Raid 42

by Graham Hurley

  At the Gruppe briefing, just a couple of hours earlier, Klopp’s wooden pointer had settled briefly on the square mile of Westminster he and his pilots were tasked to help destroy. Direct hits on the Houses of Parliament would go down very nicely in Berlin but the whole area offered rich pickings for bomber crews with talent as well as iron nerves. Downing Street, where Churchill held court. Whitehall, heart of the administrative machine. Famous hotels like the Savoy and the Ritz. Lately the British had started to learn a thing or two about marrying their searchlights to effective anti-aircraft fire, but blow these targets apart with high explosive, add a top dressing of incendiaries and even Churchill might have second thoughts about a war without end.

  The cockpit of the Heinkel was cramped. The all-glass cockpit forward of the controls offered a front-row seat for the evening’s entertainment and, once Klopp had taken over again, Messner shifted his weight in the narrow seat, trying to ease the pain in his back. Only days before, a Luftwaffe doctor had conducted a thorough examination before declaring him fit to fly. When he’d asked Messner whether he still had any residual pain after the accident, Messner had shaken his head and said no. It was a lie, of course. His lower back was on fire after just an hour sitting down but he’d had months in hospital contemplating the years to come and he knew he’d die if he couldn’t get back in the air.

  Flying with the Führer Squadron had been pleasant enough. There were rewards as well as glamour in shipping Hitler and his top chieftains around the Reich, but this was the real thing. This was why you went to war. This was where all that training led. You hung in the night sky, three kilometres above the enemy, and you rained terror onto the heads of those who deserved it. Beautiful, Messner told himself. Truly a work of art.

  Ahead lay a picket of searchlights, sweeping left and right, restless, hungry, impatient. In Spain, the Republicans had barely had guns, let alone searchlights, and for Messner this was already a new experience. As the river looped left and right beneath them, always narrowing, Messner watched the light show as they closed on the jigsaw of docks on both banks. Then, abruptly, the Heinkel was coned, at least two searchlights, maybe even three, and the cockpit was full of a blinding whiteness. Beside him, Klopp cursed the fucking English. Then the bomber reared up and shook itself as the first shells exploded and the anti-aircraft gunners began to find their range.

  Klopp was silent now, tight-lipped, and Messner detected fear as well as intense concentration in the way he crouched over the controls. This wasn’t like being a fighter pilot. There were no options, no ways of answering back. There was nothing to chase, nothing to shoot at, nothing to get your teeth into. You were in the delivery business. Your sole responsibility was to fly straight and level, hold a steady course and listen very hard to the bomb-aimer in the nose who’d tell you when your moment of glory had finally arrived. What kind of flying was that? Assuming you made it at all?

  The aircraft was still webbed in the searchlights. Klopp was flying blind, relying on sheer courage, sheer obstinacy, refusing to yield. The bomber, he was showing the pilots around him, will always get through. Always. A pleasant trip up the Thames had become a suicidal test of will.

  From somewhere in the depths of the Heinkel came a smell of cordite as another shell exploded, and then a third. By now, Messner was praying for Klopp to do something, anything, drop a wing, corkscrew down, give the searchlights and the hungry ack-ack the slip, dive into the big, black cave that was the darkness below. Then came yet another shell, an explosion even brighter than the searchlights with a molten golden core that scorched itself onto Messner’s retina as red-hot shrapnel shattered the Perspex panels on Klopp’s side of the cockpit.

  The blast of icy air took Messner’s breath away. He tried to swallow, couldn’t. Instinctively, he’d thrown his hands up, trying to shield his face. Something warm was trickling down his chest. He was grateful for the warmth. Then he looked left, towards Klopp, and he knew they were in deep, deep shit. The man beside him had no head. It just wasn’t there any more.

  The aircraft, nose up, was heading for a stall. Messner reached for the control column and pushed it forward. At the same time he kicked the right rudder bar as hard as he could. The aircraft responded slowly, dropping a wing and spinning out of the bomber stream. Engulfed by darkness, Messner wondered for a moment whether he was dead, then he forced himself to concentrate, to ignore the roar of the wind through the ruined canopy, to concentrate on the altimeter and the compass, and to use what little strength was left to him to make a plan. Kill the spin, he told himself. East, he told himself. Away from the searchlights. Away from the guns. And as low as possible. Where the cold wouldn’t kill them.

  *

  Leaving the Firth of Clyde, heading east again, Rudolf Hess was lost. All his preparations, all his hours at the map table, had come to nothing. Beyond the starboard wing he could just make out the darker edges of what must have been Glasgow. South of there, with luck, was Dungavel House but he knew his chances of finding it had gone. He was down to his last litres of fuel. The rest of his flight was now measured in minutes.

  He stole a look at the altimeter: 1,400 metres. He knew he needed more height. He lifted the nose, praying for the last few drops of gasoline to keep the props turning, and then gripped the control column between his knees as he sought to get out of his seat harness. At 2,100 metres he levelled out. He thought he’d heard a misfire in the port engine, but he couldn’t be sure. Either way, he knew he had to bale out while he still had the option.

  He pushed hard at the canopy. Against the press of the airflow, it was a bitch to open. Then he pushed again, all his strength, and the catches suddenly sprung back and his head was out in the night air. He was fighting to get out now, to release himself from the seat and to somehow escape from the narrow cockpit, but it was impossible. Think, he told himself. There have to be easier ways. Pilots do it all the time. And survive.

  The cough of one engine again. This time, he was certain. He still had one hand on the joystick, he was still in control, but the propellers were beginning to windmill, no real bite, and the nose was going down. He closed his eyes a moment, forced himself to concentrate, then he remembered. Invert. Turn upside down. And let gravity do the rest.

  It worked. He rolled the aircraft very slowly, feeling for the moment when the sheer weight of his body would release him, and then came a sudden blast of air in his face as – upside down – he slipped free of the cockpit. For a split second he was flailing in the darkness, then he felt a hot jolt of pain as his ankle hit the tailplane and dimly, looking up, he watched the Me-110 disappearing into the darkness.

  Falling now, his hand found the loop that operated the ripcord and he pulled as hard as he could. Moments later, the parachute blossomed above him, slowing his descent. His injured ankle hung uselessly from his right leg, but the pain told him he was still alive. He looked down. He could see nothing. Not at first. Then, field by field, a farm appeared, a copse of trees, hedgerows, ploughed furrows thinly veiled in mist. All too quickly, the oncoming field got bigger and bigger and he was still trying to remember how to roll his body on impact when the force of the landing knocked him out.

  When he came to again, he was aware of something on fire a couple of hundred metres away. Then he saw the figure of a man running clumsily across the ploughed field. He wasn’t a soldier. Apart from a pitchfork, he didn’t seem to be armed. And when he finally arrived it was to offer nothing but help.

  Hess allowed him to remove the parachute harness and then struggled to his feet. The moment he put any weight on his ankle it gave way.

  ‘You’re hurt?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Was there anyone else in that plane of yours?’ The man nodded across the field towards the burning wreckage.

  ‘Nein.’

  ‘You’re not British?’

  ‘No,’ Hess mustered what dignity he could and extended a hand. ‘My name is Alfred Horn. Please tell the Duke of Hamilton I have arriv
ed.’

  12

  The news from Scotland reached the Duty Officer at St James’s Street half an hour after the departure of the last German bomber. He alerted Brigadier Harker, who in turn telephoned the Director of ‘B’ Section.

  ‘It seems we have an intruder in the camp, Guy. He gets an RAF designation all of his own. Raid 42. Your baby, I think.’

  Liddell summoned a meeting at St James’s Street. Central London was in chaos after last night’s raid, but officers were urged to attend as soon as they could. Moncrieff, after half the night in a shelter beneath a pub in Gower Street, made the briefest detour to view what was left of the House of Commons. He joined a thin crowd behind the barriers in Old Palace Yard and gazed at the smoking ruins of the Commons chamber.

  Like many in the capital, he’d regarded the Blitz as a minor inconvenience. If you had the misfortune to live anywhere near the docks, the long winter nights had been hellish. East Enders, in particular, would emerge from their shelters to find whole streets wrecked but anyone living upriver was relatively undisturbed. Until now.

  Moncrieff, about to make his way to St James’s Street, caught the attention of a policeman beside the barrier. The officer had been on duty all night, helping the fire crews contain the conflagration. His uniform was coated in a thin film of ash and something heavy had dented his helmet. He nodded at the smoke still coiling upwards from the piles of rubble, and pinched the exhaustion from his eyes.

  ‘The bastards’ll be back tonight, sir. To finish the job.’

  Liddell decided to hold the emergency meeting in the basement cellar. Blast from nearby bombs had again shattered most of the windows upstairs and wind off the river carried the sweet stench of a ruptured sewer main. The basement was used for storing sensitive files which would otherwise have found their way to the Registry at Wormwood Scrubs. Cobwebbed and damp, it was lit by three bare bulbs, one of which kept flickering. Moncrieff, who was the last to arrive, counted the faces in the gloom: Tar Robertson, ‘Tin-Eye’ Stephens, Ursula and Guy Liddell.

  Liddell told Moncrieff to close and bolt the door. An Me-110, he said, had crashed in open country south of Glasgow. As far as anyone could ascertain, only the pilot had been on board. He’d managed to bale out and after being arrested by the local Home Guard he was now in custody in a Scout hall in the village of Giffnock. So far he was giving his name as Alfred Horn but an officer from the Royal Observer Corps was convinced this was an alias.

  Liddell glanced down at a sheaf of hastily scribbled notes. The officer’s name, he said, was Major Graham Donald. Before the war, he’d spent some time in Munich. He was familiar with a number of faces from the leading ranks of the Nazi Party and this was one of them.

  Liddell glanced up. It was Tar Robinson who voiced the obvious question.

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘Rudolf Hess.’ A thin smile. ‘We think.’

  ‘Christ, he’s the Deputy Führer. Hitler’s little helper. What on earth’s he doing in Scotland?’

  ‘Good question. I suspect we owe Tam an apology. Herr Horn, it seems, has come to talk to the Duke of Hamilton.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘He won’t say. Not yet.’

  A search of Herr Horn, he said, had yielded two visiting cards, one for Karl Haushofer and one for his son Albrecht, as well as homeopathic medicines and a hypodermic syringe. A black and white photograph of a woman holding a baby might well turn out to be Frau Hess and the officer who’d conducted the search had also found a lengthy letter.

  ‘Does Hamilton know about any of this?’ Robertson again.

  ‘I gather he’s been alerted.’

  ‘So where was he? Last night?’

  ‘On duty at RAF Turnhouse. He’s Commanding Officer there.’

  ‘Neat.’ Stephens this time. ‘The perfect alibi.’

  Liddell acknowledged the point with the slightest inclination of his head. Horn, he said, had been taken in the middle of the night to Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow for treatment to an injured ankle. As far as he could gather, Hamilton was due to visit him this morning. Around about now.

  Moncrieff stirred. He was watching the Director carefully.

  ‘How do we know all this?’

  ‘That, I’m afraid, I can’t tell you. Not yet. But there’s a person of interest we need to talk to. His name’s Kacper Wojcek. He’s employed as a clerk by the Polish Consulate in Glasgow and he speaks good German. He also works for Polish Intelligence. According to Major Donald, he met Horn in the small hours of this morning and spent some time with him. Wojcek is known to us. He works for our friends in Broadway.’

  Broadway housed the headquarters of MI6. Moncrieff permitted himself the ghost of a smile.

  ‘So the Deputy Führer appears from nowhere. Might we assume Wojcek was expecting him? Or did he just happen to be in the vicinity?’

  ‘A scurrilous suggestion, Tam, but I suggest you explore it further. Downing Street have been kind enough to put an aircraft at our disposal. RAF Northolt. As soon as you like. Ursula has a Glasgow address for Wojcek. I doubt he’ll be pleased to see you.’

  *

  Dieter Merz was still in bed when the Gestapo arrived at Beata’s door. Visitors to the house by the Wannsee lake had dwindled since Merz had moved in, and intrusions on a Sunday were virtually unknown. After the thunderous knocking came vocal protests from Beata. Merz was halfway down the stairs when the two men appeared in the narrow hallway. They were both uniformed – standard SS grey-green – and one of them had unholstered a service Luger.

  ‘Major Merz?’

  Merz nodded. Asked what they wanted.

  ‘Get dressed, please. We’ll wait here with the lady.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then you’ll come with us.’

  Merz held his gaze for a moment and then shrugged. He’d done nothing wrong. He had nothing to be worried about. Not that these people had the slightest interest in either proposition.

  They drove him back into the city. Within a kilometre of their destination he knew exactly where they were going. The lifeblood of the Reich ran through the big ministries on the Wilhelmstrasse and some of it was spilled in the sombre building on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, a smaller street to the left, which housed Gestapo headquarters. Like most Germans, Merz had heard chilling accounts of what you might expect on a visit to the basement interrogation suites but so far he’d never been near the place. Scheisse, he thought.

  An older man in plainclothes was waiting inside the big reception doors. He looked like a schoolmaster wearied by a term that never seemed to end. He greeted Merz by name and apologised for disturbing him on a Sunday. There were one or two issues they needed to discuss, and before they got down to business he’d like to place on record his admiration for Major Merz’s flying skills. He’d been at Nuremberg for the last of the party rallies in ’38 and he’d never forget that final low pass over the Zeppelinfeld.

  ‘Outstanding,’ he said. ‘Please follow me.’

  Merz did his best to go along with this pantomime, grateful that they weren’t heading for the stairs to the basement. His new fan, who’d neglected to introduce himself, led the way along an interminable corridor. Marble floors. Framed black and white photos of a stern-looking Führer. Even a flower vase or two. An abattoir, Merz thought, disguised as an office of state.

  The room at the end was bare, except for a metal desk and two filing cabinets. Scuffed linoleum on the floor and a view of what Merz assumed was the rear courtyard from the single window.

  ‘I’m a detective, in case you’re wondering. Please take a seat.’

  Merz didn’t move. He was watching the man as he produced a handkerchief and began to flick dust off the desk. A borrowed office, he concluded. On loan to someone probably important, embarrassed by his circumstances.

  ‘What am I supposed to have done?’ Merz asked. ‘Do you mind telling me?’

  The detective looked up. He seemed slightly pained by the question.

>   ‘Please sit,’ he nodded at the chair in front of the desk. He was tall and thin and he was studying Merz the way you might assess an item at an auction.

  ‘You’ll be aware he’s gone,’ he said at last.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Der Stellvertreter.’ The Deputy Führer.

  ‘You mean Hess?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘We think Britain. That makes him either a madman or a traitor or perhaps both. What’s your opinion?’

  Merz took his time to frame an answer. All those training flights, he thought. All those questions about range and fuel load. All that navigational expertise, so carefully gathered, so perfectly mastered.

  ‘Did he get there?’ he asked.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I know. As it happens, I liked the man.’

  ‘You think he’s dead?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I hope not.’

  ‘So you think he could have made it? All that way? Flying alone?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a natural flyer. He’s brave. He understands aircraft.’ Merz paused. ‘But why would he want to go?’

  ‘That’s my question. And I suspect you know the answer. Here, in this room, we can bring this business to a happy end. Otherwise…’ he shrugged, ‘… it’s your choice.’

  The detective seemed to resent the need for the threat, no matter how subtle. Merz recognised weakness when he saw it.

  ‘How many other people have you arrested?’

  ‘Personally? None. You’ve met Pintsch? Der Stellvertreter’s adjutant?’

  Merz frowned. Munich, he thought. The night Hess emerged from the Bierkeller and Pintsch drove them both home.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I understand he was detained this morning. At the Berghof. Also Herr Haushofer. And Herr Messerschmitt.’

  ‘Willi?’ Merz was incredulous. ‘You think he’s a traitor?’

  ‘We think he helped Hess on his way. As did you.’