by Matt Killeen
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Send More Cops, Ltd.
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Ebook ISBN 9780451479266
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For the very many
who have suffered so much
at the hands of the very few.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ONE
August 23, 1940
THE SIREN SEEMED muffled. It was absorbed by the seemingly endless hills of mud, or it fled into the big gray sky and was gone. Either way, it didn’t seem particularly auspicious. It couldn’t even startle the few disinterested seagulls that continued to squat on the gray metal tube, as if it really was just a drainpipe left lying on the side of a hill. They failed to notice the cables and wires that straggled into the mire along its length, or the branches and offshoots of pipework welded into the main cylinder at regular intervals.
However, the gray tube and muddy slope did have a more interested audience elsewhere. The cables trailed away to form an intricate path of black rubber lines, down into the valley and back up the facing slope. At their end, five hundred meters away, was a concrete blockhouse sunk into the hilltop. Through a small slit running horizontally across its length, a dozen eyes watched and waited.
The darkness inside managed to be both stuffy and damp. The boards covering the floor were ill fitting and filthy, with muddy footprints, the walls bare and unadorned. A rusty radio hid in a corner, emitting a quiet metallic hiss.
“Zehn,” a voice crackled through the speaker.
The men straightened up and crowded toward the light. Their uniforms varied in color and design but shared a predominance of gold and silver braid, medals and epaulettes, and a thick sense of entitlement.
“Neun . . . Acht . . . Sieben . . .”
Even the least theatrical jackets had a great number of hoops, lines, and decorations. One man stood apart, in a dark suit, expensive coat, and hat.
“Sechs . . . Fünf . . .”
The man stared over someone’s garishly braided shoulder-board at the opposite hill, his bright blue eyes piercing and unreadable.
“. . . Vier . . . Drei . . . Zwei . . .”
There was a shuffle of anticipation.
“. . . Eins . . . Null!”
A swiftly rising whine built into separate hissing screams. Then sparks escaped from each of the pipe’s tributaries in an almost simultaneous cascade, creating one roaring sound from a chorus of individual howls. Fire exploded from the pipe’s summit with an unmistakable thunk, moments before the opening belched a cloud of thick black smoke.
The squawking of the scattering seagulls filled the sudden silence. There were a few tuts and disappointed noises from the assembled officers. Certainly the event seemed deeply anticlimactic.
“Did it work?” complained a portly Luftwaffe officer.
“Of course it worked, Oberst,” snapped a Heer Generalmajor. He looked to one side. “How far?” he barked.
A nervous soldier sitting next to the radio coughed.
“One moment.” There was some excited chatter through the speaker. He adjusted his headphones. “Approximately seventy, seven-oh, kilometers, General.”
The general swung around and, with a triumphant smile, opened his arms to the waiting officers.
“Seventy kilometers, gentlemen. Seventy . . . and this is just a quarter-sized scale model. As you can now appreciate, a full-sized example would have a range of some two hundred forty kilometers, deliver a shell weighing some half a ton . . . and fire every twenty seconds . . .”
“. . . if it’s reliable enough,” whined the Luftwaffe officer.
“The finished cannon will fire every twenty seconds, and unlike the Paris Gun, the K-Five, or any other traditional artillery piece, this gun barrel will not degrade and will not be damaged by repeated fire . . .”
“If it can be fired repeatedly . . .”
“On-kel!”
The distant scream tore through the room and stopped the argument dead.
A Schutzstaffel officer leaned toward the viewing window and started. “What on earth?”
Across the muddy valley a small figure in a red coat could be seen running from the cannon toward the blockhouse. She skidded and slid, almost toppling over in the deep sludge, but she remained upright and began to climb the hill.
“On-kel!”
She was pursued by two soldiers, themselves incapable of staying on their feet, twice falling into the sludge in their haste. The child’s beret fell off as she clambered up the slope, long braids of golden hair swinging as she moved.
“Gottverdammte . . .” swore the man in the dark suit loudly. “Herr Generalmajor, that is . . . She . . . Take me out there immediately.”
He turned for the door and began shooing the officers out of the way. They tried to move, but the room was crowded, so they bumped into one another in the gloom. Those farthest away were confused
, and everyone began asking questions. By the time the door was opened and the man reached the top of the steps to the open air, trailing the Generalmajor, the girl had summited the brow of the hill.
She was maybe twelve years old, small and slight. Mud was plastered up her legs, and the hem of her coat was thick with sludge. Her eyes were red with tears, and her face was contorted in hysterical panic. Glistening snot ran from her nose.
“Onkel . . .” she howled, spotting the man and charging the final few meters toward him. She leapt onto him, forcing him to stagger back a few steps, almost crashing into the collection of officers who had gathered behind him. He managed to catch her weight in his arms and hugged her close.
“Ursula! I told you to wait in the car.”
“You were gone so long I didn’t think you were coming back,” she wailed, hyperventilating and hiccupping in her rush to spill the words out. “So I went looking for you and there was a big bang and then these soldiers started yelling at me and—”
“Apologize to the general at once!” he growled.
“Herr Haller . . .” The general coughed.
“Now, Ursula . . .”
“What was your daughter—” the general tried again.
“My niece, Herr Generalmajor . . .” Then he snapped at the girl: “Ursula!”
“Sorry, Herr Generalmajor,” the girl wailed and, with a shriek, began to sob again.
“We must leave . . . Gentlemen.” The man nodded to the crowd of uniforms behind the general and began to stride away over the hilltop.
“Herr Haller . . .”
“A most exciting test, Herr Generalmajor. I look forward to the contract,” the man called over his shoulder and the crying of the little girl.
The general found himself staring at the retreating figure, as did the guards and officers. After a moment the spell broke, and everyone shambled back to the bunker, murmuring as if nothing had happened at all.
* * *
The man closed the car door and started the engine. The Mercedes grunted in the cold air and came to life. The little girl in the passenger seat stopped crying and tossed stray hairs away from her face. After a long, wet snort, she snapped her fingers at the man. He handed her a folded handkerchief that she shook loose before blowing her nose noisily.
“I’m getting too old for this Quatsch,” she spat.
The man smiled. “Did you get it?”
“Of course,” she murmured, pulling what looked like a large gray firework from her coat.
“Then you aren’t too old.”
She made a face and then held the device up to the daylight that limped through the windshield. “I don’t understand the fuss. This is just an oversized firecracker.”
“Rocket-propelled shells. Bad news for London,” he said, and then glanced down at something else that Sarah was holding. “What’s that?”
It was a piece of porcelain, like part of a large cereal bowl.
“They were everywhere,” Sarah said, holding it up to the light. “Hundreds of pieces. Is it important?”
“Maybe . . . You measured the barrel?”
“Hm-hm.” She teased phlegm from her hair. “And I’d have rewired it, too, if that Schwachkopf hadn’t stumbled into me.”
“Language.”
“Yes, right.” She laughed.
“Seriously. You better not talk like that at the next party, Sarah Goldstein of Elsengrund. What will the cream of Berlin high society think?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t be there. I’ll be bringing Ursula Haller, the sweet little National Socialist darling, instead.”
TWO
SARAH HAD INSISTED they leave the apartment behind.
It didn’t matter how much she had scrubbed, disinfected, or bleached the floor, she could still see Foch’s blood there. It was like a glossy, dark, and stagnant lake that reflected the room. In this mirror world, the moment of his murder in her arms repeated endlessly. The SA officer had unmasked them and had been about to shoot the Captain; but self-defense or not, she had been complicit in the horror.
She had eventually rubbed off the varnish and begun to tear into the surface of the wood, but she could still see the blood. It was on her shoes, under her fingernails, in the creases of her skin. She couldn’t tell where the remains of the SA Sturmbannführer ended and her own raw and bloody fingertips began. As for the bathroom where the Captain had dragged the corpse and then emerged over the course of two days with a series of old suitcases . . . Sarah couldn’t even enter that room.
The Captain was reluctant to move at first—the apartment had several advantages for an agent, including an escape route, radio antenna, and false walls. But returning one day to find Sarah had torn up the floorboards and was bleaching the undersides, he was finally convinced that a fresh start was needed. Besides, that minimalist apartment was no place to entertain.
Sarah passed through the halls and palatial rooms of their new town house as the staff busied themselves around her. She paused here and there, to have chairs rearranged or to make a suggestion, but in reality their work was practiced, seamless.
The parties she and the Captain had held as spring turned to summer had been a huge success, as Germany had celebrated a seemingly endless series of military victories. Any initial concern among the German people about what this war might cost in men or resources had evaporated as the days warmed. The national atmosphere was buoyant, jubilant. For the generals and staff officers at the Captain’s soirées, the mood was triumphant and overwhelmingly self-satisfied.
They had good reason for this. The Third Reich, and its allies, had swollen and consumed Europe. It now stretched from Poland to the Atlantic coast of France and north through Denmark and Norway to the top of the world. It was all actually happening.
Sarah caught sight of herself in a mirror and looked away. She was dressed like a Hollywood child star, with frilled ankle-socks, puffed sleeves, knee-length dress, and petticoats. The Nazi Shirley Temple. The Little Princess of the Reich. Darling of the Wehrmacht and Berlin high society.
It put the men at ease. It made them feel grown-up. Superior. Magnanimous. They talked to her without thinking, answering her precocious or innocent-sounding questions with a chuckle. Or they talked around and over her like she wasn’t there. She didn’t understand half of what she heard, but this hadn’t made it less valuable—according to the Captain.
Sometimes, the men took a special interest. They brought her gifts. They wanted her to sit with them, on them. They wanted her to talk about meaningless things, or sing to them, but sometimes they wanted her to listen as they unburdened themselves of their darkness. They wanted to hold someone.
The proximity made the saliva turn sour at the back of her throat. It made her want to hurt them.
But it was the job.
In truth she wondered how much longer she could play this part. Nine months of good food had given her an extra six centimeters in height. Her body was filling out. No amount of tight blonde curls and ribbons could conceal what was coming. She was watching her little-girl act receding like a railway station platform, and she needed to stop leaning out of the train window.
By the mirror were the two leather armchairs where, at their party three months ago, Sarah had goaded the portly Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall in his garish white uniform into a wager that had backfired. He had waved her over to join him and a surly looking Generaloberst who did not welcome the distraction.
* * *
“Come and sit on my knee, Prinzessin . . . I’m just telling Walther here how he should deal with the fleeing British.”
“I don’t need any advice, thank you.”
“Certainly you do. You want to risk your tanks in the streets of Flanders?”
“I want the enemy out of action, yes.”
“Nothing puts a defeated army out of action like bombi
ng them into surrender.”
“They’ve got their backs to the sea and they’ve no way home. They’ve abandoned all their heavy equipment, they’re going to surrender anyway. We just need to press the point.”
“Yet you want to waste German lives at the hour of our victory. Let the Luftwaffe deal with it.”
“This is all hypothetical—”
Sarah interrupted.
“Walther, it sounds like you should let him try.”
“Sorry?”
“You say they can’t go anywhere, what does it matter if you let him bomb them into surrender?”
“See, Walther. The little girl has courage that you lack.”
“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall, but you need to risk something, too . . .”
“Yes! Eine Wette! Leave them to me and I’ll have them surrender in three days. Shall we say a hundred Reichsmark? Prinzessin, you shall be the bookmaker . . .”
* * *
Sarah hadn’t seen the Generaloberst—Walther—to give him his money. The crumpled fifty-Reichsmark notes sat unclaimed as most of the British Army slipped across the Channel from Dunkirk in little boats, battered but undefeated by the Luftwaffe, while the tanks had sat and waited. Had she done that, even in some small way? According to the gossip, Göring, now the Reichsmarshal, was busy failing to defeat the Royal Air Force in the skies over Britain, as he had failed at Dunkirk, so maybe he needed no help making his mistakes.
But mistakes from the German military had been thin on the ground. Despite everything Sarah and the Captain had apparently achieved, the secrets they’d uncovered, the nebulous manipulations they had wrought, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the work of one British spy and his . . . apprentice, a small Jewish orphan, didn’t amount to anywhere near enough.
She felt they were standing waist-deep in a fast-moving river, trying to stop the current with their fingers. It swept over and around them like they weren’t even there. And all this time, Sarah wore pretty dresses, curled her tresses, and ate sumptuous food. She might have stopped Professor Schäfer and his bomb—her first mission alongside the Captain—but that hadn’t prevented the Wehrmacht from tearing across the fabric of the earth.