MICHAEL DOBBS
Last Man to Die

DEDICATION

To the Memory of my Father.And all those who came before

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Part Two

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Part Three

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Author’s Note

Praise

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

It was a filthy way to die, he told himself.

He had imagined death would be something rather grand. A few immortal last words that friends would discuss and applaud as they chewed over his life and his incalculable contributions to the public weal. A dignified passing wrapped in the warm blanket of public approbation before he slipped off to an altogether more elevated plane. He had imagined it as some sort of classic English triumph, all stiff upper lip and tear-stained lace; not like this.

When the doctors told him that, at his age, there was little more they could do, he had thanked them, smiling to show that it was just another challenge. After all, it was going to be their loss rather than his. ‘Can’t complain. Had a good innings,’ he reassured them, comforting himself with the image of a final walk back to the pavilion accompanied by the applause of the crowd and congratulatory obituaries in The Times and the Telegraph. There would even be a thanksgiving service at St Martin-in-the-Fields, he hoped. Not that either of his two former wives would attend; they preferred to forget rather than forgive. And there were no children. Pity, really.

Only now had he begun to have twinges of regret, to feel the need for support as disease gnawed at his bones and his self-esteem. He had returned to his old haunts, the scenes of previous battles and many victories, wanting to touch them one more time. The first stop had been at his ancient public school perched on the Sussex Downs where his intellectual agility had begun to develop a true cutting edge and his singular competitiveness had marked him out as a boy who would go far. But he recognized no one; only the young headmaster had shown any interest and that had faded with the realization that there was to be no endowment cheque in exchange for the tea and wholemeal biscuits. He hadn’t bothered going back to his Oxford college; nowadays the old university sanctuaries all seemed to be given over to women and he hated that. Women had never been more than a distraction for him, rarely pleasurable, inevitably expensive and, ultimately, always irritating.

So he had come to London, an uncommon event since his retirement some years before. Even that had changed. The noise and crush disorientated him, the traffic ground impatiently to a halt while the people, more impatient still, hurried past, unaware and unconcerned. Whitehall, which had been the playing field for much of his career, hid distant and austere behind the new security and surveillance systems. Downing Street was where during the war he had lived, slept, loved and, in the days of defeat and despair, had even thought he might die. Now he couldn’t even get close. He had stood wedged behind the barriers, staring forlornly through the wrought-iron railings. No more crisp salutes from the duty policeman, no more satchels full of papers marked ‘Top Secret’ and smeared with the dust from Churchill’s cigars, only barriers with hidden cameras and windows covered by heavy bomb-resistant curtains to catch the shards of glass, just in case.

It was another world, a world rushing by, a world of which he was no longer part. On those streets he used to know so well he had become mesmerised and confused by the bustle while in every shady corner where he sought refuge he felt as if he were standing on the doorstep of a still darker world. He had discovered he was shaking.

He had sought refuge in the all-male preserve of his club. Here at least all was familiar order, nothing appeared to have changed. He had sat in his favourite armchair at the Athenaeum for the entire afternoon before realizing that his friends were no longer there and the few acquaintances who recognized him had no time for a decomposing old man with no future. Someone he thought he knew had approached purposefully from the other side of the room, but solely to ask whether he had finished with the newspaper. Only the steward in the coffee room seemed happy to speak with him, and he didn’t have English as a first or even third language.

He had sat, a frail figure dwarfed in an armchair of ancient, cracked leather, knowing this world had already passed him by, and whether he was yet willing to let go or not was of little consequence. He no longer belonged. He was an anachronism, of less importance to his fellow man than the battered armchair he occupied or the newspaper he was reading. He was an old man watching his body slowly being eaten away, feeling the strength drain from him a little every day and discovering that dying was a lonely and humiliating business. Suddenly he didn’t feel brave any more.

So he had come to Berlin. He had never before been to the German capital yet, as he began to suspect that the mincing clerics he had so long despised might after all be right, that he should prepare to account for those things he had done, so a sense of guilt had risen inside him. Guilt was a new feeling; he didn’t know how to handle it. It implied fallibility and a concern for the judgement of others, characteristics for which he was not noted. He had always worked behind the scenes, wielding his influence away from the public eye and never having to answer to any other than a handful of the good and great, and the justification of acting in the national interest had served to excuse a multitude of sins. Yet as death loomed, the excuse seemed no longer enough, not for what had been planned for Berlin. He had always avoided the place, not wishing to allow any measure of doubt to enter the comforting certainties of his life, but those certainties were being corrupted along with his flesh and it had become all but inevitable that he should fly here, a last attempt to atone on earth for the things he had no desire to answer for in another place.

Sir William Cazolet Bart., KCMG, CB, CVO etc., former adviser to Prime Ministers and éminence grise of the British Establishment, whose informed if unattributable counsel had frequently been sought by monarchs, judges and editors, sat on the upper deck of a bright green tour bus as it barged its way around the sights of Berlin. Most of the other passengers were still in shirtsleeves, enjoying the last of the September warmth, but Cazolet was wrapped up tight in hat and scarf. His circulation had gone and his long, thin fingers showed like white bird’s claws as they gripped the seat in front for support against the swaying of the bus. He shouldn’t travel until next spring, one doctor had advised. There’s no point in waiting, another had countered looking deep into his glassy eyes, you won’t be here by then.

Berlin was not as he had imagined. Somehow his mind’s eye had always seen the city in black and white, slightly flickering, like an old British Pathé newsreel, but the western half was tinselly, garish and loud, while the east still bore the scars of the attempt to build nirvana out of concrete. ‘Directly ahead you shall see the Brandenburg Gate,’ intoned the courier, ‘built in 1791 to act as a toll gate at the western end of Unter den Linden. It was here on 13 August 1961 that the first stones of the Berlin Wall are being laid. The statue of the goddess of Victory on top was firstly naked, but was quickly covered up, and then taken for a few years to Paris by Napoleon …’

The bus lurched to the right and the Gate was no longer in sight. An overweight American in the next seat who had been sleeping off lunch gave a belch as he came to life and muttered something in the ear of his equally substantial wife. She ignored him, burrowing into her guide book, double checking everything they were told by the courier with an air of unremitting scepticism as if anxious to ensure they were getting their money’s worth. She saw Cazolet staring. ‘Yeah?’ she said aggressively as if welcoming the opportunity to engage in combat with someone new, before being distracted once again by the voice over the loudspeaker.

‘The low grassy mound you are seeing in front of you is all that is left of Hitler’s infamous Bunker, which was blown up by the Russians after the war. It was from this point that Hitler and his generals directed the campaign in its last few months, and it was here that he and his mistress Eva Braun committed suicide in the closing days of the war, she by poison, he by shooting himself …’

Up to this point the fat American had been far more engrossed in her guide book than the real-life sights of Berlin, but now she stared out of the window, leaning across the girth of her husband to get as close as possible. ‘’S no bigger than a Little League pitcher’s mound, Leo,’ she snorted in contempt, digging her husband in the ribs before snapping her guide book shut and burying her nose in a slimming magazine. Leo, grateful for the respite, went back to sleep.

Neither of them noticed Cazolet’s reaction. He was sitting to attention in his seat as though reprimanded, his head swivelling on its scrawny neck to ensure that his eyes stayed fixed upon the grassy knoll for as long as possible. When at last it vanished from sight the old man slumped back in his seat, a puppet with all its wires cut. His face, already pale, had become chalky white beneath the parchment skin, the only sign of colour being the blue veins throbbing at the temples. His breathing was anguished, the air forced through thin, downcast lips. There was sweat on his brow and the dim eyes stared straight ahead, taking in nothing, lost in a distant world of their own. He took no further interest in the tour and showed no sign of leaving the bus when it reached its final stop. The courier had to shake him by the shoulder to rouse him. ‘Must have had a turn,’ the courier muttered to the driver, relieved that the old man was able, albeit with difficulty, to disembark and so release him and the tour company from any further responsibility.

It was not until the following day that Cazolet seemed to have recovered the grim determination which had brought him to the city. There was more to be seen, but he forsook the formal guided tours and instead commandeered a taxi. ‘Take me to old Berlin,’ he instructed. ‘I want to see the city as it was, before the war.’

‘What’s left to see? Try a picture library,’ the driver muttered.

But Cazolet had insisted, so the driver, encouraged by a substantial tip paid up front, had driven east and north, across the line where the old Wall had only recently divided the city before being chipped to fragments by a thousand hammers, into the working-class district of Niederschoenhausen. As the sights of the tourist brochures slipped away behind them the shrunken figure in the back seat seemed gradually to come to life. This was more as he had imagined it, sad, grey, like British Pathé. ‘Slow down,’ he ordered, peering intently out of the window as they came off the highway and began to bounce along streets of bare cobblestone.

For some while they crawled between the rows of austere, gloomy tenements that huddled along either side of the road. There was little life to be seen. The only greenery grew out of the cracks in the cornicing that hung, often precariously, along the frontages, and the few people he saw on the streets had expressions which perfectly matched their dismal surroundings. Many of the buildings were in need of substantial repair, with dripping algae-covered water outlets and cracked window panes, or bits of board and cellophane where windows ought to have been. The ancient ravages of war could still be seen in the pockmarks which were spattered across the façades. There were gaps between houses where buildings had once stood but where now there was nothing but a wilderness of weeds doubling as a burial ground for old cars. Everything seemed worn out, of a past age, just waiting to die. At last, Cazolet told himself grimly, he had found a place where he belonged.

He stopped outside the shop for no better reason than that it appeared to be the only place open. It loosely described itself as an antique shop but the goods were more second-hand than aged. As he opened the door, a bell jangled overhead producing not a bright song of welcome but a choking sound, a stiff rattle of discontent as if complaining at being disturbed. Cazolet guessed it had been that way for a long, long time. The shop was cramped and narrow, like a railway carriage, with a thin corridor down the middle between bric-à-brac and dusty oddments which were piled with little apparent logic or order along the shelves and on top of the collection of dark tables and bureaux that had been pushed against the walls. The best of what there was seemed to be in the front window, a large blue-and-white Nanking temple vase which was a modern reproduction, he guessed, and a nineteenth-century mahogany upright clock with an intricate brass face but no back panel. It had been disembowelled and the movement lay on the floor beside it. Both vase and clock bore a substantial layer of dust, as did the owner, who appeared from behind a curtain at the back of the shop wiping his hands on a tea towel. He had a stomach which his grimy undervest and leather belt had difficulty in containing, and from his scowl and the grease that had dribbled on to his chin it appeared as though he had been disturbed in the middle of eating. He was somewhere in his mid-sixties, Cazolet estimated. As always when he met a German of his own age, Cazolet wondered what the other had done during the war and what secrets and torments hid behind the watery, suspicious eyes. He would have been about fifteen by the end of the fighting. In Berlin that was old enough to have been conscripted, to have been sent out with nothing more than a couple of grenades and a busted rifle to face the Soviet tanks and the peasant-conscripts who swarmed behind, to have fought for Berlin street by street and sewer by bloody sewer, to have killed and been killed. Many much younger had known that. In those days, death in Berlin had recognized no distinction between the innocence of childhood and culpability for having been born a German, yet this German had survived to become old and fat, and that alone was enough to ensure he should never be taken for granted.

The shopkeeper said nothing, standing silently in the back of the premises smacking his greasy lips and staring, as if he reckoned Cazolet might be on the point of running off with his precious stock. Cazolet refused to be intimidated. He liked this place, its jumble of artifacts, its mustiness, its uselessness. He moved stiffly through the shop, pulling out drawers, inspecting battered brassware, smudging the dust off prints before settling into an oak dining chair, testing it for comfort, easing his aching limbs. Had it been one of six the chair might have fetched a reasonable price but on its own it was simply old – a survivor, Cazolet reflected, which made it something special in Berlin. He was astonished to discover himself feeling a sharp twinge of envy. Of a chair. Bloody fool! he scolded himself, once again rehearsing the arguments as to why he had nothing to fear about tomorrow, whatever it might bring.

It was as he was sitting in reflection that he saw the photo frame. It was blackened with age and dirt, and from behind the smeared glass stared the image of a young German military recruit from the last war, his brave smile and crisp Wehrmacht uniform typical of countless thousands of photographs that had adorned mantelpieces and bedside tables in bygone days. The photo itself held no fascination for Cazolet; it was the battered frame that grabbed his attention. He reached out unsteadily and took it between both hands, his thumbs rubbing at the tarnished metal, trying to reveal the gleam of silver which he guessed lay beneath the oxide. Up the sides and along the bottom of the frame he found small decorative filigree executed in a different metal which beneath the dirt and soot looked like dull brass; directly in the centre at the top of the frame was a small, slightly jagged hole, as if some further piece of decoration had been pulled away none too carefully. It was staring at the hole that brought it back. A memory, vague with distance and time but which battled through to flood his fingers with tension and anticipation. Surely it couldn’t be … With a thumbnail he scratched gently at the filigree, but already he knew what he would find. Not worthless brass, instead the yellow lustre of gold. Now he knew for certain what was missing. He turned the frame over and with some difficulty began releasing the clips that secured the photograph inside the frame. His hands were trembling, and not solely with age.

The shopkeeper had come over to inspect what he was doing. ‘Careful!’ he growled.

‘This is not the original photograph,’ Cazolet snapped. ‘This is a wartime piece, without doubt, but the frame was made for something else …’

The shopkeeper began to take a keen interest; perhaps he could do business over this piece of junk after all.

‘You see the hole?’ continued Cazolet as the back came off and his frail fingers searched for the edge of the photograph. ‘I think there used to be a little gold swastika, just here. You know, these frames were specially produced and given away …’ He sucked in his breath as the old photograph came away to reveal the original still lurking behind.

‘Bollocks,’ muttered the German.

‘… by Adolf Hitler himself.’

They could both see the face, magisterially staring left to right into a distance he imagined to be filled with endless victories.

‘This is quite rare. It’s even signed!’ Cazolet was rubbing furiously at the grime on the glass with a spotless white handkerchief.

‘Five hundred marks,’ the shopkeeper barked, rapidly recovering his composure.

‘Oh, I don’t want to buy it. I have no need …’ But Cazolet could go no further. His words died as his vigorous cleaning of the glass revealed not just Hitler’s spidery signature but also a dedication. His breathing was laboured as the excitement and the exertions began taking their toll. The frame trembled in his hands as he held it up to his frail eyes. He blinked rapidly, giving the glass another polish with the now-stained handkerchief and holding it up once more for inspection. The metal seemed to be burning into his hands, as if grown white hot with a mystical energy all its own. The Englishman was one of life’s professional sceptics and even as he had contemplated his own death he had found it hard to believe in Fate or any form of divine intervention, but every day for the few months that remained to him thereafter Cazolet would look at his hands expecting to find stigmata burned deep into his palms.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ he gasped as at last he deciphered the scrawled dedication. ‘Can it be? After all these years ….’

‘What? What is it?’ the shopkeeper cried in exasperation.

The old man seemed not to notice. He was back in another time, face consumed by anguish, his eyes tightly closed, shaking his head as though trying to fend off the understanding which confronted him. Then, very softly, almost exhaustedly, the words came. ‘He made it. He actually bloody made it!’

The old man’s hands gave another savage shake and the silver frame slipped from his fingers, glancing off his knee before falling to the floor. There was a loud crack as the glass shattered.

‘That’s it,’ snapped the German. ‘You’ll have to buy it now.’

Part One

ONE

March 1945

It wasn’t much of a prison camp, just a double row of barbed wire fencing strung around a football pitch with guards occasionally patrolling along the slough-like path that ran between the rows. In the middle were twenty or so dark green army bell tents serving as the sole source of shelter for the 247 German prisoners. There were no watch towers; there hadn’t been time to build any as the Allied armies swept up after the Battle of the Bulge and pressed onward through Europe. It was one of scores of transit camps thrown up, with little thought of security, anywhere with space enough to provide primitive shelter for prisoners on their way from the war zone to more permanent accommodation. No one appeared keen to escape. They had survived; for most that was enough, and more than they had expected.

The great tide of captured Germans washing up against British shores had all but overwhelmed the authorities’ ability to cope. After all, with the Allies racing for the Rhine, there were other priorities. So guarding the camps was a job not for crack troops but for new recruits, with little experience and often less discipline. That was the trouble with Transit Camp 174B, that and the complete absence of plumbing.

The camp, on the edge of the windswept Yorkshire moors, was run by young Canadians, freshly recruited, ill-trained and with a youthful intolerance which divided the world into black and white, friend and foe. They weren’t going to win any campaign medals on this rain-sodden battleground, and perhaps it was frustration and a feeling of inadequacy that tempted them to take out their aggression on the prisoners. In most camps the commanding officer would douse any unruly fires amongst the hotheads, but in Camp 174B the CO’s name was Pilsudski, who came of Polish parents out of Winnipeg, and after reports began filtering through of what the Russians had found as they raced through the ruins of Poland, he didn’t give a damn.

The trouble had begun two days previously when the camp’s leading black marketeer had come to grief. He had never been popular, but had his uses. ‘I’ll do a deal on anything,’ he used to brag. He could obtain a surprising variety of necessities from the guards and would get a reasonable price for anything that the prisoners had to sell – watches, wedding rings, wallets, even their medals. It made the difference between surviving and simply sinking in despair into the mud. He was also a bum-boy and sold himself, and the rest of the inmates were willing to put up even with that – until one of them discovered he was also the camp ‘stooly’ and was selling information to the Canadians about his fellow prisoners. The guards found him late one night, crawling through the mud and screaming in agony, with every last penny of the substantial sum of money he had scraped together shoved up his ass.

Perhaps the incident would have passed without further consequences, for the stool pigeon was no more popular amongst the guards, most of whom thought he had it coming. But it was not to be. Pilsudski received a report of the previous night’s incident moments after hearing on the radio of what the Germans had done before their retreat from Warsaw, and how little they had left standing or alive. Before the war he’d had an aunt and aged grandmother who lived in an apartment on the leafy intersection of Aleja Jerozolimska and Bracka streets; now, apparently, there was nothing left, no apartment, no intersection, no street, no trace of the women. It was the excuse he had been looking for, the opportunity to revenge in some small way the horrors and frustrations that preyed on his mind.

There were nine tables set up in line on the small parade ground. Before eight of them the camp’s entire complement of prisoners was standing to attention in the incessant drizzle; behind the ninth, raised on a dais, sat the stocky form of Pilsudski as he surveyed the scene. The senior prisoner, a tall, scrawny man who was a commander in the German Navy, leaned heavily on a stick and had just finished remonstrating with him.

‘So, Commander, you want to know what this is all about, do you?’ Pilsudski was saying, staring down at the German officer, his thick Slavic features making the other man seem frail and vulnerable. ‘Well, I’m going to tell you. Last night someone broke into the office here.’ He waved towards the primitive wooden construction which, before the sports area was commandeered, had served as changing rooms and a small grandstand. ‘And I want to know which of your men did it. Damn me but you Germans don’t seem to be able to control yourselves,’ he added, the morning’s news still much on his mind. ‘Some property’s missing, so we’re going to look for it.’

Already the commander could hear the noise of wrecking as guards went through the tents overturning beds, tearing palliasses, emptying kitbags and the other hold-alls in which the prisoners kept their meagre possessions, ripping everything apart. He knew that anything of value would be gone by the time the prisoners were able to begin picking up the pieces.

‘But it cannot be. The offices are outside the wire; my men could not possibly have …’

Pilsudski began to chuckle, a harsh, false sound which revealed no humour, only crooked teeth. The German could feel the implacable bitterness behind the red eyes; he shivered, and not solely from the growing cold. The captor, still chuckling, began shaking his head slowly. ‘You’re surely not trying to tell me it was a Canadian soldier? No, not my boys. They know how to behave themselves. So, you see, it must have been one of yours.’

‘Impossible …’

‘Not only is it possible,’ Pilsudski interrupted, ‘but to my mind inevitable wherever you find a German. You’ve thieved and pillaged and raped just about everywhere you’ve been in Europe, so why should you make an exception here?’ The grin didn’t falter, the teeth still showing, but the eyes had narrowed. The German did not see the danger signs; he was propped unsteadily on his stick, clearly a sick man and in some considerable pain after standing for nearly an hour in the drizzle.

‘This is utterly unjust,’ he protested, but was cut short as Pilsudski’s swagger stick sliced high through the air to come crashing down across the table.

‘Don’t talk to me about justice, you Nazi bastard. If I make you eat shit, at least that’s more than most of your prisoners got over the last six years.’

With considerable effort the German pulled himself up off his cane and stood erect, looking at Pilsudski, his defiance visible through the rain that dripped off his cap and down his face. ‘I am a German officer. I most strongly protest.’

‘He protests!’ Pilsudski stood so the commander felt dwarfed. ‘This butchering son-of-a-bitch protests,’ Pilsudski continued in a voice strong enough to be heard full across the parade ground. No one was to miss this humiliation. Satisfied he had achieved his objective, he leaned low across the table until he was looking down upon the pained face of the commander, showering him in venom and spittle. ‘Listen! You started this war. You lost. So shove it.’ Pilsudski jerked the middle finger of his right hand into the face of the commander before turning from him in contemptuous dismissal. ‘Sergeant. Search the prisoners!’

At the command the first man in each line of prisoners was prodded forward by the guards until they were standing in front of a table. After considerable further encouragement from the muzzles of the standard-issue Lee Enfield .303s and a barrage of abuse from their captors, they began taking off their clothes, item by item, and placing them on the tables.

‘All of ’em, sauerkraut,’ one of the guards bawled, giving a reluctant prisoner a savage dig under the ribs. He smiled arrogantly through a mouthful of gum while the German slowly obeyed until he had joined the seven other prisoners standing naked in front of the tables. The guards went through their clothes, indiscriminately filching cigarettes, wallets, combs, even family photographs.

The search seemed to be over. Nothing incriminating had been found, and the sergeant was looking in the direction of Pilsudski for further orders. It was time. Time to revenge the fate which had cast Pilsudski as babysitter in this gut-rotting dampness instead of letting him loose in Europe; time to revenge a birthright which had left him a good six inches shorter than most men; time to revenge the suffering of his aunt and grandmother at the hands of Germans – not these Germans, of course, but these were the only Germans around. It was time. Pilsudski gave a curt nod.

At the sign, each of the prisoners was thrown across the table, his head forced down by a guard until he had lost his footing in the mud and was spreadeagled. As he lay there, surprised, stunned, a second guard armed with a heavy leather glove forced his legs wide apart and violated him, the guard’s gloved finger piercing and entering, twisting deep inside and raping not just the body but the soul. One began to emit a low howl of anguish and degradation but a shouted reprimand from a fellow prisoner choked it off. After all, why admit the shame, why give the guards still further satisfaction?

‘You are … tearing up … all the rules,’ the commander began, barely able to find words as he struggled to contain his feelings. ‘What in God’s name do you think this is?’

‘A medical inspection. For piles. If anyone asks. Which they won’t.’ Pilsudski’s manner was cold as the wind. He didn’t regret a thing. ‘By the way, one of the prisoners is excused. The queer. They tell me he’s been comprehensively inspected already.’

‘So. I think I understand.’

‘Sure you do, Fritz. How do the rules of war go? To the victor the spoils. To the losers, a finger up their ass. And it’s a damn sight less than you bastards deserve.’

‘You have already defeated us. Is that not enough?’

‘No, not by a long chalk. I want every stinking German left alive crawling on his hands and knees, begging for mercy, just like you left that faggot the other night. I hope I make myself clear.’

There was no point in further protest. In war he had been a senior officer but in defeat he felt no better or more worthy of respect than any other man; the German turned on his heel as correctly as his ailing legs would allow and joined the end of one of the lines.

It took more than two hours for the guards to finish their work, and the drizzle continued to fall as the parade ground turned into a sea of slime. There were tears mingling with the rain that flowed down the cheeks of many of the Germans, tears of emasculation and despoliation, tears of despair at having been captured, of having failed both their comrades and their country. But most of all there were tears of guilt at being survivors when so many others had found the courage to do their duty to the very end. In laying down their arms instead of their lives they were guilty of desertion, of dereliction, of having betrayed the womenfolk and children they had left behind. As Pilsudski knew, almost every one of the men on that parade ground secretly believed he deserved the punishment being meted out to him. Pilsudski might be a vicious bastard but, as losers, theirs was the greater sin.

Such feelings of guilt are the general rule for prisoners of war. But to all generalities there are exceptions. And in Camp 174B, the exception was Peter Hencke …

‘It’s an unpalatable prospect, Willie,’ the Prime Minister growled, breaking a lengthy period of silent contemplation as he searched for the soap under a thick layer of suds.

William Cazolet took off his glasses and gave them a vigorous polish to clear the condensation. He felt such a fool on bath nights. In the fortified Annexe off Downing Street where the Prime Minister spent much of his time, the ventilation was close to non-existent behind windows which were permanently enclosed in thick steel shutters. It made the bathroom hot and steamy, just as the PM liked it, but for visitors – and there usually were visitors on bath night, even female secretaries taking shorthand – it could be an ordeal. It was one of the many eccentricities of working and living with Winston Churchill.

‘What prospect is that, exactly?’ Cazolet asked, leaning forward from his perch on the toilet seat in an attempt to restore the circulation to his legs. It could be uncomfortable sitting at the right hand of history.

The Prime Minister grumbled on, almost as if talking to himself. ‘There was a time, not so long ago, when the British were the only players in the orchestra. We were on our own. Our empire provided all the musicians. I conducted, even wrote most of the score. My God, but we made sweet music for the world to listen to.’ There was no hiding the pride in his voice. ‘Had it not been for us, Europe would now be listening to nothing but the harsh stamp of German brass bands. D’you know, Willie, I’ve never liked brass bands. All huff and puff without any trace of tenderness. Could you ever imagine Mozart composing sonatas for brass bands?’

He paused to scrub his back and puff fresh life into the cigar which had been lying sad and soggy in an ashtray beside the soap dish. The Old Man was lacking his usual jauntiness tonight, the secretary thought. Cazolet was only twenty-eight, a young Foreign Service officer thrust by the opportunities and shortages of war into the tight-knit team of prime ministerial assistants who were responsible for taking care of the Old Man’s every need, transmitting his orders, acting as a link between Downing Street and the mighty war machine over which he presided, ensuring that he took plenty of soda with his whisky and, if necessary, putting him to bed. Some couldn’t take it, working round the clock in the cement cocoon of the Annexe and the War Cabinet Rooms beneath, without sunlight or sight of the world above, discovering what the weather was like only through bulletins posted on a board in the corridor, subjected to the Old Man’s vile temper and suffocating in an atmosphere of constant cigar smoke. But Cazolet had taken it, and it had given the young man an uncanny aptitude for reading the PM’s thoughts.

‘I’ve always thought the American military display too great a fondness for brass bands,’ Cazolet prompted. ‘Very loud. No subtlety.’

‘But my God, how we needed them, and how generously they have given. Yet …’ There was an unaccustomed pause as the Old Man searched for an appropriate expression, hiding behind a haze of cigar smoke. ‘It seems we are destined to march behind one brass band or another, Willie,’ he said slowly, picking his words with care.

Cazolet wiped the condensation from his glasses once more while he studied the other man. He saw not the great war leader, the stuff of the newsreels and propaganda films. The Old Man was no celluloid figure in two dimensions but a man full of self-acknowledged faults which at times made him impossibly irascible even in the same breath as he was visionary. The spirit seemed unquenchable, yet the body was seventy years old and was visibly beginning to tire. What else could one expect after six winters of war? Flamboyance and strength of character were not enough any longer to give colour to the cheeks, which were pale and puffy. Too many late nights, too many cigars, too much hiding underground. Of everything, simply too much.

‘How was Eisenhower?’ Cazolet enquired, anxious not to allow the PM to slip off into another empty silence. Anyway, it was time to probe. The PM had been unusually reticent and moody since his meeting with the American general on the previous day, and Cazolet could sense something churning away inside.

‘He is a determined, single-minded man, our general,’ the Old Man responded. The deliberate way he punctuated the words did not make them sound like a compliment. ‘The very characteristics that make him such an excellent military leader make him nothing of a politician. And he is American. He thinks American. He listens too much to Americans, particularly his generals, most of whom seem to have gained their experience of battle out of books at West Point. They are all quartermasters and caution. I judge an officer by the sand in his boots and the mud on his tunic rather than the number of textbooks he has managed to pacify.’

The PM contemplated the moist end of his Havana, deliberating whether it was yet time to call for its replacement. Since his heart murmur three years earlier his doctors had told him to cut down, to cut down on everything except fresh air and relaxation. Idiots! As if the greatest danger facing the British Empire was a box of Cuban cigars and the occasional bottle of brandy.

A potent mix of smoke and steam attacked Cazolet’s lungs and he stifled a cough. ‘They say Eisenhower can be weak and indecisive, that he listens to too many opinions, carries the impression of the last man who sat upon him.’

Churchill shook his head in disagreement. ‘If that were so we would not be at odds, since I would be constantly by his side, ready to sit upon him at a moment’s notice.’ He patted his paunch. ‘And I would make a very considerable impression!’ He broke into a genial smile, the first that evening. He was beginning to feel better. To hell with the doctors. He lit a fresh cigar. ‘Don’t underestimate the general, William. He is not weak. A conciliator, perhaps, who prefers to lead by persuasion rather than instruction. But above all he is an American. Americans are boisterous, unbroken, raw, full of lust and irresponsibility, goodheartedness, charm and naked energy. And above all they haven’t the slightest understanding of Europe. For them it is little more than a bloody battlefield on which they have sacrificed their young men twice in a generation, some troublesome, far-flung place on a foreign map. That’s why they deserted us after the last war. They threw away the victory then; we must not allow them to do so again.’

‘What do you want from them?’

‘There are many things I expect of our American friends – ships, arms, food, money, materiel. But one thing above all they must give me, Willie.’ His blue eyes flared defiantly. ‘They must give me Berlin!’

The blackout curtains were drawn tight around the luxurious manor house adjacent to SHAEF forward military headquarters in newly-liberated France. It wouldn’t do to have the Supreme Allied Commander shot up by some Luftwaffe night-fighter, not when he was having dinner and, with growing agitation, giving forth of his own version of the previous day’s meeting.

‘Would you believe the man? He tried to scold me. Said I was smoking too much, that it was an unforgivable extravagance at a time of general shortage. Damn nerve!’ General Dwight Eisenhower started to chuckle in spite of himself. He regarded the PM, half-American on his mother’s side, as something of a father figure and so tolerated the older man’s bombastic and occasionally patronizing manner. He was no less a chain smoker than Churchill, yet even in his addiction he revealed his modest, less flamboyant character. Strictly a ‘Lucky Strikes’ man.

Eisenhower paused to indicate there was a serious point to his tale. ‘Extravagance! I told him I was willing to be extravagant with everything but men’s lives. Yet he still insists on taking the most outrageous risks …’ The general shook his head sadly, staring into the flame of the candles that lit the beautifully laid dinner table separating him from his companion. ‘The Brits are running out of time. They’ve been bled dry; Britannia with her wrists slashed. It’s making the Old Man impatient, rash.’

The genuine regret in Eisenhower’s voice was not lost on his companion, who was British, and who mistook neither the irony of sitting in a Europe only recently freed from German occupation while surrounded by seemingly endless supplies of vintage champagne, nor the absurdity that war seemed to be fought either from foxholes or from the luxury of liberated French chateaux. ‘So what did you tell him?’

‘Just that. He was being rash. So then he gets het up and says risks have to be taken, it’s the art of war. Art, for Chrissake! I told him that dying isn’t an art but a ruthless damn military science.’ He stubbed out his cigarette as if he were crushing bugs, grinding it to pulp in the crystal ashtray. ‘You see, he wants Berlin. A final master stroke to crown his war, so he can lead the victory parade through the captured German capital.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Oh, not a lot, except the military value of Berlin doesn’t amount to a row of beans and it’d cost at least one hundred thousand casualties – American casualties – to get there before the Russians. Christ, can you imagine how tough the Germans are going to be fighting for their own capital? !’

The telephone interrupted them for the fourth time since they had sat down to dine, and Eisenhower jumped to answer it. This proved to be a mistake for as he drew back his chair he seemed to double up and a flash of pain crossed his face. Chronic indigestion. When in England he had blamed it on the endless diet of Brussels sprouts and boiled cabbage which seemed to be standard fare in London, but in France he had run out of excuses. They didn’t eat boiled cabbage, and the pain was getting worse. The strains of war were plucking at him, demanding that he ease up. The point had been brought firmly home when he discovered a rat in one of the classrooms serving as his office. He had taken out his revolver and, from a distance of no more than a few feet, shot at it. He missed. Carefully he had put on his glasses and shot again. And missed again. The third shot succeeded only in blowing off its tail and a sergeant had used a chair to put both the rat and the Supreme Commander out of their misery. Eisenhower was tired, he had been losing weight and the patchwork quilt of lines beneath his eyes had sagged into whirlpools of fatigue. He needed to steady his hand and to get his mind off the war, but how could he? Even as he talked on the telephone his jaw was chomping with frustration.

‘OK-OK-OK, run up the white flag. If State insists it’s vital I see the Crown Prince – where’d you say he was from? – you’d better fit it in. Then you go and ask the State Department, very politely, if they’d mind putting a cork in their courtesy calls and letting us get on with winning this goddamned war!’ The grinding of his teeth could be heard across the room. ‘And one more thing. No more interruptions, eh?’

He hobbled back towards the table, massaging his bad knee. It always swelled when he was run down, and his habitually high blood pressure hit new peaks and he lost still more of his hair. And he could really do without this run-in with Churchill.

‘For Chrissake, he’s being preposterous. Even if we do take Berlin, we can’t hold it. We already agreed at Yalta that it’ll be in the Russian zone of occupation after the war. So five minutes to hold Mr Churchill’s victory parade and then we hand it back. That’s about twenty thousand US casualties for every godforsaken minute. A high price for an old man’s ambition, eh?’ He swirled the whisky around the glass, watching the candlelight catch the finely cut patterns in the French crystal, wondering what his troops in the field facing von Rundstedt had eaten that evening, and envying them their simple tasks of war. ‘I’ll not let the old men of Europe play their games with my troops,’ he said quietly. ‘My duty is clear. To win this war, and to win it with the minimum loss of Allied lives. If lives are to be lost, better they be Russian than American or British.’

There was no response from his companion. Perhaps he had gone too far. He felt the need to justify himself. ‘There’s something else. Something pretty scary. Our intelligence guys believe Hitler may be planning a retreat from Berlin to the mountains in Bavaria and Austria, a sort of Alpine redoubt. He moves everything he can in there and conducts endless guerrilla warfare. God, it would be tough rousting him out of there. The war might never end.’

‘But is that likely?’

‘He’s fighting for his life; he’s not going to roll over just to please Churchill.’

‘So …?’

‘So to hell with what the Old Man wants. We concentrate on cutting off any chance of Hitler’s retreat to the mountains.’ He drained the glass. ‘And if it means Stalin taking Berlin and half of Europe, it would be a pity. But not a great pity.’

‘What a way to run a war!’ Churchill exclaimed, more soapy water splashing over the side of the bath and dripping on to the carpet.

Cazolet looked despairingly at his suit, the razor-sharp creases of half an hour ago now a sorry tangle of damp wool.

‘Some intelligence men sitting on their backsides in a Zurich bar hear whispers about a mountain fortress, and Eisenhower wants to cast all our plans aside. For mere tittle-tattle and rumour!’

‘But surely there may be something in those reports,’ interjected Cazolet. He could always recognize when Churchill’s enthusiasm ran away with his prudence, particularly late at night.

‘Let us suppose, let us for one fraction of a moment suppose …’ Churchill responded, his jowls quivering with indignation and stabbing his cigar like some blunt bayonet in the direction of the younger man. ‘Let us suppose that the same American intelligence experts who just four months ago so lamentably failed to spot thirty-one Nazi divisions massing in the Ardennes to launch the Battle of the Bulge were, on this occasion and in spite of their track record, right. So what? What can Hitler do in the Alps? Let him have his caves, let him freeze in the winter snows just as he did on the Russian plains. He can do no real damage in the mountains. But Berlin …’ At the mention of the word, his voice lowered, the brimstone being replaced by an almost conspiratorial timbre. ‘Berlin is the key, William, the key. Without it, everything may be lost.’

The waters heaved and parted as Churchill raised his considerable girth out of the bath and gesticulated for Cazolet to hand him a tent-size cotton towel. ‘It is quite simple. Either we take Berlin, or the Russians will. Vienna, Budapest, Sofia, probably Prague, almost every one of the great capitals in Central Europe will soon be occupied by the Red Army. If he gains Berlin, too, Stalin will have his paws around the heart of the continent. I have to tell you, Willie, I do not trust him. He talks of friendship, but every time Comrade Stalin stretches out his hand to me, it always feels as if he is reaching directly for my throat!’ Churchill, suddenly distracted, sat naked on the edge of the bath.

‘And behind us, here in London, I fear the worst, Willie. Defeat. Before the end of the year, at the election.’

Cazolet couldn’t help himself. The idea seemed too absurd. ‘Nonsense! How can you lose after all you’ve done? They must support you.’

‘I love them, with all my heart I love them, but I have little faith in their gratitude.’ He sat silent for a moment, drawing in his chin until it became lost in the loose folds of flesh. He tried to hide the misting in his eyes, but there was no mistaking the catch of emotion in his voice as he resumed. ‘My own father. One of the great statesmen of his age. Yet they threw him to one side. Broke his heart on the great anvil of politics …’ Tears were starting to roll down Churchill’s cheeks as he remembered the humiliation, even as Cazolet recognized the hyperbole and inexactitude. Churchill’s father had been a drunken womanizer, a disgraceful husband and even worse father, and had died at a young age of syphilis. Perhaps that was why the son had to work so hard to weave the legend and why he, at least, had to believe so passionately in it.

‘No. All triumphs are fleeting, Willie. One cannot expect gratitude. After the last war we promised them homes fit for heroes. They’re still waiting. And if Stalin and his acolytes are to rule from the Urals to the Atlantic, right up to our own doorstep, I’m not sure how long the electorate could resist inviting them in, even here. So you see, we need Berlin, to stop the disease spreading, Willie. If we lose. Berlin we shall lose the peace. The battle for Hitler’s capital is the most important contest of the war. Sadly, it seems we shall have to wage it against our American allies.’

There was a glint in his pale eyes, revealing the boyish enthusiasm of which he was so capable – or was it the desperation of an ageing, ailing leader? Cazolet was no longer sure.

‘If only we could be certain Hitler would never leave Berlin,’ Cazolet responded. ‘Then everything would fall into place.’

‘My thoughts precisely, Willie. If only.’

The tension in the general’s face had disappeared. As the flame had eaten away the candles and the warm wax had trickled on to the starched tablecloth, his mood had softened. Eisenhower was no longer a general on parade. The creases across his face dissolved and the muscles around his jaw stopped working overtime. ‘Have I been too hard on the Brits?’

‘We’ll survive,’ his companion responded, returning his smile.

‘I didn’t mean to be hard. Your Churchill’s a great guy, really. Just wrong on this one, I guess. I’m sorry.’ He looked coy as he tried to make amends. ‘You know I like the British.’

‘What, all of us?’

‘Some more than others, I guess.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

The general looked intently across the table at Kay Summersby, the woman seconded to Eisenhower’s headquarters early in the war as his driver, then secretary, now also his lover.

‘Would you obey a direct order to come to bed, or shall I have you taken out at dawn and shot for disobedience?’

She threw her napkin playfully across the table at him, and thought how boyish he could still look with his blue eyes and explosive smile, even with his hair in rapid retreat.

‘Well, if it would help further the cause of Anglo-American understanding …’

It was in their eyes that Hencke could see the change. Once they had been battle-hardened, men of steel, soldiers of the Wehrmacht who even in captivity would gather together for the strength and support they could give each other. They had crowded around the numerous kindling fires in noisy groups, finding tasks to fill their days and maintain their spirits, beating tin cans into exotic cigarette cases, moulding and whittling jewellery from scraps of clear plastic salvaged from the cockpits of crashed planes, while those with less dexterity played chess, exchanged stories or simply shared photographs and experiences. Even in defeat there had been defiance.

Now it was all gone. There was little conversation, only silent figures whiling away the hours huddled over the low flames, some using tin cans to cook the scraps of extra rations they had bribed out of the guards or wheedled from fellow prisoners through a crooked game of Skat, no longer sharing, gaunt faces blackened from squatting so close over the fires, heads bowed, eyes red rimmed and desperate, peering out of sooty masks like clowns at a circus of the damned. As Hencke walked around the camp they cast furtive glances to see who passed by before returning once more to stare into the flames, unable or unwilling to hold his gaze. Pilsudski had known what he was about, the bastard.

It wasn’t just the finger. God, if that had been all it would have been over and done with in a moment Less pain than a boot camp hypodermic, one good heave and a cold shower and it would have been nothing more than unpleasant history. No, it was the feeling of utter worthlessness with which they were left. Pilsudski had reduced them to objects without value, with no rights, no feelings, no dignity, scarcely men at all. They had stood in the rain, raging inside at the injustice and their impotence, sick with apprehension as the line of men shortened and their turn came ever closer. They were fighting men, yet in a minute Pilsudski’s guards with their harsh, slime-smeared gloves were going to reduce them to the level of castrated pigs, not physically, but inside, where the scars never heal. When it was over they had slunk around in their private worlds of shame, feeling dirty, guilty, no longer comrades but individuals, isolated and alone. And Hencke would need every one of them if he were to have any hope of success.

A lifetime ago he had been a teacher in a bustling provincial town where the children laughed, the coffee shops were washed with conversation and the trams ran on time. He had found happiness, for a while, helping his wards enjoy a childhood he had never known. His mother had died in childbirth, his father had failed to return from the gas-filled trenches of the First War and he had been entrusted to the care of a maiden aunt who had carried her enforced maternal duties and self-sacrifice like a donkey does a chafing saddle, intolerant and protesting, a burden which she used to impress her neighbours even while she oppressed the boy. She had offered love, of a sort – selfish, demanding, inflexible, but what the middle-aged spinster recognized as love, her entire knowledge of which had been gained one clumsy afternoon as a teenager in a hayrick. She had grown to maturity with the view that men were capable only of deception, that even her brother’s death at the front was an act of personal desertion and yet, to do her justice, she was determined that her young ward would prove the exception. All her attention was lavished on the boy whom she would raise in her own image, the one man in her life who would never descend into lust and betray her. It hadn’t worked, of course. She had kept him isolated and away from the corrupting influence of friends, forbidden even to touch the memory of his lost father, so that he grew up at first in awe and eventually in hate of her until the self-righteous demands and accusations of ingratitude she cast at him had broken their bonds completely and he had been left on his own. He had built himself a new life, living his lost childhood through his young pupils, recapturing the dreams that had been stolen from him and devoting himself to the tasks of teaching with an enthusiasm combined with a degree of sensitivity and understanding that surprised those who knew nothing of his background. And few did, for outside school Hencke was intensely private, a man who insisted on the right to build his own world into which others were not invited until they had earned his trust, and he had convinced himself they would not infect the wounds left unhealed by his aunt. At last, in the small Sudeten town of Asch with its laughing children and coffee shops and trams, he thought he had found happiness. Then the war forced its way across his doorstep and the world he had so painstakingly built for himself had been blasted away, leaving nothing but fragments. After that there had been nowhere left to hide. Pilsudski had tried to strip away his sense of personal security and hope, but he was too late. Others had got there first.

Yet he needed Pilsudski, with all his grotesque savagery. Hencke had stood in line, waiting his turn, feeling the harsh wind lash his back and the tightening of apprehension in his body as he drew closer to the table and its guards, but he had experienced neither fear nor outrage. Instead there was a sense of relief, of opportunity. The degradation itself left him empty, cold; he knew there were worse fates in war. Yet he also knew that stripping away their manhood had made the others malleable; it was precisely the effect Pilsudski wanted, but Hencke understood that he might turn it to his own advantage. Within each of the crouched and humbled figures around the prison camp burned a sense of outrage which, if harnessed, might turn them once more into a force of terrible retribution – his retribution. Hencke needed these men. There was little enough chance with them, none at all without them.

As he looked across the flickering glow of a dozen tiny campfires and the hunched shoulders of those he wanted for his own personal cause, Hencke understood that the inevitable price of failure in war, even a war so near its end, would be death. But he knew he would have to risk it, risk everything, if his mission were to succeed. Even if it meant his being the last man to die …

TWO

Cazolet squeezed on to the narrow seat and tried to make himself comfortable, knowing he had little chance of success. When the House of Commons had been hit by a stray Luftwaffe bomb in 1941 the team of firefighters, already sadly depleted by the firestorms blazing around London, had faced the choice of saving either the Commons or the more ancient and gracious construction of neighbouring Westminster Hall. The comfort and convenience of politicians was balanced in the scales by the firemen against the preservation of an important part of the nation’s Tudor heritage; the Commons had been left to burn until gutted.

For a while this had caused considerable disruption until the members of the House of Lords came to the rescue and gave over to their common-born colleagues the facilities of the undamaged Upper Chamber, a still more impressive Gothic edifice than the one left smouldering in ruins. Yet their hospitality had not stretched to the civil servants who accompany ministers, and so Cazolet and his kind were condemned to squashing on to a row of hard wooden stools tucked away in one corner. Not even the glories of uninhibited Victorian craftsmanship could do much to distract from the numbness that crept over Cazolet’s body less than ten minutes after perching on one of those hideous stools. Still, today he had other distractions and for once had forgotten that he could feel little from his shirt tail down.

An air of expectation filled the Chamber. Members of Parliament, many of them in the uniforms of the armed forces in which they served, bustled to find themselves a position on the red leather benches while others loitered around the extravagantly carved oak canopy covering the sovereign’s throne. Something was up. The word had gone round – the Prime Minister was coming to the House to make an important statement – everyone wanted to be in on it. Cazolet sat with a conspiratorial smile; these were the times he found his job so rewarding, when the whole world seemed to wait upon a prime ministerial utterance, the words of which Cazolet himself had drafted. And this one was going to be a cracker.

The Prime Minister walked purposefully into the Chamber, conspicuous in full morning dress with flowing coat tails, a spotted and loosely secured bow tie at his throat and his father’s gold watch fob stretched across the front of his waistcoat. The outfit was not new, indeed it gave the solid impression of having been made for him at least twenty years earlier, since it bulged and stretched in too many places. It should have been replaced long ago, but he felt comfortable in it. Anyway, Clemmie was always nagging him to be less extravagant.

No sooner had he found his place on the front bench than he was given the floor. ‘Mr Speaker, I pray the House will forgive the exuberance of my attire,’ he began, a thumb stuck firmly in his waistcoat pocket. The Old Man was teasing them, keeping them waiting, building up the atmosphere. ‘I have not, as some Honourable Members might conclude, come straight from the racecourse’ – there was a ripple of polite laughter. It wasn’t a very good joke, but if he could begin with any form of joke the news must be exceptional – ‘but from an audience with His Majesty the King. Just an hour or so ago I received news which I thought it only right to share with him and with the House at the first possible opportunity.’

‘He’s called an election,’ someone shouted from the back benches. It was a Labour MP renowned for his ready heckle, and Churchill rose willingly to the bait as more laughter washed across the House.

‘No, sir! The Honourable Gentleman must contain his impatience. He reminds me of a Black Widow spider, anxious for his date with destiny but who will undoubtedly discover that his love affair with the electorate will end only in his being brutally devoured.’

The Old Man was in good form, and there was general waving of Order Papers around the Chamber. The antagonisms of partisan politics had been laid to one side during the lifetime of the coalition government which Churchill led, but they were never far below the surface and were getting less restrained as it became apparent that an election and a return to normal parliamentary hostilities must be only weeks away.

‘Mr Speaker, sir, the whole House will know that a few days ago the Allied armies reached the western bank of the Rhine, the historical border of Germany.’ A low chorus of approval rose from the MPs, but Churchill quickly raised his hand to silence them. His tone had grown suddenly more serious. ‘No one could have been in any doubt that the crossing of the Rhine would be a deeply hazardous enterprise, with all the bridges across that vast river destroyed and the Nazi armies fighting fanatically to protect the homeland with their own towns and villages at their backs.’ He paused while he took a large linen handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers to clear his nose, and the habitual crease that ran down the centre of his forehead deepened into a frown. The Chamber was completely silent. Was it bad news after all? He had them all in his grasp – all, that is, except Cazolet, who struggled to contain his smile as he watched his master trifling with their emotions.

‘The Rhine is the last great barrier standing between our armies and complete victory. I have to tell this House that late last night a junior officer, a lieutenant, of the United States First Army, succeeded in’ – he hesitated slightly, toying with the words – ‘walking across a bridge at a small town called Remagen. It appears that the Germans, in their anxiety, failed to blow the bridge properly. Mr Speaker, the Rhine has been crossed. We have a bridgehead on German soil!’

The announcement was greeted with an outpouring of relief and jubilation on all sides, many Members rising to their feet to applaud and others shaking the hands of opponents they would normally have difficulty addressing in a civil tone. Churchill stood, triumphant in their midst, yet wishing for all the world that he were young again and could exchange his role for that of the lowly American lieutenant.

Once he had resumed his seat, other MPs rose to offer their congratulations and thoughts, giving the Prime Minister fresh opportunity to bask in the sun of military success.

‘What did you advise the King?’ asked one.

The Prime Minister’s demeanour was full of mischief. ‘The House may not know that in the dark days of 1940 I gave His Majesty a carbine, for his own personal use in the event of invasion.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I advised him that it was my firm opinion he would no longer need it.’

They loved it. Churchill’s sole regret was that he couldn’t hold the election instantly in the midst of such unqualified rejoicing. More questions, more praise. No one expected other than further fulsome accolades when Captain the Honourable Gerald Wickham-Browne, MC, DSM, caught the Speaker’s attention. The captain, junior scion of minor aristocracy, had lost an eye during the retreat from Dunkirk yet still managed to regard military combat with the sort of unrestrained enthusiasm normally found only amongst schoolchildren at a cup final. He was on his feet, standing in parade ground fashion, hands clasped behind his back and black eye-patch thrust proudly towards the distant ceiling. But he was not a happy man.

‘Is the Prime Minister aware, as delighted as I am to hear the news, that the honour of being the first to cross the Rhine was to have been left to British troops under General Montgomery? While of course we are delighted at the Americans’ good fortune in being able simply to walk across’ – Cazolet marvelled at how Wickham-Browne managed to make it sound as if a mongrel had run off with a string of prize sausages – ‘what is now to be the role of British troops, who have been preparing for months for the storming of the Rhine and who by sheer bad luck have been denied their share of this triumph? Are we to get anything by way of …’ He hesitated, unsure of the most appropriate word, before deciding it didn’t matter a damn anyway. ‘… compensation?’

Churchill rose to respond, his chin working up and down as he sought for the words of his reply, rubbing his thumbs in the palms of his hands in instinctive search for the cigar he wished he were smoking. ‘Let us not quibble over the fortunes of war. It is enough that the Rhine has been crossed. But let us not forget what this event has proved to us. First, that German resistance is crumbling. And second, that if we can pursue the battle with speed and flexibility, and can grasp the opportunities which confusion and indiscipline amongst the enemy may present, then nothing can stop our march across Germany. I have no doubt that now is the moment of our greatest opportunity, and that British forces will be in the vanguard of the victory which is surely to come. I have already telegraphed my sincerest congratulations to General Eisenhower and told him that our troops stand ready for the next challenge. Onward Britannia! Nothing can stop us now!’

At times of great crisis, words can be more powerful than bullets. Churchill had proved that time and again during the days of the Blitz when he had precious few bullets and little else with which to resist the enemy and to maintain British morale. He was conscious of the effect his words could have, yet, as he resumed his seat to the congratulations of his parliamentary colleagues, he had not the slightest notion of the impact they were causing several hundred miles away, at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, where his congratulatory telegram was bursting into fire like a grenade thrown through the window.

‘What in God’s name is this crap?’ The message trembled in Eisenhower’s hand.

British troops are ready … Now is the moment to swarm across the bridgehead at Remagen …

The flush of anger was spreading across his face as he read every new sentence. The adjutant who had delivered the telegram took another precautionary step backwards; the general was reputed to have an unreliable temper, and he didn’t care to be around to suffer the uncertain consequences.

German resistance and morale may collapse if you strike before the enemy has time to regroup …

Eisenhower continued to quote from Churchill’s missive. ‘Shit, doesn’t he realize we’ve got less than two hundred men perched on that bridgehead and they could get blown away any time? If we put so much as another pack of paperclips across that stinking bridge it’ll topple into the river. What’ll happen then? Our guys on the bridgehead become sandwich meat, that’s what!’

Suddenly he pounded his head as if to inflict punishment on himself. ‘What a fool I am … Losing my wits. Why didn’t I realize straight away what that scheming old bastard was up to?’ He read on.

The arguments for a direct drive on the German capital become irresistible. Let us drive down the autobahns which Hitler himself has built and not dare to stop until we have reached Berlin.

‘Berlin! So that’s still his game.’

He turned in his chair and screamed through the open door into the next office to his chief of staff. ‘Beetle! Get in here and bring a stenographer. I want to send a reply.’

Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith and the stenographer scuttled in without a word and perched in front of Eisenhower. There they sat, pencils poised, for several long moments while Eisenhower remained lost in thought. Ice seemed to have taken the place of the fires within him. Eventually Bedell Smith could stand the uncertainty no longer.

‘Changed your mind?’

Eisenhower raised his head from his thoughts and looked at him with piercing blue eyes.

‘Beetle, how do I say “Fuck You” in British?’

The commander tapped his stick against the chair to demand silence. In the darkness of the night the entire prisoner complement of Transit Camp 174B huddled together on the exercise square in search of companionship and warmth, forming a human amphitheatre around the flames of an open fire. Their faces stared gaunt and drained of colour in the flickering light like ghosts gathered around a grave. They expected no comfort from the commander’s words. An Ehrenrat had been called, a ‘Council of Elders’, and that only happened when there was a real mess.

The commander sat at their head, with his two senior officers on either side and several others standing behind. He was leaning on his stick even while seated, his face a lurid mask as some player in a tragedy.

‘My friends,’ the commander began. A few of them noticed that he had forsaken his customary formal greeting – ‘Men of the Wehrmacht!’; there was no suggestion of command in his voice. ‘My friends, I have gathered you all together to share with you the news I was given today. I can find no words to lessen the pain, and so I …’ He lowered his head, struggling for composure and fresh strength. He cleared his throat, as if the words were sticking in his gullet like phlegm.

‘The Russians are fighting on German soil. They are already well advanced into Pomerania, and have crossed the Oder. They are less than a hundred miles from the Hauptstadt, Berlin.’

The words carved like a razor through their midst as damp wood spat on the burning pyre, cremating their last hope of salvation. No one bothered to contest the news, to pretend it was enemy propaganda. Such bravado belonged to the days when they had bombers in the air and food in their bellies, and those days were long since gone. They all understood what the news meant. Many of them had fought on the Russian Front, had seen the bestiality with which the Russian peasant soldiers treated captured Wehrmacht and civilians alike. They had found the mass graves of butchered officers, shot in the back of the head, of the women raped and mutilated, of the children slaughtered for no reason other than they had got in the way. The Russians knew only one method of fighting war, to the bitter end, and that end was now in sight. Cossacks swarming through their homeland, penetrating their villages and their women, pillaging everything and everyone in their path. They, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, had failed, leaving their loved ones to pay the price.

‘I’m so sorry,’ was all the commander could find to say. He fell into silence until it became oppressive and he had to find something else to break it. ‘My only satisfaction is that you have survived. You are brave men, I have fought and served with many of you. We have survived. That, at least, is something. Perhaps we may yet have the opportunity of rebuilding our country …’

He trailed off in a savage fit. of coughing. There was shrapnel in his lungs and in other vital parts of his body, and to a man they knew that whatever might lie in store for the rest of them, the commander would not be part of it. They had all seen the tell-tale translucence of the skin clinging to his skull, the glaze across his eyes and the bloodstains on his handkerchief; only his pride and sense of duty had kept him going this far. In sympathy and silent embarrassment they watched as the commander brought up a little more of his rapidly fading life.

They stood aimlessly, staring silently into the flames, dispirited and without hope, lost in contemplation of a homeland far away. Then something moved, a man, one of their own, who stepped forward into the circle surrounding the fire. He wore the tattered uniform of an Oberleutnant in some tank regiment – it was impossible to tell which; almost all the insignia were missing. Nevertheless he was a striking-looking figure, tall, lean to the point of gauntness, his cropped black hair parted near the middle so that it stood up in a defiant, almost disrespectful manner before flopping across the forehead of his long face. His features were finely carved as if sculpted from smooth clay, his cheekbones high – looks that suggested intelligence and sensitivity which seemed out of place in the middle of a band of warriors. Yet he had obviously seen combat, and sported a scar through the top of his lip which dragged one edge of his mouth downward, giving the impression of a perpetual sardonic smile. There was suffering in the face, and nowhere more clearly than in the eyes which were remarkably dark and deep-set as if trying to keep their distance from the world. They were careworn from more than just the numbing tiredness of past combat, yet as the commander gazed at him they became almost transparent. He felt he was peering right into the man’s inner soul, and inside he could see flames of torment. There was passion and anger in this man. The prisoner snapped to attention.

‘Permission to speak, sir?’

‘You are …?’

‘My name is Hencke, sir.’

The commander nodded for him to continue.

‘I have family in the east, in the Sudetenland. For all I know, the Russians are there already.’ There were sympathetic nods from amongst the men. ‘Your pardon, Commander, but I’m not content to sit idly back on my ass comforting myself in the thought that I am a survivor while those I love face the Russians. Sir!’

The reprimand implicit in his words and the rough language used to his commanding officer caused a stir of anger, but the commander waved it away. He was too tired to fight, particularly with one of his own men.

‘I intended no sense of satisfaction in what I said, Hencke, but survival is all we have to look forward to. I fear there is little other choice.’

‘I believe we always have a choice …’ The sting of accusation in his voice had guaranteed him a hearing, but now he had their attention and his voice softened. ‘Sir, it is the duty of German officers to resist. It is an oath of duty which we have all taken and which still, to us all, should be sacred.’

‘An oath to generals and politicians who got us into this mess?’ a voice interrupted from the darkness at the edge of the fire.

Hencke turned in the direction of the questioner. He had begun addressing the whole group, not just reporting to his senior officer, holding centre stage in the midst of an audience he could scarcely see in the night gloom. His gaze travelled around the group slowly, deliberately, piercing through the darkness at the shadowy masks which confronted him, probing like a scalpel into their inner thoughts. ‘I agree. What have our beloved generals and politicians done for me? I haven’t even got buttons to do up my flies anymore, and my proudest possession is the piece of string I use for a belt. It’s difficult marching unquestioningly behind your leaders with your trousers round your ankles – present commanders excepted, sir.’

A stirring of appreciation rustled through the prisoners.

‘Whether our leaders have let us down or not, my oath of duty wasn’t taken for their personal benefit but for my country and for those I left behind. It’s them I’m interested in. They are the ones who deserve our help. And we’re doing nothing to help them sitting round here scratching ourselves and gossiping about three “Fs”.’

‘Three “Fs”?’ enquired the commander wearily.

‘Er, “Food”, “Freedom” and …“Females”, sir,’ one of his subordinates leaned over to advise him.

‘Forget the females. I’d sell my mother for a tin of corned beef,’ a voice volunteered from out of the shadows to general approval.

‘Tell me, Hencke,’ the commander continued. ‘I share your frustration. But what on earth can we do? This is a prison camp, for God’s sake.’

Hencke delayed his reply, giving them time to silence their shuffling, giving him command of the stage. When he resumed his tone was once again harsh. ‘What can we do? Why, we can roll over and let the guards kick us whenever they feel bored. We can continue to scrabble around in the mud for the scraps of food they choose to throw at us, hoping they’ll get so tired of all this that one day they will simply throw open the gates and let us struggle back home. “One day. Some day. Never”,’ he mimicked the words of a song of lost love popular in Germany. ‘In the meantime what are we left with? “Wag your tail” – “Lick my boots” – “Sit up and beg” – “Bend over”.’ He was moving around the circle, inviting contradiction as he threw the guards’ taunts at them. None came. ‘Or we can remind our captors that we are still German soldiers, that simply because they wish to treat us like dogs there’s no need for us to act like dogs. Show them that we’re not garbage, that we’re not here just for them to piss on whenever they feel like a bit of fun. OK, they may have captured us, but for God’s sake don’t allow them to crush us. Let’s show that we’re still men!’

‘How? In Heaven’s name, how can we resist in here?’ The commander’s voice was plaintive as he swung his cane around to indicate the barbed wire surrounding them.

‘Not in here, sir. Out there.’

‘What? You mean …’

‘Escape.’

‘But that’s preposterous, Hencke. No German has managed to escape from Britain back to Germany through the course of this entire war. Not a single one! And you are willing to risk your life gambling against odds like that?’

‘It’s better than staying here to have a finger shoved up my ass. Sir.’

‘I cannot allow you to escape, Hencke. It would be folly.’

‘I’m not suggesting that I escape, sir. I’m suggesting we all do.’

His words hit the assembly like ice water, and the men began to shake themselves as if to get rid of an unwelcome drenching.

‘Think about it, just for a second,’ Hencke continued, anxious not to lose their attention as he resumed his walk, cat-like, around the circle. ‘It’s because no one’s ever escaped that it makes such sense. The guards are pig-lazy and idle, the last thing they expect is trouble. And if we all get out, the confusion will be huge, there’ll be a far greater chance of at least one of us making it back.’

‘It’s worth a shot,’ someone prompted.

‘That’s all you’re likely to get – shot!’ retorted the commander, wiping spittle from his lips. He had seen so much unnecessary death, his conscience couldn’t take responsibility for permitting still more.

‘Sir, when did you ever hear of a German POW being shot after trying to escape? These British are sticklers for the rules. Twenty-eight days’ solitary is the maximum they’re allowed to throw at us.’

‘Yes, but these Canadians don’t play by the rule book …’

‘This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to get our own back. What the hell are the Canadians going to do if they lose an entire campful of prisoners? More to the point, what are the British going to do to the Canadians? It’s our chance to get our own back, to catch them with their trousers down!’

‘Oh, yes. It’d screw the verdammten Canadians rigid,’ a prisoner applauded. ‘I’d just like to see Pilsudski’s face the morning after. I’d risk anything for that.’

‘But what purpose would it achieve?’ the commander began, lacking the strength to join in the enthusiasm that was beginning to bloom around him.

‘It would show our loved ones back home that, whatever they are about to go through, we have not forgotten them,’ Hencke responded quietly, his words massaging away the doubts. ‘That we remembered our duty to them. That we share the burden of their suffering. That we are still their men. Anyway, what’s the alternative? Staying behind for more of this!’ He stuck his middle finger in the air, imitating the gesture Pilsudski had thrown at the commander, and a shiver of fury cut through the assembly.

The commanding officer could sense the change of mood and motivation amongst his men. A chance to revenge the humiliation, to end the despair, no longer to be Pilsudski’s catamites. To become whole men once again. It was his duty to stop it, of course; it was folly. But he no longer had the energy to resist. He sat, head resting in exhaustion on the top of his cane, unable to find any further protest while those around him began to chatter away with more animation and spirit than they had found since entering Camp 174B.

Hencke smiled grimly. The escape was on. His mission had begun.

Churchill attempted to wipe the dribble of rich gravy from his waistcoat with a crisp linen napkin, but all his effort served only to impregnate the grease more firmly into the fibre. He gave up the unequal struggle; the stain wouldn’t be noticed, anyway, amongst all the rest. Perhaps he should have felt a prick of conscience surrounded by so much good food while most of the country were struggling on a weekly meat ration that looked no more appetizing than a Trafalgar Square pigeon and eating breakfasts concocted from powdered egg that had the consistency of fast-drying concrete and much the same impact on the digestive system. Still, he could no more stand the pace on an empty stomach than he could run a war without shedding blood. Conscience often had to go into cold storage. So he would enjoy his food and his bathtime and continue to exhort others to use no more than five inches of water.

The Old Man was content. A few close friends, their wives glittering in all their pre-war finery, made an attentive audience. The ten diners had just finished demolishing a haunch of venison shot a few days previously on the Scottish estate of the host, Sir William Muirhead, and ferried down to London for the occasion. Runner beans from the hot-houses of Cornwall had also been served, bought off-ration but at lavish price, and washed down with a splendid claret. The war had played merry hell with current French vintages, but the best stock had been well preserved, stored deep in cellars, far out of reach of the Luftwaffe. All part of God’s great plan, mused Churchill as he finished another glass.

‘Seems that the flood of American soldiers through London is playing havoc with prices in the West End,’ chirped Sir William’s wife. That afternoon she had come back from an expedition to Fortnum’s, bemoaning the fact that not only had their prices for afternoon tea gone up but, far worse, she’d had to queue for more than ten minutes behind a group of GIs before getting a table. They had even left their tip, not discreetly under the plate but on top, right out for everyone to see. So vulgar.

‘Makes a change from the Free French, I suppose,’ Churchill pouted through a lopsided, indulgent grin.

Lady Muirhead failed to notice the glint in his eye. ‘I’m sorry, Winston?’

‘Prices in the West End. The Free French. Apparently every street-walker in London claims to belong to the Free French. Although scarcely any of them are French. And none of them, so I’m told, are free!’

There was general laughter as the PM relaxed amongst old friends, only the long-suffering Clemmie showing little appreciation. She’d heard it all before.

Another of the wives joined in. ‘Do you know, I heard the other day that a bus full of schoolchildren had been brought into the West End to see the lights turned on, now the blackout has been lifted. Seems they were all terrified. Never seen anything like it before. Burst into tears and demanded to be taken back home.’

The laughter was less genuine, and Churchill chose not to join in. The comment had been silly and insensitive. What was there to laugh about with a generation of children brought up in a world of darkness and fear, where even the half-lights allowed by the new regulations caused confusion and misery? It was going to take a very long time to get back to normal after this war; indeed, it would take an effort as great as the war itself to rebuild what had been shattered. Did the country – did he – still have the fight for it? He thought of the forthcoming election once more, and that feeling of nervousness returned.

His host noticed the faraway look beginning to creep into Churchill’s eye and decided to intervene. ‘Winston, I think it’s time for a toast,’ he said, refilling the Old Man’s glass. ‘I sometimes wondered whether we would ever reach this point, but at last it seems as if the war is almost over. We’ve won – no, you’ve won the war, Winston. I know those Yankee interlopers have come in for the finish, just like they did last time, and will no doubt claim much of the credit …’

‘Just like they did last time!’ someone added.

‘But it wouldn’t have happened, couldn’t have happened without you and what you’ve done. I know there will be many more toasts in the weeks and months ahead, but as an old friend it would do me great honour if this could be the first.’ He raised his glass. ‘To you, Winston. With our thanks for winning the war.’

It was a genuine accolade, made all the more poignant because as an old friend there was no need for Muirhead to have made the gesture. There was a mutter of appreciation from around the table as the others joined in, and already Churchill’s eyes were brimming with tears. He wiped the trickle away with the flat of his hand.

‘Not quite over yet, you know. Still all to play for,’ was the only response he seemed able to mount as Clemmie reached over to pat her own tribute.

‘Still all to play for’, Churchill heard the echo in his mind. Was it so? Eisenhower’s response to his telegram, received that afternoon, had been blunt. ‘Keeping all options open,’ it had said. ‘Review the situation on an ongoing basis … No rush to judgement.’ All the cliches at which an American military mind could clutch. But in the event, Eisenhower’s unwillingness to impair his authority over military matters had been clear and uncompromising. The hard facts were inescapable.

‘I have not won this war, Bill,’ Churchill continued, in a tone that dampened the reverie around the table. He waved down the polite protest of his host. ‘Perhaps historians will be kind and maybe it will be said that I prevented us from losing the war, after Dunkirk. But look around us. Look not just at the West End of London, but across the battlefields of Europe. This war is now an American war, fought with American guns, American money and American lives. Today they have more troops engaged in combat than the whole of the British Empire. It is the Americans who will win this war, eventually. And, to my everlasting regret, it is they who will be largely responsible for the peace.’

As his host picked up the conversation, Churchill could not but remember the words of Eisenhower’s response. Far from pouring through the bridgehead at Remagen, the Supreme Allied Commander was being cautious, blaming the fragile state of the bridge, stating that it would take several days before it was clear whether the bridgehead would hold. So British troops in the north who were ready to advance on Berlin would have to continue sitting on their backsides while Eisenhower’s penpushers dithered about whether US troops had enough prophylactics and nylons for the battle ahead. Damn the man! The war wasn’t over yet and he wasn’t ready to watch American generosity give away everything he had fought for. As he poured himself a brandy, Churchill resolved once more: He wasn’t going to let go, there was too much at stake. While Eisenhower prevaricated, the peace was being lost. The Americans would have to be persuaded or pushed into changing their plans, to set aside their fears of an Alpine Redoubt. Not for the first time he cursed the shortsightedness of others; once again, as at Dunkirk, he was fighting alone. But fighting he was. By one means or another, they would get to Berlin first!

Dinner that night at Camp 174B had been a quiet affair. Not that a mixture of sausage, canned herring and white bread eaten out of an empty corned beef tin and washed down with a mug of tea ever excited great enthusiasm, but the guards were grateful it had been finished rapidly. It left more time for a game of cards and a quiet cigarette.

It was shortly before dusk when one of the Canadian captors’ attention had been attracted by a soldier beckoning in his direction from the shadows of a tent. As he approached he saw the prisoner held a watch in his hand; it was to be a trade. Another Kraut who wanted extra rations or a dry pair of boots.

They moved behind the tent to put themselves away from the general body of prisoners. Illicit trading like this went on all the time, but it paid to be cautious. You didn’t want the whole world to know that you were getting a genuine Swiss watch with twelve diamonds in the movement for the price of a couple of packs of cigarettes. Yet this deal was proving tricky. It was an excellent watch, one of the best the guard had seen in the camp, but the prisoner was demanding a ridiculous price.

It was as they were bent over in heated discussion, the guard wondering whether he should just confiscate the thing anyway, that he felt the cold touch of steel on the back of his neck.

‘Don’t try to be a hero. Just do as you’re told, friend,’ a voice said in heavily accented English. ‘Put down your rifle slowly.’

He tried to turn round but the steel jabbed into his neck. ‘I’ll blow your head off if you try anything stupid.’

‘You can’t have got a gun – even if you had you wouldn’t dare use it,’ the Canadian protested, the uncertainty flooding through.

‘You’re going to gamble your life on it?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Your rifle laid on the ground, very slowly.’

‘Or else?’

‘Or else you die, my friend.’

Shit, why did it have to be him? The war nearly over, soon back to the farm outside Calgary with lots of silly stories to impress the girls about how he personally beat Hitler and won the war. And there would be no damn medals for getting his balls blown off in this God-forsaken part of Britain, a million miles from the front. Slowly, very slowly, he bent down and placed his rifle on the ground.

‘Wise move, soldier.’

The guard didn’t even have time to stand erect. No sooner was his hand away from the trigger than he was hit from behind with the heavy metal bracket that had been wrenched from a camp bed and held against his neck. It wasn’t a very good imitation gun, but now it didn’t matter. They had a real one, and a guard’s uniform. All the tools they hoped they would need …

The brandy was flowing, and Churchill was once again in excellent humour. The women had withdrawn to another room, leaving the men to their own devices. In the absence of the ladies it had been confirmed that prices in the West End had indeed soared, and the only thing the whores were offering free was abuse.

‘It was the same during the last war,’ Muirhead confirmed, to the amusement of his guests. ‘Nothing changes.’

‘My dear sir, but it does,’ Churchill interjected forcefully, wagging his cigar across the table and scattering ash everywhere. ‘How well I remember, when I had returned from the Boer War, I received several very encouraging propositions from such ladies who made it abundantly clear that there would be no charge. I can only ascribe the present unhappy bout of inflation in the West End to a sad decline in values.’ He chortled along with the rest, enjoying his own joke.

‘That was rather special,’ Muirhead chided. ‘You had just escaped from a Boer prison camp and been chased across half of Africa by their army.’

This was why the Old Man enjoyed Muirhead’s dinners; the host always made a point of giving him plenty of scope for relating some of his favourite stories.

‘Why bother to escape, Winston? What drove you to it?’ enquired one of the guests.

And with scarcely time for a perfunctory cough of modesty, he was off. ‘The Boer’ – he pronounced it ‘Booa’, as if to emphasize the race’s reputation for thick-skinned stubbornness – ‘the Boer has so little imagination. A diet of maize and dried beef or, if we were fortunate, dried beef and maize – it was impossible! I would simply have faded away. So you see, my escape was not a matter of bravery. I had no choice in the matter. My stomach insisted.’ He smiled, using his fingers to pop a little cube of cheese into his mouth which he chewed with relish.

‘“Winston Churchill: Dead or Alive”,’ Sir William offered.

‘If only the British electorate had wanted me as passionately as the Boers!’

While the other guests chuckled, Churchill paused to scratch his crotch with a total lack of self-consciousness. His table manners were atrocious. He had long ago ceased to bother about such trivial things, and when Clemmie had forcefully reprimanded him he had justified his behaviour as the self-indulgence of an old man. Anyway, he countered, it hadn’t caused any slackening in the flood of dinner invitations.

‘Seriously, Winston. If you had been captured you most certainly would have been shot, if only to discourage others. Why risk your life? Was it really that important?’

‘I never realized how important until I returned home, where I found that my escape had been the focus of the newspapers’ attention for weeks. Unwittingly I had become a hero, a symbol of national resistance, and my escape had succeeded in bolstering the determination of the entire country to continue with the war until victory. It is a matter of morale, and you cannot fight a war without morale. As one editor kindly wrote, “One man, by his actions and example, can so inspire a nation that he will light a fire across a whole continent”.’

There was an appreciative silence around the room and a look of sheer wickedness crept into the Old Man’s eye. ‘And, as I discovered, you can get a good discount into the bargain!’

The camp was in darkness. There were no lights along the perimeter fence and the only illumination came from within the old football changing rooms, which now served as a guard hut, and from the bright moon. But it was a blustery night with clouds scudding across the sky. Had any of the guards bothered to look they would have found shadowy figures flitting between the tents, playing hide-and-seek in the sporadic moonlight, but most of the Canadians were relaxing in the guard hut. There were just four guards on the main gate into the compound, and two patrolling the walkway between the double perimeter fence. Guard duty was a pain; there had never been any trouble and no prisoner in his right mind would want to escape back to the hell pit they’d just left in Europe. They were all, prisoners and guards alike, marking time till the fighting was over.

So when, from inside the shadowy compound, the pair patrolling the perimeter walkway saw one of their number beckoning to them, no suspicion was aroused. He had probably found two prisoners screwing or some other bit of fun to enliven the endless night hours of cold and boredom. They let themselves into the compound through a side gate in the wire; they didn’t even think twice that the gateway was shielded from the main guard house across the compound by the prisoners’ tents. After all, they hadn’t put the tents there. Even after they darted between two of the tents and came face to face with their fellow guard pointing his Lee Enfield straight at them, they were still not concerned. It was only when they heard the familiar click of a round being forced into the chamber that they realized all was not well, and not until the moon had squeezed briefly between the clouds and fallen across Hencke’s lean and determined face did they realize that this was not, after all, going to be their night.

‘But you’re …’ one gasped in sudden understanding. It came too late. They had already raised their hands and were being relieved of their weapons.

‘I … don’t want to die,’ the youngest guard blubbed as his wrists were tied behind him with a length of guy rope.

‘Keep your miserable mouth shut and you won’t have to,’ a prisoner responded. The young guard was almost relieved when he felt the gag pushed firmly between his teeth.

The guards’ legs were pinioned and they were bundled into the corner of one of the tents. It was only when the prisoners were leaving that one of them remembered. ‘You’re the miserable little bastard who held my head down on the table the other day, aren’t you?’ The youngster’s eyes, all that could be seen above the gag, showed large and white. He was petrified. ‘I’ll never forget that. You were laughing your head off.’ The prisoner stiffened and swung back a leg as if to smash the Canadian’s testicles. None of the other prisoners did or said anything to stop him; the guard deserved everything he got. But as the German looked at the whimpering body on the ground in front of him, he seemed to change his mind. He knew what it was like to be defenceless and scared. He spat in disgust and turned on his heel. Escape would be revenge enough.

A few minutes later a group of men moved towards the guard house, eight prisoners being marched sullenly along with three uniformed guards, rifles at the ready, escorting them from the rear.

‘Open the gate!’ one of the guards shouted. ‘Got a bunch of troublemakers who need a little gentle reminding of who’s in charge of this friggin’ camp.’

The gates swung open and the prisoners marched through. The duty sergeant nodded as they approached, his rifle slung over his back as he took a drag from a cigarette. He waved a lazy torch in their direction. Hencke was standing directly in front of him before the beam fell across his face.

‘Heil Hitler,’ Hencke snapped.

‘What …?’ was the only word the sergeant managed to expel before a rifle butt thumped him in the gut, putting him on the floor and rendering him incapable of any noise except a low gurgling retch. Around him the other guards were receiving similar treatment before being trussed and dragged off to join their companions in the tent.

The prisoners now had seven rifles. They also had surprise on their side and there was scarcely a protest when they burst into the guard hut and over-powered sixteen other guards. The seventeenth, the captain on duty, was taking a shower and thought the interruption was some prank by the other guards. He was not in good temper when he stepped from under the water to remonstrate, with nothing more than a sponge to maintain the dignity he thought due his senior rank. He was in even poorer temper after he had been bound and, minus even his sponge, dumped with the other captive guards.

‘I’ll freeze to death,’ he complained.

‘Be grateful that dying will take you so long,’ came the response, after which the captain ceased protesting and saved his energy for trying to burrow as deeply as possible into the pile of warm bodies inside the tent.

The break-out had been conducted with ruthless German team work, but now it was every man for himself. They knew the prospects were not good; there had been no time for preparations. There was no civilian clothing, no maps, precious little food or money, what chance did they have? But they were free. Even an hour of freedom was enough. It would be a night to remember.

‘Seeing the look on that stupid captain’s face made it all worth while for me,’ one of the prisoners smiled, pausing to shake Hencke’s hand. ‘The only pity is that Pilsudski’s not around for a little of his own treatment. Still, maybe he’ll get that from his court martial. Thanks, Hencke. We owe you,’ he said before turning to jog through the camp gates and into the unknown.

Then the commander was in front of him, bent over his stick, wheezing. ‘Good wishes, Hencke. It’s madness, but lots of luck.’

Hencke looked into the other’s exhausted face, then down at his stick.

‘I’m not going anywhere, you know that,’ the commander said. ‘Wouldn’t make it past the gate and I’d only be a burden. I’m going to stay here, if you don’t mind, and wait till the relief guard arrives in the morning. It will be enough for me to see what happens to Pilsudski when the British discover they’ve got the biggest prisoner escape of the war on their hands. Might stretch even their sense of humour …’ He tried to smile but the effort was too much for him and he began coughing again. There was an air past caring about him and his eyes had taken on that distant, dull look of approaching death. He rested his weight against Hencke, trying to regain his breath. ‘One thing, Hencke. I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but you’re special. I’ve seen the way you can lead men and the desire that drives you on. I don’t mind admitting that you frighten me a little; such passion is extraordinary. It makes me wonder how, with such commitment, we managed to lose this wretched war …’

‘It’s not over yet. There’s still plenty of dying to be done.’

‘Plenty of dying to be done … You’re right, of course.’ The commander reflected on the words for a moment. ‘I don’t suppose anyone will make it back home but, if they do, it will be you. I want to ask you a favour. I’m not going to get back, not this time or ever. I don’t have long, and you may be the last German I ever talk to.’ The commander’s hand reached out to grab Hencke with the force of desperation. ‘My wife and children … they’re in Stettin. If it’s not already in Russian hands it soon will be. Please …’ He scrabbled feverishly inside his uniform, producing a letter which he thrust at Hencke. ‘Get this to them. It’s my last chance, the last time I’ll ever …’ His breathing pattern was gone again and he struggled to find a little more energy, pulling in rasping lungfuls of air. ‘If you’ve ever loved anyone you’ll know how important this is to me. Do it for me, Hencke. Your word of honour, one German officer to another. Give this letter to them, with my love. If you get back.’

‘When I get back.’

The commander nodded in agreement. ‘How will you?’

‘There’s a motorbike around the back of the guard hut.’

‘You’re surely not going to use the main roads! They’ll be bound to pick you up.’

‘There are nearly two hundred and fifty escaping prisoners. None of them has the slightest idea what to do or where he’s going. Most of them have only the vaguest idea even where they are. So they’ll shy away from the towns and take to the countryside, moving by night. And the British will know that anything that moves through the woods at night for a hundred miles around this place will be either an escaped prisoner or a fox. In the mood they are likely to be in, chances are they’ll shoot, just to be on the safe side.’

The commander shook his head in confusion at this blunt assessment, so much more callous than the one Hencke had offered around the camp fire. ‘You talk about “them”, as if you are quite separate, on your own.’

‘The only chance anyone has is not to do what the rest of the crowd does. I’ve got four, maybe five hours to get well clear of this place before it starts swarming with troops. So I’m going to borrow the bike and take to the roads. All roads lead somewhere.’ He began his preparations to depart, buttoning up the Canadian tunic which he was still wearing.

‘Not in enemy uniform, for God’s sake. They’ll shoot you for sure!’

‘They’ve got to catch me first,’ Hencke shouted back over his shoulder.

Moments later the sound of an engine, a Norton 250, began throbbing through the night. ‘They even left a map with it,’ he smiled in triumph, revving the bike before letting out the clutch with a snap which sent a shower of wet dirt cascading into the air. Hencke was gone.

The commander gazed after the disappearing figure. ‘You are a strange one, Hencke. But I chose the right man. You’ll get back to wherever you came from, I’m sure. Even if it’s the other side of hell.’

He could neither see nor hear the motorbike by the time it pulled up sharply several hundred yards beyond the camp gates. Hencke reached into the pocket of his tunic where the commander had stuffed the precious envelope. ‘My word of honour,’ he whispered, ‘one German officer to another.’ The dark eyes glowed with contempt as he tore the letter into a hundred tiny fragments, sent scattering in the wind as he rode away.

THREE

The sun was rising and London was beginning to stir, but it made little difference within the Annexe. Daylight didn’t penetrate here, and the only sign of the new day was the progress of the clocks and the arrival of those rostered for day duty. The duty secretary, Anthony Seizall, was rubbing the sleep from his eyes and staring at the telephone as if it had broken wind. Perplexed, he clamped it back to the side of his head.

‘You’re not pulling my leg, are you? Because if you are I shall have great pleasure in coming round with half a dozen of the local boys in blue and pulling the head off your bloody neck!’ There was a pause while he listened to a heated voice on the other end of the phone, his head bent low over the bakelite mouthpiece and his straight hair falling over his eyes while he punctuated the conversation with references to a variety of spiritual saviours before descending into repeated low cursing. Seizall was chapel, practically teetotal. Something was clearly up.

He sat chewing the end of his pencil for several minutes, the tip of his rubbery nose twitching like a rabbit’s and dilating in time to the successive floods of indecision which swept over him. Eventually his gnawing broke the pencil clean in two; time was up, action was required. He proceeded down a maze of underground corridors, shaking his head from side to side as if trying one last time to disperse the fog of inadequacy that had settled upon him, until he came to the staff sleeping quarters. Hesitating only briefly for one final burst of indecision, he knocked on a door and entered.

‘Sorry to wake you, Cazolet. Got a tricky one.’

Cazolet rolled over and waved his hands in front of his eyes, trying to ward off the light from the bare bulb which was prying his lids apart. He spent a great deal of his time in the Annexe and the result was a grey pallor across his face made worse by lack of sleep. He wasn’t supposed to be on duty at the moment, but he knew the PM’s mind so well that the other staff had taken to consulting him on many matters. What it meant, of course, was that they brought him all their problems, as if he didn’t have several filing trays full of his own to deal with. But he didn’t mind; consultation was the finest form of bureaucratic flattery.

‘Seems there’s been a break-out. Some POW transit camp in Yorkshire. Haven’t got the final figures but it looks like – almost two hundred and fifty Jerry on the loose. I’ve double-checked, of course. No doubt about it, I’m afraid. Bit of a cock-up, really.’ Seizall’s sentences were clipped, giving but the barest detail, as if too much flavour might somehow involve him in it all, and every instinct in his civil service body told him to steer well clear of this one.

‘I was just about to let the Old Man know,’ Seizall continued. ‘Trouble is he’s fast asleep; got in dreadfully late last night from some swill of a dinner party and you know he’s like a rhinoceros with piles when he’s woken. So I thought I’d let him sleep on a little. Trouble is I’ve got to inform all the other necessary Departments … What’ll we do?’

‘So all of a sudden it’s our problem, is it?’ Cazolet grumbled. One day, one day very soon, he prayed, they would let him get a full night’s sleep. He poured cold water from a large jug into an enamel washbasin – all that passed for facilities in the primitive subterranean accommodation – splashing urgent handfuls over his face to encourage a little more oxygen into his brain while Seizall stood uncomfortably in the doorway of the narrow room. The cold water seemed to have worked, for when Cazolet stood up from the wash-stand he was decisive.

‘You tell all the other Departments, Seizall, and the news will be round Fleet Street before you’ve had time to finish breakfast. And once that’s out, we’ll never be able to put it back in the bag, wartime censorship or no. It’ll be blaring out on Radio Berlin within five minutes. Two hundred and fifty of them? It’s a disaster. And it’s just what the Prime Minister’s political opponents want. They’ll pin the blame for slack security on him personally, try to make him look old and incompetent. So you go right ahead and inform everyone from the Labour Party to the Third Reich that we have one of the biggest security lash-ups of the war on our hands.’ He paused to dry his face vigorously with a rough cotton towel. ‘Then you can go wake up the PM and tell him what you’ve done.’

The effect on Seizall was impressive. His lower jaw wobbled in fair impression of a mullet, his Adam’s apple performing balletic gyrations of distress.

‘There is a better way,’ Cazolet continued, his supremacy in the matter clearly established. ‘We tell the minimum number of people – only those in the security services who need to know in order to start getting Jerry rounded up. We make it clear to them that this is a matter of top national security, that any public discussion of the escape can only give comfort to the enemy. Be vague about numbers. Then, when the Old Man’s awake and in harness, we’ll tell him what we’ve done. If he wants to let the whole world know, he can. But that’s up to him, not you or me.’

Seizall was nodding, trying to look as if he were merely accepting endorsement of a course of action he had already made up his mind to pursue.

‘There’s a lot riding on this, Seizall. Perhaps the Old Man’s entire political future. I think he’ll be grateful you waited.’

For the first time that morning an impression of relief began to etch its way across the duty secretary’s face and he paused to give silent thanks for the binding effect of powdered egg.

Dawn was beginning to paint lurid pictures in the sky, thin fingers of rain cloud stretching towards him like witches’ claws, their fire-red tips making the heavens appear to drip with blood. Around Hencke the dark woods seemed to crowd in, the trees bending down as if trying to pluck him from the seat of his bike while the throbbing of the engine surrounded him in a cocoon of sound which carved out a little world of his own and detached him from reality. From the moment he had scattered the commander’s letter to the wind he had kept his head low and the throttle stretched open, taking full advantage of the deserted roads. The wind snatched at his hair and froze his face and fingertips, all the while urging him onwards. He was free! But there was no elation in Hencke. As he looked at the fierce sky above him, the memories came crowding back. In the glow that brushed the clouds he saw only the embers he had found burning in the schoolhouse, consuming everything he loved. In the gloom of the trees bowing and sagging in the wind he found images of the veils pulled close around the mothers who had come to sorrow and mourn, weighed down by incomprehension at their loss. In the thumping noise of the engine there was no sound of freedom, only the tramp of boots as they had marched past smouldering wreckage. Hencke could not escape the memory of young bodies twisted and broken. Of books torn and burning, their ashes scattered in the growing winds of war. Of a pair of tiny shoes lying neatly at the entrance to the classroom, with no trace of the vibrant and joyful child who had been wearing them moments before. Of a love which should never have been and which could never be again. And as he remembered he clung to the throttle like a drowning man clutches at a stick, charging recklessly onward, pursued by demons.

As the sky began to lose its lustre and take on the damp grey tones of March he found himself passing through more open countryside. The long avenues of haunted trees made way for the hedgerows of rural England; above the whistle of the wind he could hear the welcoming chorus of early morning, and the demons that had returned to haunt his mind faded in the daylight. They would be back, they always came back, yet for a moment the nightmare seemed to have drained from his soul. He was taking the first, deep breath of relief when he rounded a long bend between the hedgerows and stood hard on the brake pedal, sliding to a halt on the dewy surface. Before him, stretched full across the road and blocking his path, was a rusty farm tractor around which spilled a line of British soldiers, rifles raised, pointing directly at him.

It seemed as if his race was already over.

It was nearly eleven o’clock before Cazolet presented himself to the Marine guard stationed outside the Prime Minister’s bedroom. As the sentry stepped smartly aside, Cazolet entered bearing a large cup of tea. Churchill stirred beneath the thick quilt. Typically he slept heavily and late, particularly after a good dinner, but five years of heartbreak and Hitler had conditioned him to come rapidly to full alert.

‘William. To what do I owe this decidedly ambiguous pleasure?’ He swept the dishevelled strands of greying russet hair back into place and reached out greedily for the tea, which he proceeded to slurp.

‘There’s been a POW break-out.’

‘From where?’

‘Yorkshire. Camp 174B. It’s just north of …’

‘Yes. I know it,’ Churchill interrupted, the tea temporarily forgotten. There was a gleam – a twinkle, even – in the Old Man’s eye. ‘Some men never seem to know when they’re beaten. How many?’

‘Nearly two hundred and fifty.’

Churchill jumped. The tea slopped into the saucer and began dripping onto the sheet.

‘Nearly two hundred and fifty,’ Cazolet repeated. ‘Several thousand troops are being sent to the area, but as always they’re in the wrong place, waiting on the south coast to embark for Europe. To fill the gap we’ve activated detachments of the local Home Guard to man road blocks around the camp.’

He was good, Cazolet, damned good. No undue emotion or unnecessary hyperbole, measuring out the details so as to inform rather than to incite. After a late night out the Old Man could be like an unexploded bomb which required the most delicate of handling, yet he seemed to be taking all this in his stride.

‘There’s something else. I’ve instructed the Chief Constable in charge of co-ordinating the operation that news of the break-out must be treated on a strictly need-to-know basis, that on no account must the numbers involved be released. He complained that this makes it very much more difficult for his men; not knowing the full facts ties their hands behind their backs.’

‘Did you manage to persuade him?’

‘Not until I reminded him that the war coming to an end and the next Honours List would be bound to include many civilians who had been particularly helpful on the home front. I think he saw the point.’

‘But the news is bound to get out eventually,’ Churchill mused. ‘It will be the best news Herr Hitler will have heard in months.’ His tea was momentarily forgotten, the cup stranded halfway between saucer and chin.

‘But not before most of the escapees have been rounded up. By then it can be treated as a success story and not used by our enemies to undermine you.’

‘My goodness, William. You have been busy guarding my back. Commendable!’

‘Not really.’ Cazolet’s tone was impish. ‘Pure self interest. Prime Ministers are not brought down without creating waves. In your case it would be a veritable tidal wave, which would quite swamp small boats such as mine …’

‘Then may I wish you many long years of carefree sailing.’

There was an almost familial informality between the two born of a meeting of intellects and emotions, more like father and son than the formal courtesies demanded between master and civil servant. Anyway, it was difficult to be left in excessive awe of a man propped up in bed, swathed in three yards of pale pink pyjama silk and already puffing away at a huge cigar between mouthfuls of tea.

‘The local police stations are being inundated with reports of suspicious characters; several have already been apprehended.’ Cazolet glanced at his notebook. ‘Two men were caught as they rode a stolen bicycle in full Luftwaffe uniform the wrong way down the village High Street. Apparently they would have been caught earlier, except for the misfortune that the bike they stole belonged to the local police constable.’

‘Remind me of that when I call to congratulate the Chief Constable and thank him for his co-operation …’

‘Four others were found early this morning, dead drunk behind the bar of a local pub. Seems they never had any intention of escaping further than the nearest drink. I suspect that most of them will be rounded up very quickly.’

‘I’m sure you are right. But as we know, most of them don’t matter; it’s the one or two slipping through the net who carve their names in the history books, who light a fire across a whole continent.’ He paused. ‘Keep me well advised, William. A great deal may ride on such an escape, I want to know everything that happens on this one.’

Cazolet stood at the end of the bed, waiting. ‘Any further instructions?’

The Old Man looked up, his expression serious. ‘This may be a difficult day, which calls for unusual measures.’ There was a frown of concentration. ‘I shall have two eggs with my bacon and toast. And another cup of tea.’

Cazolet turned and left. For the first time in several days he was laughing out loud.

Hencke counted the barrels of eight Lee Enfields, all of which were pointing straight at him from a distance of less than ten feet. He could try to run them down, of course, but by the time he had slipped the clutch and moved no further than a few inches he reckoned that at least six of the eight bullets would have found him. Not much of an option, that. Neither was surrender, but what was the alternative? Already he could see the tips of the barrels dancing nervously and could sense the fingers tightening around the triggers. As he throttled back and put the gears in neutral, Hencke’s hand went to his throat, checking that the uniform he was wearing was properly buttoned. No surrender. Never that. There was too much at stake. He would try to bluff it out.

‘Sergeant Cheval, Fourth Royal Quebec,’ he snapped. God, could they really take his accent for a French Canadian? But don’t wait and see – grab the initiative! ‘Who’s in charge?’

The rifles were still pointing at him, but some were beginning to waver in uncertainty. He began to study the men behind the muzzles; only two were in uniform, the rest were in an assortment of crumpled civilian clothing with nothing more than armbands for identification. Behind them, strewn amongst the hedgerows, lay several pedal cycles which apart from the battered tractor were their only apparent means of transportation. What luck! He had run into Dad’s Army dragged out of their beds. Perhaps there was a chance, after all …

From behind the line of rifles stepped a man in his sixties armed with a Webley pistol, a fierce look in his eye and a carefully trimmed white moustache. He was the only one wearing a military cap. His uniform was smartly pressed and his boots were immaculate. A veteran, and a man who wore his lieutenant’s shoulder pips with pride, Hencke decided. Still astride the motorcycle, he came to a salute.

‘Lieutenant, I am Sergeant Cheval of the Fourth Quebec,’ he repeated the introduction. ‘My regiment is guarding the camp.’

The Webley was still pointing straight at him and there was a bead of nervous perspiration across the bridge of the lieutenant’s nose, but to the officer’s rear Hencke could see the barrels of several rifles beginning to droop towards the ground.

‘Less than two miles down the road there are thirty escaped Germans,’ Hencke continued, waving behind him in the general direction of the north of England. The look of ferocity in the officer’s eye had changed to one of suspicion and he was about to aim a flood of questions which Hencke knew he had no chance of withstanding. ‘Many of them are armed. They’ve already killed several of my company!’

At this point the rifle barrels were raised once more in anxiety; this time they were pointing not at Hencke but back down the road. The lieutenant’s lips were working away in agitation beneath his moustache. He was being overwhelmed by Hencke’s news and the responsibility which had suddenly been thrust upon him after so many years of waiting, like the fishes, for an invasion which had never come. He had the rank but he couldn’t match the experience suggested by Hencke’s regular army uniform. He had a thousand questions to ask but could find the words for none of them.

‘Lieutenant, the Germans are headed in this direction, they’re not far behind. You must maintain your position here and be ready while I go and warn headquarters.’ It was all so ludicrously makeshift. He hadn’t the slightest idea where headquarters were located, but he supposed they must lie somewhere to the other side of the road block. That was enough. He began gently to rev the bike engine, testing the officer’s resolve. ‘And remember. They’re dangerous!’

For the first time the lieutenant’s eyes left him and began staring in the direction from which Hencke had appeared. The ferocity had gone; there was only anxiety left, and by the time he had dragged his attention back from the distant woodland the moment for making decisions was past. The Norton was already on the move.

‘Good luck, Lieutenant,’ Hencke shouted above the noise of the engine as he weaved around the tractor and the line of men. Their rifles were at shoulder level once more while their boots scratched nervously away at the pavement, trying to find a solid firing position. When Hencke looked behind him he could see a long row of backs. Only the officer was looking in his direction, the agonies of uncertainty twisting his face. But already it was too late …

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