Last Man to Die

by Michael Dobbs

  They were still laughing when they heard the commotion downstairs. The banging of doors. The raised voices. Feminine screams of surprise mixed with male shouts of authority.

  ‘Holy Mother, it can’t be! A raid?’ she gasped.

  ‘I thought you said the British …’

  ‘They never have …’

  The door was flung open. One of the girls stood panting, her ample chest heaving beneath a flimsy covering of lace. ‘American MPs! Looking for one of their sodding sergeants,’ she shouted before disappearing to warn others.

  Hencke’s eyes searched desperately around the room, for a way out, a means of escape. He didn’t need to say anything.

  She shook her head, her face pale. ‘There’s nowhere to run, Peter.’

  ‘Then I am lost.’

  She bit into her lower lip. ‘I won’t have it. No!’ In one action she kicked off her shoes and scrabbled at her sweater, tugging at it until she popped out. ‘We’ve maybe one chance.’ The zip was undone, the skirt already falling to the floor, with the petticoat following. ‘You’re not American. You’re a civilian having some fun in a brothel.’ Stockings, suspenders. ‘If they believe that, maybe they’ll leave us alone.’ She tore at the straps of her bra with a ferocity which caused something to give. Then it was her knickers and she was standing there naked, glowing. ‘So pull your bloody finger out and get into bed!’

  She had rushed across and was leaning over him, pulling at the robe, when the door burst open once again. The form of a young military policeman filled the doorway, all metal helmet, armband, white webbing, razor-sharp creases and polished boots. He had a night-stick in his hands and a nervous tic around his left eye, which was trained on Sinead and had to be torn away before finally settling on Hencke. The soldier took one step into the room.

  ‘So, what’s going on here?’ His voice was youthful, light on the authority of age and experience and lacking totally in any sense of occasion.

  Before he could move further than a pace Sinead was in front of him, blocking his path, hands on the curve of her naked hips, her full breasts wobbling with indignation as she faced up to him.

  ‘What’s the matter with you stupid Yanks? Never seen a woman getting laid before? If you’re here for lessons you’ll have to wait your turn like all the rest. In the meantime just bugger off and let a girl get on with a night’s work!’

  The tic around the MP’s eye seemed to double in intensity and he made no attempt to move further into the room, which he could only have done by touching Sinead. He seemed embarrassed to be confronted by a woman, stark naked and a good twelve inches shorter than himself. It hadn’t ever happened to him before. Not a completely naked woman, not under any circumstances. Never.

  ‘Christ, Peterson,’ a voice called from down the corridor. ‘What the devil are you up to? Is he goddamned there or not?’

  The soldier looked up nervously from his inspection of her bright red nipples and glanced again towards Hencke, studying him for a fraction of a second before looking back down at Sinead and her nakedness.

  ‘Er … no, Sarge! Not in here.’

  ‘Are you certain, asshole?’

  The MP was looking distinctly uneasy and beginning to sweat. Sinead, confusing him by switching her tactics, had hold of his night-stick and was stroking it tantalizingly between her breasts.

  ‘Come back later, soldier, when I’m through with this one. Let’s have some fun,’ she whispered.

  He shot another nervous glance in Hencke’s direction, comparing his profile to the description of the errant soldier they were seeking. There was real anguish in his eyes. He was mortified while he looked at Sinead, yet he couldn’t bear to take his eyes off her. ‘No, definitely not here, Sergeant,’ he croaked.

  ‘Then what are you waiting for? Get your butt up to the next floor,’ the disembodied voice of authority came back down the corridor, just as Sinead’s fingers reached in the direction of the soldier’s shirt buttons.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ he whimpered, and was gone.

  Sinead closed the door quietly before she turned round. She had a brave half-smile on her face which she tried desperately to turn into a convincing look of triumph, but the lower lip began to wobble and in a moment the resistance was gone and tears were flooding down her face. She threw herself into Hencke’s arms and sobbed great tears of tension and relief. She was still crying when she lifted her head and began kissing him passionately, her salty tongue probing between his lips.

  He did not respond, just as he had failed to do in the lorry, but she was making all the running. Her body was warm from the nervous energy, her nipples burning against his own body, her tears turning to sighs of passion.

  ‘Peter, in this world it may be our last time. Please!’

  Something told him that for her it was also the first time. She was so young, scarcely older than some of his pupils. He was confused, uncertain, the self-righteous moralizing of his aunt ringing in his ears, but his indecision was overwhelmed by Sinead’s insistence. In the end he had little real choice but to join in and, if not exactly enjoy it, at least to take comfort in her gratification. She knew what she wanted, instinctively, even if she wasn’t totally clear how she wanted it. The raw energy more than compensated for her youthful ignorance. It wasn’t great sex, but for her it would always be special.

  When she had finished she lay back to catch her breath, coming down to earth, her whole body tingling, feeling places within for the first time. She knew it was a moment she would never be able to forget, or to repeat, no matter how many years she might live. Not even with Hencke. It was a long time before either of them spoke.

  ‘You have someone back home?’ Perhaps it wasn’t the most tactful question but she couldn’t help herself; she didn’t have much experience at this. She had to ask. She felt now she had the right.

  ‘No. Not any more.’ His words were clipped, without any trace of self-pity, as if all emotion had already been wrung out of him. But in the gaze which held her she could once again see the fire inside, and there was pain.

  ‘You lost someone, too?’

  He didn’t respond, simply nodded.

  ‘But if they’re gone, why are you so impatient to get back home?’ She made it sound like a rebuke.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be?’

  She propped herself on an elbow. ‘I’m not sure, Peter. Back to Germany? I don’t want to take sides in your war, but over here we don’t hear pleasant things about Germany.’

  ‘It’s like many places. Some good parts and fine people. Many bad. Like most places. Like Ireland, I suspect.’ He was deflecting her questions, throwing the challenge back at her. ‘Why did they arrest your brother?’

  She didn’t reply immediately. ‘They claimed he left a bomb. There was a warning. But a policeman got hurt …’

  ‘Did he do it?’

  ‘I …’ She pulled away from him and her face flushed with anger that he should dare raise the question, but his eyes were searching around inside her. He already knew. ‘I … don’t know. In all honesty I truly don’t know.’ There was great misery about her. ‘And I don’t know why, Peter Hencke, but that’s the first time I’ve ever said as much to anybody. Even to myself.’ He had penetrated more than her body, and with the admission, a little bubble of faith which had survived all previous doubts and assaults quietly burst within her.

  ‘So he might be guilty?’

  ‘The policeman didn’t die,’ she began in mitigation, but she wasn’t convincing even herself. Her head fell forward to hide her confusion, her long russet curls falling about the pale skin of her breasts. ‘He was crippled. He won’t ever walk again.’

  ‘He had family? Children?’

  She could do no more than nod.

  ‘And friends, who were so filled with revenge that they shot your father. This is your “family affair”?’

  ‘I didn’t start our troubles, Peter.’

  ‘You may not have started it. But who’s going to finish
it? That’s always the difficult part.’

  Suddenly she resented the assault upon her integrity and ideals, and the way he was ripping her world apart. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that it wasn’t Hitler but Poland which started World War Bloody Two. And that you’re going home to finish it!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sinead. I have no right.’ He paused, remembering the widow. ‘We all do things of which we are not proud, which we would change, if we could.’ He reached out to touch her hand, to re-establish contact. She didn’t respond, but neither did she move away. ‘There are some things we would gladly die for, if we could change. Which means that others, too, sometimes must suffer. I know. I have my own “family affairs” to see to.’

  ‘But why, Peter? You said you had no family left.’

  ‘I have memories. Sometimes all you have left are memories.’

  ‘And can you live just for memories?’

  She studied him closely, following the profile from his high forehead down his long nose to the scarred lip and sharp, determined chin. He didn’t reply straight away. It seemed a lifetime since anyone had got close enough to ask such questions.

  ‘I’ve tried. Yet … you spend your life looking back, and the farther you have to look back the more you die each day, little by little. No, I can’t live for memories, no one can. You mustn’t try.’

  ‘But you are prepared to die for them?’

  She waited, but there was no answer. For all their adventure and talk together she still knew little more than his name. He was a man who kept his secrets wrapped tightly around him, a man with fire in his veins and steel in his bones, yet who could still cry over a little girl and her teddy bear.

  ‘Why are you going back?’

  He remained silent, unwilling or unable to say, staring blankly at the ceiling.

  ‘Peter Hencke, I don’t want you to be the last man to die in this bloody war!’

  A wry smile began to play around his lips – or was it the scar? ‘No one wants to be the last man to die. Not in this war, not in any war.’

  ‘Does … that mean you’ll be coming back?’

  He turned to face her until she could see his eyes. He didn’t want any misunderstanding.

  ‘You mustn’t hope for me to be something I cannot be. No, Sinead, don’t think of it.’ He shook his head. ‘I won’t be coming back.’

  SEVEN

  ‘Not too hot for you, sir?’

  The only reply was a grunt.

  At least he’s not complaining, not yet, thought the barber. Doesn’t mind me scalding my fingers raw, but let him feel the slightest discomfort from the hot towels and he’d let the entire bloody street know. After which he’d moan about his shave not being close enough. And he never left a tip, not even at Christmas.

  ‘Did you see they got Hencke at last?’

  ‘What, you mean that bloody German? Thought they’d picked him up a long time ago.’

  It was not an uncommon assumption. With so many stories queuing up to demand space in the news columns as the war drew to its climax, the coverage of Hencke’s escape had rapidly disappeared from the pages. Even today’s report had been restrained, wrapping up what editors decided was an old story.

  ‘No. They found the blighter in Cricklewood – or what was left of him. Seems he’d been leading the police a right merry chase, then a couple of nights ago he got caught underneath one of their V-2s. Poor sod. Seems unfair somehow.’

  With victory within their grasp the British sense of fair play was beginning to flourish once more. And since Hencke had a name he was no longer simply another bloody Kraut but a real character, even an underdog, and the barber held a sporting regard for any underdog, particularly since he had done the decent thing and thrown himself under one of his own rockets.

  ‘Serves the miserable Hun right,’ the customer barked from underneath the towels. ‘Should have shot him if they’d caught him alive. Probably a damned war criminal anyway; most of them are.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose we shall be able to shoot them all.’

  ‘Damn it, but I’d like to try,’ the voice came back from within the fog of steam, as the barber tried to remember from behind which desk the customer had fought his war. ‘Particularly this one.’

  ‘Why him?’

  ‘Most dangerous type of Hun. Doesn’t know when he’s beaten. Too stupid and arrogant to know when he’s lost the bloody war.’ But it was more than that. It was his example, one lonely man – even a German – running around the country sticking his fingers in the face of Authority, an example which all too many seemed willing to follow. It couldn’t be tolerated. These were difficult and unsettled times, when people needed to be reminded about their proper place and duties. There was more than one way to lose an empire. ‘And be damned careful how you trim the moustache!’

  The barber stropped the razor and examined the customer’s throat. One day, he promised himself. One day …

  In Berlin the news that Hencke’s body had been discovered was heard widely, even though it was carried only by the BBC and listening to enemy radio was an offence punishable by summary execution on the street corner. The populace took comfort in the fact that the law was unenforceable; there simply weren’t enough lamp posts. But in the Bunker the news became available to very few; Goebbels saw to that. Hencke had been his prize. Great hopes had been raised upon the prospect – which many took as a promise – of a triumphant return to Germany, and he didn’t like to disappoint the Fuehrer. Indeed, it was Goebbels’ full-time task to keep the spirits of the Fuehrer high, to persuade him that salvation was still at hand, to find every omen, helpful horoscope or shred of encouraging news and cling to it like a climber to an ice face.

  Above all, however, Goebbels was a realist. That’s why he was so useful to the Fuehrer. He wasn’t a carpet-widdling spaniel like so many of the others. He told the Fuehrer what he wanted to hear, of course, but not to ingratiate himself and flatter, only to encourage and strengthen. If they were to salvage anything from the heap of scrap into which Germany was being bombed, they needed time and the undisputed leadership which only the Fuehrer could provide.

  And they needed luck. It was ironic how, after all their planning and preparation and putsch-ing, all the great victories and still greater reverses, everything came down to a matter of luck. If only they’d invaded Russia a year later, after an armistice on the Western Front. Or reached Moscow a month earlier, before the snows. If only that oaf Goering had continued bombing the British airfields a few weeks longer when the enemy had only a handful of aircraft left, instead of turning his snout towards the blitzing of London. If only the Japanese hadn’t bombed Pearl Harbor and brought the Americans rushing into the war. If only … It all came down to luck and fickle fortune in the end. That’s where Hencke came in. Goebbels wanted him as his lucky charm, to dangle round the neck of the Fuehrer, to ward off the doubters and defeatists who undermined the leader’s morale and to give him back the resolve to continue for the few vital weeks they needed. With Hencke and a little luck anything would still be possible. Yet suddenly the luck seemed to have run out.

  Hencke was beginning to feel that death might, after all, be a soft option. They hadn’t been long in the rusty fishing smack, only a few hours, but the seas were rough and growing fiercer, and he was a rotten sailor.

  She noticed the sudden sallowness in his complexion and the grimness about his mouth, the scar tugging at his lip. ‘Think positive. The weather makes it more difficult for the coast-guard, too. Anyway, we’ve not long now,’ she encouraged.

  No sooner had she spoken than through the low-hanging storm clouds on the horizon appeared the outlines of a rocky coast.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Man. The Isle of Man, they call it.’

  ‘I thought we were going to Ireland?’

  ‘One step at a time. The Isle of Man is in the middle of the Irish Sea, halfway there. All the direct routes to Ireland are carefully guarded. We’re going
to try to slip through the back door.’

  ‘As long as it’s dry land I don’t think I care any more …’

  ‘You should feel at home. The island is full of Germans and Italians sitting out the end of the war.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s one of the main internment points for enemy aliens and prisoners.’

  ‘You’re taking me to an island the British use as one vast prison camp?’ he groaned, trying to find the strength to raise an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s the Irish in me,’ she said, mocking him. ‘But don’t worry. They’re so busy trying to stop people getting out that no one expects anybody to try to get in.’

  Hencke had held out, against seemingly overwhelming odds, until they were approaching the relative calm of a small west-facing harbour called Peel, over which towered the crumbling red stonework of a ruined castle. He and Sinead had no opportunity to admire the view; they had been ordered into the hold to hide them from prying eyes. So Hencke had lost sight of the horizon, the only immovable and unheaving object to which his fragile senses had been able to cling, at precisely the moment his stomach was assailed by the overpowering stench of fish. His resistance came to a sudden end.

  ‘And this is the secret weapon with which Germany is going to win the war?’ Sinead taunted as he sat hunched over a bucket.

  ‘If you have any mercy, shoot me.’

  ‘Too late,’ interrupted the skipper, clattering down wooden stairs which led from the deck. ‘Apparently the British government have just announced that you are lying on a slab in a mortuary somewhere in London. Officially you’re dead already!’

  Hencke thought for a moment about attempting a smile, but decided that triumphs could never be celebrated on a retching stomach. He reached for the bucket.

  Any depression that Josef Goebbels might have allowed himself on hearing that his talisman had been found crushed under a pile of German-induced rubble quickly disappeared when he received the top-secret cable from the German Embassy in Dublin. Hencke … Alive … Free … In Dublin. Halfway Home!