.’

‘But would he be intelligent enough to carry it off? There are so many things he wouldn’t know how to handle. I mean, being a Field Marshal is rather different from being an orderly room clerk,’ Hofer said.

‘He seems intelligent enough to me,’ Rommel told him. ‘He’s obviously talented and a brave soldier to boot. Iron Cross First and Second Class. And you mustn’t forget one important thing.’

‘What’s that, Herr Field Marshal?’

‘He’d have you at his shoulder every step of the way to keep him straight.’ Suddenly Rommel sounded impatient. ‘Where’s your enthusiasm, Konrad? If you’re that worried, I’ll give you a few days to prepare him. Let’s see, it’s Saturday now. How about descending on Jersey next Friday. I’m only thinking of thirty-six hours or so. Back in France on Saturday night or Sunday at the latest. If Berger can’t carry it off for that length of time, I’ll eat my hat.’

‘Very well, Herr Field Marshal. I’ll notify the Channel Islands that you’ll be arriving next Friday.’

‘No, you won’t,’ Rommel said. ‘We box more cleverly than that. Who’s the commander-in-chief?’

‘Major General Count von Schmettow. His headquarters are in Guernsey.’

‘I’ve met him,’ Rommel said. ‘Good officer.’

‘With a reputation for being pro-English, which didn’t do him any good in some quarters,’ Hofer said.

‘On the other hand, the fact that he’s Field Marshal von Rundstedt’s nephew certainly helped there. Who’s military commander in Jersey?’

‘I’ll check.’ Hofer took a file from his briefcase and worked his way down a unit situation list. ‘Yes, here we are. Colonel Heine is military commander.’

‘And civil administration?’

‘The important people there are Colonel Baron von Aufsess and Captain Heider.’

‘And the inhabitants themselves? Who are their representatives?’

‘There’s an organization called the Superior Council of the States of Jersey. The president is the bailiff of the island. A man called Alexander Coutanche.’

‘Good,’ said Rommel. ‘This is what we do. Send General von Schmettow a signal ordering him to hold a coordinating meeting in Guernsey to consider the implications for the islands of the invasion of France threatened this summer.’

‘And you want them all there?’

‘Oh, yes. Military commander Jersey, the civil affairs people, the bailiff and his lot, and whoever’s in charge of the Navy and Luftwaffe contingents in the islands.’

‘Which will leave only junior officers in command.’

‘Exactly.’

‘There’s not too much flying in and out of the Channel Islands these days. The RAF are far too active in that area. It’s usual to travel between the islands by sea and at night.’

‘I know,’ Rommel said. ‘I’ve taken advice on that point from Naval Headquarters in Cherbourg. Tell von Schmettow to call his meeting for next Saturday. In the circumstances they must travel either Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday to make sure they get there. I’ll fly in on Friday morning in the Storch.’

‘A risky flight, Herr Field Marshal.’

‘For you, Konrad, and Berger, of course, not for me.’ Rommel smiled with a kind of ruthless charm. ‘The first thing they’ll know about my arrival is when you ask the tower for permission to land at the airfield.’

‘And what will von Schmettow think?’

‘That the whole thing has been a deliberate ploy so that I can make a snap inspection of the military situation in the island and its defenses.’

‘That’s really rather clever,’ Hofer said.

‘Yes, I think it is.’ Rommel started to unbutton his tunic. ‘In the meantime, I’ll meet with Falkenhausen and Stulpnagel at some quiet spot and get on with it.’ He yawned. ‘I think I’ll go to bed. See that signal goes to von Schmettow in Guernsey tomorrow. Oh, and speak to Colonel Halder first thing in the morning. Tell him I’m much taken with Corporal Berger and want to borrow him for a while. I don’t think he’ll make any difficulties.’

‘I doubt it, Herr Field Marshal,’ Hofer said. ‘Sleep well,’ and he went out.

Dougal Munro slept on a small military bed in the corner of his office at Baker Street that night. It was about three o’clock in the morning when Jack Carter shook him gently awake. Munro opened his eyes instantly and sat up. ‘What is it?’

‘Latest lists from Slapton, sir. You asked to see them. Still over a hundred bodies missing.’

‘And no sign of Kelso?’

‘I’m afraid not. General Montgomery isn’t too happy, but he has had an assurance from the Navy that the E-boats couldn’t have picked survivors up. They were too far away.’

‘The trouble with life, Jack, is that the moment someone tells you something is impossible, someone else promptly proves that it isn’t. What time is first light?’

‘Just before six. That should make a big difference to the final search.’

‘Order a car for eight o’clock. We’ll take a run down to Slapton and see for ourselves.’

‘Very well, sir. Are you going back to sleep?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ Munro stood up and stretched. ‘Think I’ll catch up on some paperwork. No peace for the wicked in this life, Jack.’

At six o’clock on that same morning, Kelso came awake from a strange dream in which some primeval creature was calling to him from a great distance. He was very, very cold, feet and hands numb, and yet his face burned and there was sweat on his forehead.

He unzipped the flap and peered out into the gray light of dawn, not that there was anything much to see for he was shrouded in a sea fog of considerable density. Somewhere in the distance, the beast called again, only now he recognized it for what it was – a foghorn. Although he didn’t know it, it was the Corbiere Light on the tip of the southernmost coast of Jersey, already behind him as the current swept him along. He sensed land, could almost smell it and, for a little while, came back to life again.

He could hear waves breaking on an unseen shore, and then the wind tore a hole in the curtain and he glimpsed cliffs, concrete gun emplacements on top. The place, although it meant nothing to Kelso, was Noirmont Point, and as the sea fog dropped back into place, the current carried him into St Aubin’s Bay, close inshore.

There were waves taking him in, strange, twisting currents carrying him round. At one side, a wave broke sending spray high in the air, and all around him was white foam, rocks showing through. And then there was a voice, high and clear, and the fog rolled away to reveal a small beach, rocks climbing steeply to a pine wood above. There was someone there, a man running along the shore, in woolen cap, heavy reefer coat and rubber boots.

The life raft slewed broadside in the surf, lifted high and smashed against rocks, pitching Kelso headfirst through the flap into the water. He tried to stand up, his scream as his right leg collapsed under him drowned by the roaring of the surf, and then the man was knee-deep in water, holding him. It was only then that he realized it was a woman.

‘All right, I’ve got you. Just hang on.’

‘Leg,’ he mumbled. ‘Leg broken.’

He wasn’t sure what happened after that, and he came to in the shelter of some rocks. The woman was dragging the landing craft out of the water. When he tried to sit up, she turned and came toward him. Kelso said as she knelt down, ‘Where am I, France?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Jersey.’

He closed his eyes for a moment and shivered. ‘You’re British, then?’

‘I should hope so. The last I heard of my husband, he was a major in the Tanks Corps serving in the Western Desert. My name’s Helen de Ville.’

‘Colonel Hugh Kelso.’

‘American Air Force, I suppose? Where did your plane come down?’

‘It didn’t. I’m an army officer.’

‘An army officer? But that doesn’t make sense. Where on earth have you come from?’

‘England. I’m a survivor of a ship that was torpedoed in Lyme Bay.’ He groaned suddenly as pain knifed through his leg and almost lost his senses.

She opened his torn trouser leg and frowned. ‘That’s terrible. You’ll have to go to hospital.’

‘Will that mean Germans?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

He clutched at the front of her reefer coat. ‘No – no Germans.’

She eased him back down. ‘Just lie still. I’m going to leave you for a little while. I’m going to need a cart.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But no Germans. They mustn’t get their hands on me. You must promise. If you can’t do that, then you must kill me. See, there’s a Browning pistol here.’

He plucked at it and she leaned over him, face set, and took the pistol from its holster on his left thigh. ‘You’re not going to die and the Jerries aren’t going to have you either – that’s the only promise I’m prepared to give. Now wait for me.’

She slipped the pistol into her pocket, turned and hurried away. He lay there on that fog-shrouded shore, trying to get his bearings, and then the leg started to hurt again and he remembered the morphine in the emergency kit. He began to crawl toward the life raft. That, of course, was very definitely the final straw, and he plunged into darkness.




4 (#ulink_f2fb788b-a15d-5d4d-93c6-7da1690e9d16)


Helen de Ville left the cart track which was the usual way down to the beach and took a shortcut, scrambling up the steep hillside through the pine trees. She was strong and wiry, not surprising after four years of enemy occupation and the food restrictions that had caused her to lose nearly thirty pounds in weight. She often joked that it had given her back the figure she’d enjoyed at eighteen, an unlooked-for bonus at forty-two. And like most people, the lack of a car and a public transport system meant she was used to walking many miles each week.

She stood at the edge of the trees and looked across at the house. De Ville Place was not one of the largest manors on the island. It had been once in days of family glory, but a disastrous fire at the end of the nineteenth century had destroyed one entire wing. It was very old, constructed of Jersey granite weathered by the years. There were rows of French windows at the front on either side of the entrance, a granite wall dividing the house from a courtyard at one side.

She paused, taking her time, for there was an old Morris sedan parked in the courtyard, one of those requisitioned by the enemy. For two years now she’d had German naval officers billeted on her. They came and went, of course, sometimes staying only a night or two when E-boats of the 5th Schnellboote Flotilla came over from Guernsey.

Mostly they were regulars, young officers serving with various naval units based in Jersey. The war took its toll. There were often engagements with British MTBs in the area of the Channel Islands, and the RAF frequently attacked convoys to Granville, St Malo and Cherbourg, even when they made a night run. Men died, but some survived. As she started across the lawn, the door opened and one of them came out.

He wore a white sweater, old reefer coat and seaboots and carried a duffel bag in one hand. The face beneath the salt-stained naval cap was good-humored and recklessly handsome. A bravo, this one, straight out of the sixteenth century, who wore a white top to his cap, usually an affectation of German U-boat commanders, but then Lieutenant Guido Orsini was a law unto himself, an Italian on secondment to the German Navy, trapped in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time when the Italian government had capitulated. Helen de Ville had long since given up pretending that she felt anything but considerable affection for him.

‘Morning, Guido.’

‘Helen, cara mia.’ He blew her a kiss. ‘I’m the last, as usual.’

‘Where to today?’

‘Granville. Should be fun in this fog. On the other hand, it keeps the Tommies at home. Back tomorrow. Do you want to go into St Helier? Can I give you a lift?’

‘No thanks. I’m looking for Sean.’

‘I saw the good General not ten minutes ago coming out of the south barn with a felling axe and walking down toward his cottage. See you tomorrow. I must fly. Ciao, cara.’

He went through the small gate to the courtyard. A moment later, she heard the Morris start up and drive away. She crossed the courtyard herself, went through a field gate and ran along the track through trees. Sean Gallagher’s cottage stood by a stream in a hollow. She could see him now in old corduroy pants and riding boots, the sleeves of the checked shirt rolled up above muscular arms as he split logs.

‘Sean!’ she called and stumbled almost falling.

He lowered the axe and turned, pushing a lock of reddish brown hair from his eyes as he looked toward her. He dropped the axe and reached out to catch her as she almost fell again.

Sean Martin Gallagher was fifty-two and, as an Irish citizen, officially neutral in this war. He had been born in Dublin in 1892, his father a professor of surgery at Trinity College, a man who had taken no interest in women until, in his fiftieth year during a professional visit to Jersey, he had met a young nurse called Ruth le Brocq. He’d married her within a month and taken her back to Dublin.

She’d died in childbirth the following year and the boy Sean grew up spending the long summers each year in Jersey with his grandparents, the rest of the time in Dublin with his father. Sean’s ambition was to be a writer, and he’d taken a degree in literature at his father’s university, Trinity College. The exigencies of life made him a soldier, for as he finished college the First World War started.

He’d joined the Irish Fusiliers, a regiment that many Jerseymen served in, and by 1918 was a very old twenty-six. A major, twice wounded, and with an MC for gallantry on the Somme. As he used to say, any real experience of war came after that, fighting with the IRA in Ireland under Michael Collins’ leadership, as commander of a flying column in County Mayo.

The treaty with the British government which had ended the conflict in 1922 had only proved a prelude to a bloody and vicious civil war between those elements of the IRA who refused to accept the treaty and those who chose to fight for the Irish Free State government under Collins. Sean Gallagher had chosen the Free State and found himself a general at the age of thirty, sweeping through the west of Ireland, ruthlessly hunting down old comrades.

Afterward, sick of killing, he’d traveled the world, living on money left to him by his father, writing the odd novel when he had a mind, finally settling in Jersey in 1930. Ralph de Ville had been a boyhood friend, and Helen he had loved desperately and hopelessly from the first moment they had met. His home in St Lawrence, deep in the country, had been requisitioned by the Germans in 1940. Helen, with Ralph away serving with the British Army, needed a strong right arm, which explained his presence at the dower cottage on the estate. And he still loved her, of course, and still quite hopelessly.

The old cart had seen better days and the horse was considerably leaner than it should have been as they negotiated the track down to the beach, Sean Gallagher leading the horse, Helen at his side.

‘If this goes wrong,’ he said gravely. ‘If they find out you’re helping this man, it won’t just be a prison sentence. It could mean a firing squad or one of those concentration camps they’re talking about.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Jesus, woman, I’m a neutral, don’t I keep telling you that?’ He smiled mischievously, the gray eyes full of humor. ‘If they want to keep that old bastard, de Valera, sweet back in Dublin, they’ve got to handle me with dress gloves. Mind you, after the way I chased the arse off him all over Ireland in the Civil War, he might welcome the news that they want to shoot me.’

She burst out laughing. ‘I love you, Sean Gallagher. You always make me feel good at the worst times.’ She put an arm around the small, lean man’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.

‘As a brother,’ he said. ‘You love me as a brother, as you often remind me, so keep your mad passion in your pocket, woman, and concentrate. Colonel Hugh Kelso, he said, an American army officer torpedoed off Devon?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And what was all that about how the Germans mustn’t get their hands on him?’

‘I don’t know. He was half out of his mind and his leg’s in a terrible state, but at the suggestion he might have to go to hospital he went crazy. Said it would be better if I shot him.’

‘A fine old mess from the sound of it,’ Gallagher said, and led the horse down onto the fog-shrouded beach.

It was very quiet, the sea calm, so quiet that they could hear the whistle of the German military train from across the bay as it ran along the front from St Helier to Millbrook.

Hugh Kelso lay face-down on the sand unconscious. Sean Gallagher turned him over gently and examined the leg. He gave a low whistle. ‘He needs a surgeon, this lad. I’ll get him in the cart while he’s still out. You gather as much driftwood as you can and hurry.’

She ran along the beach and he lifted Kelso up, taking his weight easily, for he was surprisingly strong for a small man. Kelso groaned but stayed out, and the Irishman eased him onto the sacks in the cart and draped a few across him.

He turned as Helen came back with an armful of wood.

‘Cover him with that while I see to the life raft.’

It was still bumping around in the shallows, and he waded into the water and pulled it up on the sand. He looked inside, removed the emergency kit, then took out a spring-blade gutting knife and slashed at the skin of the life raft fiercely. As air rushed out, it crumpled and he rolled it up and carried it to the cart, shoving it onto the rack underneath.

Helen arrived with another armful of wood which she put in the back with the rest. ‘Will that do?’

‘I think so. I’ll stop by the paddock and we’ll put the life raft down the old well shaft. But let’s get moving.’

They started up the track, Helen sitting on the shaft of the cart, Sean leading the horse. Suddenly there was laughter up ahead and a dog barked. The Irishman paused and took his time over lighting one of the vile French cigarettes that he smoked. ‘Nothing to worry about, I’ll handle it,’ he told her.

The Alsatian arrived first, a splendid animal which barked once, then recognized Gallagher as an old friend, and licked his hand. Two German soldiers in field gray and helmets, rifles over their shoulders, came next. ‘Guten morgen, Herr General,’ they both called eagerly.

‘And good morning to you two daft buggers.’ Gallagher’s smile was his friendliest as he led the horse on.

‘Sean, you’re quite mad,’ she hissed.

‘Not at all. Neither of those two lads speak a word of English. It might have been fun if they’d looked under the cart though.’

‘Where are we going?’ she demanded. ‘There’s no one at the Place at the moment.’

It was always referred to in that way, never as a house.

‘Isn’t Mrs Vibert in?’

‘I gave her the day off. Remember that niece of hers had a new baby last week.’

‘Naughty girl,’ Gallagher said. ‘And her man away serving in the British Army. I wonder what he’ll think when he comes home and finds a bouncing boy with blue eyes and blond hair called Fritz.’

‘Don’t be cruel, Sean. She’s not a bad girl. A little weak perhaps. People get lonely.’

‘Do you tell me?’ Gallagher laughed. ‘I haven’t exactly noticed you chasing me around the barn this week.’

‘Be sensible,’ she said. ‘Now where do we take him? There’s the Chamber.’

During the English Civil War, Charles de Ville, the Seigneur of the manor at that time, had espoused the Royalist cause. He’d had a room constructed in the roof with a secret staircase from the master bedroom known to the family over the years as the Chamber. It had saved his life during the time of Cromwell’s rule when he was sought as a traitor.

‘No, too awkward at the moment. He needs help and quickly. We’ll take him to my cottage first.’

‘And what about a doctor?’

‘George Hamilton. Who else could you trust? Now hang on while I get this life raft down the well.’

He tugged it out and moved into the trees. She sat there, aware of her uneven breathing in the silence of the wood. Behind her, under the sacking and the driftwood, Hugh Kelso groaned and stirred.

At Slapton Sands just before noon, the tide turned and a few more bodies came in. Dougal Munro and Carter sat in the lee of a sand dune and had an early lunch of sandwiches and shared a bottle of beer. Soldiers tramped along the shoreline, occasionally venturing into the water at some officer’s command to pull in another body. There were already about thirty laid out on the beach.

Munro said, ‘Someone once said the first casualty when war comes is truth.’

‘I know exactly what you mean, sir,’ Carter said.

A young American officer approached and saluted. ‘The beach is cleared of new arrivals at the moment, sir. Thirty-three since dawn. No sign of Colonel Kelso.’ He hesitated. ‘Does the Brigadier wish to view the burial arrangements? It’s not too far.’

‘No thank you,’ Munro told him. ‘I think I can manage without that.’

The officer saluted and walked away. Munro got up and helped Carter to his feet. ‘Come on, Jack. Nothing we can do here.’

‘All right, sir.’

Carter balanced on his walking stick and Munro stood, hands in pockets, and looked out to sea. He shivered suddenly. ‘Anything wrong, sir?’ Carter asked.

‘Someone just walked over my grave, Jack. To be honest, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling. Come on, let’s get back to London,’ and he turned and walked away along the beach.

‘So, Berger, you understand what I am saying to you?’ Konrad Hofer demanded.

Heini Baum stood rigidly at attention in front of the desk in the office which the CO had been happy to lend to the field marshal at Campeaux. He tried to ignore the fact that Rommel stood at the window looking out into the garden.

‘I’m not sure, Herr Major. I think so.’

Rommel turned. ‘Don’t be stupid, Berger. You’re an intelligent man, I can see that, and a brave one.’ He tapped the Iron Cross First Class with the tip of his crop and the band around the left sleeve with the Gothic lettering. ‘The Afrika Korps cuff-title, I see. So, we are old comrades. Were you at Alamein?’

‘No, Field Marshal. Wounded at Tobruk.’

‘Good. I’m a plain man so listen carefully. You did a wonderful impersonation of me last night, in both appearance and voice. Very professional.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now I require a second performance. On Friday, you will fly to Jersey for the weekend accompanied by Major Hofer. You think you could fool them in Jersey for that long, Berger? King for a day? Would you like that?’

Baum smiled. ‘Actually, I think I would, sir.’

Rommel said to Hofer. ‘There you are. Sensible and intelligent, just as I told you. Now make the arrangements, Konrad, and let’s get out of here.’

The cottage was built in the same kind of granite as the house. There was one large living room with a beamed ceiling and a dining table and half-a-dozen chairs in a window alcove. The kitchen was on the other side of the hall. Upstairs, there was one large bedroom, a storeroom and a bathroom.

Rather than negotiate the stairs, Gallagher had laid Kelso out on a long comfortable sofa in the living room. The American was still unconscious, and Gallagher found his wallet and opened it. There was his security card with photo, some snaps of a woman and two young girls, obviously his family, and a couple of letters which were so immediately personal that Gallagher folded them up again. He could hear Helen’s voice from the kitchen as she spoke on the telephone. Kelso opened his eyes, stared blankly at him and then noticed the wallet in Gallagher’s hand.

‘Who are you?’ He grabbed at it weakly. ‘Give it back to me.’

Helen came in and sat on the sofa and put a hand on his forehead. ‘It’s all right. Just be still. You’re burning up with fever. Remember me, Helen de Ville?’

He nodded slowly. ‘The woman on the beach.’

‘This is a friend, General Sean Gallagher.’

‘I was just checking his papers,’ Gallagher told her. ‘The identity card is a little damp. I’ll leave it out to dry.’

She said to Kelso. ‘Do you remember where you are?’

‘Jersey.’ He managed a ghastly smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not quite out of my mind yet. I can think straight if I concentrate.’

‘All right, then, listen to me,’ Sean Gallagher said. ‘Your leg is very bad indeed. You need hospital and a good surgeon.’

Kelso shook his head. ‘Not possible. As I told this lady earlier, no Germans. It would be better to shoot me than let them get their hands on me.’

‘Why?’ Sean Gallagher demanded bluntly.

‘She called you General. Is that true?’

‘I was once in the Irish Army and I served with the Brits in the last war. Does that make a difference?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘All right, what’s your unit?’

‘Engineers – assault engineers, to be precise. We lead the way in beach landings.’

Sean Gallagher saw it all. ‘Is this something to do with the invasion?’

Kelso nodded. ‘It’s coming soon.’

‘Sure and we all know that,’ Gallagher said.

‘Yes, but I know where and I know when. If the Germans could squeeze that out of me, can you imagine what it would mean? All their troops concentrated in the right place. We’d never get off the beach.’

He was extremely agitated, sweat on his forehead. Helen soothed him, easing him down. ‘It’s all right, I promise you.’

‘Is George Hamilton coming?’ Gallagher asked.

‘He was out. I left a message with his housekeeper that you wanted to see him urgently. I said you’d cut your leg and thought it needed a stitch or two.’

‘Who’s Hamilton?’ Kelso demanded.

‘A doctor,’ Helen said. ‘And a good friend. He’ll be here soon to see to that leg of yours.’

Kelso was shaking again as the fever took hold. ‘More important things to think of at the moment. You must speak to your resistance people here. Tell them to get on the radio as soon as possible and notify Intelligence in London that I’m here. They’ll have to try to get me out.’

‘But there is no resistance movement in Jersey,’ Helen said. ‘I mean, there’s a hell of a lot of people who don’t care to be occupied and make life as awkward for the enemy as they can, but we don’t have anything like the French Resistance, if that’s what you mean.’

Kelso stared at her in astonishment and Gallagher said, ‘This island is approximately ten miles by five. There are something like forty-five thousand civilians. A good-size market town, that’s all. How long do you think a resistance movement would last here? No mountains to run to, nowhere to take refuge. Nowhere to go, in fact.’

Kelso seemed to have difficulty in taking it in. ‘So, there’s no resistance movement. No radio?’

‘No links with London at all,’ Gallagher told him.

‘Then what about France?’ Kelso asked desperately. ‘Granville, St Malo. They’re only a few hours away across the water, aren’t they? There must be a local unit of the French Resistance in those places.’

There was a significant pause, then Helen turned to Gallagher. ‘Savary could speak to the right people in Granville. He knows who they are and so do you.’

‘True.’

‘Guido was leaving as I came up from the beach,’ she said. ‘He told me they were trying for Granville this afternoon. Taking advantage of the fog.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘They won’t have the tide until noon. You could take the van. There are those sacks of potatoes to go into St Helier for the troops’ supply depot and the market.’

‘All right, you’ve convinced me,’ Gallagher said. ‘But if I know Savary, he won’t want any of this, not in his head. That means writing it down, which is taking one hell of a chance.’

‘We don’t have any choice, Sean,’ she said simply.

‘No, I suppose you’re right.’ Gallagher laughed. ‘The things I do for England. Look after our friend here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

As he reached the door she called, ‘And Sean?’

He turned. ‘Yes?’

‘Don’t forget to drive on the right-hand side of the road.’

It was an old joke, but not without a certain amount of truth. One of the first things the German forces had done on occupying Jersey was to change the traffic flow from the left- to the right-hand side of the road. After four years, Gallagher still couldn’t get used to it, not that he drove very often. They only had the old Ford van as a special dispensation because the de Ville farmlands supplied various crops for the use of the German forces. The size of the petrol ration meant the van could be used only two or three times a week anyway. Gallagher stretched it by coasting down the hills with the engine off, and there was always a little black-market petrol available if you knew the right people.

He drove down through the tiny picturesque town of St Aubin and followed the curve of the bay to Bel Royal, St Helier in the distance. He passed a number of gun emplacements with a few troops in evidence, but Victoria Avenue was deserted on the run into town. One of the French trains the Germans had brought over passed him on its way to Millbrook, the only sign of activity until he reached the Grand Hotel. He checked his watch. It was just before eleven. Plenty of time to catch Savary before the Victor Hugo left for Granville, so he turned left into Gloucester Street and made his way to the market.

There weren’t too many people about, mainly because of the weather. The scarlet and black Nazi flag with its swastika on the pole above the Town Hall entrance hung limply in the damp air. The German for Town Hall is Rathaus. It was, therefore, understandable that the place was now known as the Rat House by the local inhabitants.

He parked outside the market in Beresford Street. It was almost deserted, just a handful of shoppers and a sprinkling of German soldiers. The market itself was officially closed, open for only two hours on a Saturday afternoon. There would be enough people in evidence then, desperately hoping for fresh produce.

Gallagher got two sacks of potatoes from the van, kicked open the gate and went inside. Most of the stalls in the old Victorian Market were empty, but there were one or two people about. He made straight for a stall on the far side where a large genial man in heavy sweater and cloth cap was arranging turnips in neat rows under a sign D. Chevalier.

‘So, it’s swedes today?’ Gallagher said as he arrived.

‘Good for you, General,’ Chevalier said.

‘Do you tell me? Mrs Vibert gave me swede jam for breakfast the other day.’ Gallagher shuddered. ‘I can still taste it. Two sacks of spuds for you here.’

Chevalier’s eyes lit up. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down, General. Let’s have them in the back.’

Gallagher dragged them into the room at the rear, and Chevalier opened a cupboard and took out an old canvas duffel bag. ‘Four loaves of white bread.’

‘Jesus,’ Gallagher said. ‘Who did you kill to get those?’

‘A quarter pound of China tea and a leg of pork. Okay?’

‘Nice to do business with you,’ Gallagher told him. ‘See you next week.’

His next stop was at the troop supply depot in Wesley Street. It had originally been a garage and there were half-a-dozen trucks parked in there. There wasn’t much happening, but a burly Feldwebel called Klinger was sitting in the glass office eating a sandwich. He waved, opened the door and came down the steps.

‘Herr General,’ he said genially.

‘God, Hans, but you do well for youself,’ Gallagher said in excellent German and prodded the ample stomach.

Klinger smiled. ‘A man must live. We are both old soldiers, Herr General. We understand each other. You have something for me?’

‘Two sacks of potatoes for the official list.’

‘And?’

‘Another sack for you, if you’re interested.’

‘And in exchange?’

‘Petrol.’

The German nodded. ‘One five-gallon can.’

‘Two five-gallon cans,’ Gallagher said.

‘General.’ Klinger turned to a row of British Army issue petrol cans, picked two up and brought them to the van. ‘What if I turned you in? You’re so unreasonable.’

‘Prison for me and a holiday for you,’ Gallagher said. ‘They say the Russian Front’s lovely at this time of the year.’

‘As always, a practical man.’ Klinger pulled the three sacks of potatoes out of the van. ‘One of these days a patrol is going to stop you for a fuel check, and they’ll discover your petrol is the wrong color.’

‘Ah, but I’m a magician, my friend, didn’t I tell you that?’ and Gallagher drove away.

Military petrol was dyed red, the ration for agricultural use was green, and doctors enjoyed a pink variety. What Klinger hadn’t discovered was that it was a simple matter to remove the dye by straining the petrol through the filter of the gas mask issued to the general public at the beginning of the war. A little green dye added afterward turned military petrol to the agricultural variety very quickly indeed.

Survival was what it was all about. This was an old island, and the Le Brocq half of him was fiercely proud of that. Over the centuries, the island had endured many things. As he passed the Pomme d’Or Hotel, German Naval Headquarters, he looked up at the Nazi flag hanging above the entrance and said softly, ‘And we’ll still be here when you bastards are long gone.’




5 (#ulink_65ac36d8-a306-5fde-b3e0-490445e59a78)


Gallagher parked the van at the weighbridge and walked along the Albert Pier, going up the steps to the top section. He paused to light one of his French cigarettes and looked out across the bay. The fog had thinned just a little and Elizabeth Castle, on its island, looked strange and mysterious, like something out of a fairy story. Walter Raleigh had once ruled there as governor. Now Germans with concrete fortifications and gun emplacements up on top.

He looked down into the harbor. As always it was a hive of activity. The Germans used Rhine barges, among other vessels, to carry supplies to the Channel Islands. There were several moored on the far side at the New North Quay. There were a number of craft of various kinds from the 2 Vorpostenbootsflotille and two M40 Klasse minesweepers from the 24th Minesweeper Flotilla. Several cargo vessels, mostly coasters, among them the SS Victor Hugo, were moored against the Albert Pier.

Built in 1920 by Ferguson Brothers in Glasgow for a French firm engaged in the coastal trade, she had definitely seen better days. Her single smokestack was punctured in several places by cannon shell from RAF Beaufighters in an attack on one of the night convoys from Granville two weeks previously. Savary was the master with a crew of ten Frenchmen. The anti-aircraft defenses consisted of two machine guns and a Bofors gun, manned by seven German naval ratings commanded by Guido Orsini.

Gallagher could see him now on the bridge, leaning on the rail, and called in English, ‘Heh, Guido? Is Savary about?’

Guido cupped his hands. ‘In the café.’

The hut farther along the pier which served as a café was not busy, four French seamen playing cards at one table, three German sailors at another. Robert Savary, a large, bearded man in a reefer coat and cloth cap, a greasy scarf knotted at his neck, sat on his own at a table next to the window, smoking a cigarette, a bowl of coffee in front of him.

‘Robert, how goes it?’ Gallagher demanded in French and sat down.

‘Unusual to see you down here, Mon General, which means you want something.’

‘Ah, you cunning old peasant.’ Gallagher passed an envelope under the table. ‘There, have you got that?’

‘What is it?’

‘Just put it in your pocket and don’t ask questions. When you get to Granville, there’s a café in the walled city called Sophie’s. You know it?’

Savary was already beginning to turn pale. ‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘You know the good Sophie Cresson well and her husband Gerard?’

‘I’ve met them.’ Savary tried to give him the envelope back under the table.

‘Then you’ll know that their business is terrorism carried to as extreme a degree as possible. They not only shoot the Boche, they also like to make an example of collaborators, isn’t that the colorful phrase? So if I were you, I’d be sensible. Take the letter. Needless to say, don’t read it. If you do, you’ll probably never sleep again. Just give it to Sophie with my love. I’m sure she’ll have a message for me, which you’ll let me have as soon as you’re back.’

‘Damn you, General,’ Savary muttered and put the envelope in his pocket.

‘The Devil took care of that long ago. Don’t worry. You’ve nothing to worry about. Guido Orsini’s a good lad.’

‘The Count?’ Savary shrugged. ‘Flashy Italian pimp. I hate aristocrats.’

‘No Fascist, that one, and he’s probably got less time for Hitler than you have. Have you any decent cigarettes in your bag? I’m going crazy smoking that filthy tobacco they’ve been importing for the official ration lately.’

Savary looked cunning. ‘Not really. Only a few Gitanes.’

‘Only, the man says.’ Gallagher groaned aloud. ‘All right, I’ll take two hundred.’

‘And what do I get?’

Gallagher opened the bag Chevalier had given him. ‘Leg of pork?’

Savary’s jaw dropped. ‘My God, my tongue’s hanging out already. Give me.’

Gallagher passed it under the table and took the carton of cigarettes in return. ‘You know my telephone number at the cottage. Ring me as soon as you get back.’

‘All right.’

Savary got up and they went outside. Gallagher, unwilling to wait, got a packet of Gitanes out, opened it and lit one. ‘Jesus, that’s wonderful.’

‘I’ll be off then.’ Savary made a move to walk toward the gangway of the Victor Hugo.

Gallagher said softly, ‘Let me down on this one and I’ll kill you, my friend. Understand?’

Savary turned, mouth open in astonishment as Gallagher smiled cheerfully and walked away along the pier.

George Hamilton was a tall, angular man whose old Harris tweed suit looked a size too large. A distinguished physician in his day, at one time professor of pharmacology at the University of London and a consultant of Guy’s Hospital, he had retired to a cottage in Jersey just before the outbreak of war. In 1940, with the Germans expected at any day, many people had left the island, a number of doctors among them, which explained why Hamilton, an M.D. and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, was working as a general practitioner at the age of seventy.

He pushed a shock of white hair back from his forehead and stood up, looking down at Kelso on the couch. ‘Not good. He should be in hospital. I really need an x-ray to be sure, but I’d say at least two fractures of the tibia. Possibly three.’

‘No hospital,’ Kelso said faintly.

Hamilton made a sign to Helen and Gallagher, and they followed him into the kitchen. ‘If the fractures were compound – in other, words, if there was any kind of open wound, bone sticking through, then we wouldn’t have any choice. The possibility of infection, especially after all he’s been through, would be very great. The only way of saving the leg would be a hospital bed and traction.’

‘What exactly are you saying, George?’ Gallagher asked.

‘Well, as you can see, the skin isn’t broken. The fractures are what we term comminuted. It might be possible to set the leg and plaster it.’

‘Can you handle that?’ Helen demanded.

‘I could try, but I need the right conditions. I certainly wouldn’t dream of proceeding without an x-ray.’ He hesitated. ‘There is one possibility.’

‘What’s that?’ Gallagher asked.

‘Pine Trees. It’s a little nursing home in St Lawrence run by Catholic Sisters of Mercy. Irish and French mostly. They have x-ray facilities there and a decent operating theater. Sister Maria Teresa, who’s in charge, is a good friend. I could give her a ring.’

‘Do the Germans use it?’ Helen asked.

‘Now and then. Usually young women with prenatal problems, which is a polite way of saying they’re in for an abortion. The nuns, as you may imagine, don’t like that one little bit, but there isn’t anything they can do about it.’

‘Would he be able to stay there?’

‘I doubt it. They’ve very few beds and surely it would be too dangerous. The most we could do is patch him up and bring him back here.’

Gallagher said, ‘You’re taking a hell of a risk helping us like this, George.’

‘I’d say we all are,’ Hamilton told him dryly.

‘It’s vitally important that Colonel Kelso stay out of the hands of the enemy,’ Helen began.

Hamilton shook his head. ‘I don’t want to know, Helen, so don’t try to tell me, and I don’t want the nuns to be involved either. As far as Sister Maria Teresa is concerned, our friend must be a local man who’s had a suitable accident. It would help if we had an identity card for him, just in case.’

Helen turned on Gallagher. ‘Can you do anything? You managed a card for that Spanish Communist last year when he escaped from the working party at those tunnels they’ve been constructing in St Peter.’

Gallagher went to the old eighteenth-century pine desk in the corner of the kitchen, pulled out the front drawer, then reached inside and produced a small box drawer of the kind people had once used to hide valuables. There were several blank identity cards in there, signed and stamped with the Nazi eagle.

‘Where on earth did you get those?’ Hamilton asked in astonishment.

‘An Irishman I know, barman in one of the town hotels, has a German boyfriend, if you follow me. A clerk at the Feldkommandatur. I did him a big favor last year. He gave me these in exchange. I’ll fill in Kelso’s details and we’ll give him a good Jersey name. How about Le Marquand?’ He took out pen and ink and sat at the kitchen table. ‘Henry Ralph Le Marquand. Residence?’

He looked up at Helen. ‘Home Farm, de Ville Place,’ she said.

‘Fair enough. I’ll go and get the color of his eyes, hair and so on while you phone Pine Trees.’ He paused at the door. ‘I’ll enter his occupation as fisherman. That way we can say it was a boating accident. And one more thing, George.’

‘What’s that?’ Hamilton asked as he lifted the phone.

‘I’m going with you. We’ll take him up in the van. No arguments. We must all hang together, or all hang separately.’ He smiled wryly and went out.

Pine Trees was an ugly house, obviously late Victorian in origin. At some time, the walls had been faced in cement which had cracked in many places, here and there, large pieces having flaked away altogether. Gallagher drove the van into the front courtyard, Hamilton sitting beside him. As they got out, the front door opened and Sister Maria Teresa came down the sloping concrete ramp to meet them. She wore a simple black habit, a small woman with calm eyes and not a wrinkle to be seen on her face though she was in her sixties.

‘Dr Hamilton.’ Her English was good, but with a pronounced French accent.

‘This is General Gallagher. He manages de Ville Place where the patient is employed.’

‘We’ll need a trolley,’ Gallagher said.

‘There’s one just inside the door.’

He got it and brought it to the back of the van. He opened the doors, revealing Kelso lying on an old mattress, and they eased him out onto the trolley.




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