SS-GB

by Len Deighton

  ‘That’s really tough.’

  ‘I have the boy.’ She sat down with him and he put an arm round her.

  Barbara drank a little of her drink. ‘And you have me too,’ she said.

  ‘Do I?’ He looked at her but she had turned away from him. He touched her back. She shivered. ‘Do I?’ he said again.

  ‘You know you do,’ she whispered to the ice cubes.

  ‘I love you, Barbara.’

  ‘I love you too, Doug. I didn’t want to, God knows.’ The cloud moved across the sun, and the golden light dwindled and died until the room was almost dark. She leaned over and switched on the table lamp. ‘I hate this damned sofa,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘It’s the ugliest thing I ever saw,’ said Douglas. ‘Will you marry me?’

  ‘I was going to have it dyed, but the people who rent me the place probably think it’s valuable.’ She fingered the chintz cover thoughtfully.

  Douglas said, ‘My year’s salary is no more than you earn for a good story.’

  ‘Let’s marry soon, very soon.’

  ‘There’s my son, remember.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Barbara.’

  With mock severity she said, ‘Without your son, no deal,’ but the words caught in her throat, and she cried as he put both arms round her and kissed her.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Colonel Mayhew arrived at eight o’clock. Douglas and Barbara felt a childish satisfaction in the way that they received him in the lounge, pretending they hadn’t watched him arrive from the window of the bedroom upstairs.

  Mayhew dropped his tightly-rolled umbrella into the brass rack inside the door, and hung up his coat and hat with the easy familiarity of a regular visitor. Douglas resented it. Mayhew smiled at Douglas but it was the set grimace that marks anxiety rather than pleasure. ‘You’ve heard the news about Harry?’

  ‘Harry Woods?’ said Douglas.

  ‘He was arrested…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Douglas. ‘He’s all right. I went over there this afternoon and found him…’

  ‘Then you don’t know!’ he said. Mayhew looked at Barbara and back to Douglas and rubbed his hands together. ‘Harry was in a shooting incident this afternoon. They say he was hit but I’ve no confirmation of that. The girl with him – Sylvia Manning, who used to be your clerk – is dead.’

  ‘My God,’ said Douglas. His stomach knotted with guilt and he felt worse about the death of Sylvia than he would have believed.

  ‘They got through the barbed wire of the perimeter fence at the Caledonian Market detention camp. Trying to escape, the sentry said. It sounds right.’

  ‘I was there until almost four,’ said Douglas. ‘They had their release more or less arranged. They’d bribed the officer of the guard, they said.’

  Mayhew nodded. ‘Didn’t want to get you involved, you see.’ He sniffed. ‘Always a good sort, Harry. Didn’t want to get you mixed up in it.’

  ‘But they both said it was fixed,’ said Douglas desperately.

  ‘A dozen or more have got away from that compound,’ said Mayhew. ‘They were unlucky, that’s all. Left it too late. Guards got jumpy. Perhaps the sergeant major gave them all a talking to, and they became trigger-happy. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘The girl’s dead, you say?’ said Douglas.

  ‘Came back to try and drag Harry to safety. Sort of bravery that gets a chap a Victoria Cross in wartime, or a commission in the field. Got to admire her pluck eh? She was clear away and safe. Young, you see! She could run faster than Harry, and perhaps the sentry hesitated before shooting at a woman the first time. But when she went back…’ He pulled a face.

  ‘And Harry’s hurt?’

  ‘The Gestapo have already asked the army for him. Since he’s a serving police officer, they say the army have no right to hold him.’

  Barbara touched Douglas’s arm and said, ‘Will they torture him to get information?’

  Mayhew shook his head. ‘Harry knows nothing.’

  ‘Harry was working with some Resistance group,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Yes, the remnants of the Camden Town battalion of the Home Guard have been putting sugar in the petrol tanks of army vehicles, assaulting drunken German soldiers and writing rude slogans about Hitler on walls.’

  Douglas nodded agreement. He’d heard about the Camden Town battalion.

  Mayhew’s voice was flat and noncommittal. ‘Harry Woods knows only the girl who was with him and two other men they worked with.’

  ‘Damn fool,’ said Douglas, his distress turning to anger against Harry, as a mother might scold a child who has narrowly escaped death in traffic.

  ‘It takes a lot of courage,’ said Barbara. ‘I’d be proud of any of my countrymen who did such things against an invader.’

  ‘Harry and the girl carried the leaflets: that’s dangerous!’ said Mayhew. ‘A suitcase full of contraband, or even radio parts, and you might stand a chance in a million of talking your way out of trouble. But the people who carry political leaflets are carrying their own death warrant if they are found with them.’

  ‘What a waste,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Anyway the two other men in his cell – or platoon as they like to call it in the Home Guard – have been told of Harry’s arrest. They will disappear…No, Harry knows nothing that the Gestapo will find very important. Still, being taken to Gestapo HQ in Norman Shaw North is not something to be recommended for someone who needs rest and relaxation.’

  ‘I’d better get back there,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Now hold on,’ said Mayhew in a different and more urgent tone of voice. ‘That would make them take an interest in Harry. You’re not in the right state of mind to tackle those gentry. If they suspected that Harry and you had something to hide, they’d sit you down and tear out your fingernails for starters.’

  ‘That’s a risk I’ll have to take,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ said Mayhew, moving between Douglas and the door. ‘But it’s not a risk that the rest of the organization have to take.’

  Mayhew was right, Douglas decided. He wasn’t made of the sort of stuff that Sylvia had proved to be made of. Douglas sat down.

  ‘Now look at this,’ said Mayhew. He got a copy of Die Englische Zeitung from his pocket and unfolded it so that the front page was exposed. ‘This is tomorrow’s edition.’ In gigantic Gothic type, across the whole front, its headline said, ‘Standrecht’.

  Barbara said, ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Martial law,’ said Douglas. ‘The Germans have declared martial law all over Great Britain.’

  Mayhew said, ‘One of our people in the telephone exchange got wind of it early. But he had only a little pocket dictionary and the word wasn’t in it.’

  Douglas was still reading the official announcement from the newspaper Mayhew was holding. ‘As from midnight tonight, Central European Time,’ he said.

  ‘All soldiers are recalled from barracks, and further leave cancelled,’ said Mayhew. ‘Side-arms to be carried at all times. Waffen-SS units in Great Britain are to be integrated into the army – and that means used as a replacement pool. It’s a bitter blow for Heinrich Himmler.’

  ‘What difference will martial law make?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘The German army took precautions in case the Highgate explosion was the beginning of large-scale armed uprising throughout the country. Then they started pressing for de jure recognition of a de facto situation. It looks as if they gained it.’

  ‘Spoken like a true bureaucrat, Archer,’ said Mayhew. He put his glass down and clapped his hands soundlessly.

  ‘You’d better understand, Colonel Mayhew,’ said Douglas tonelessly, ‘that the Germans are bureaucrats. It’s the key to everything they say, and do…and to everything they don’t say, and don’t do.’

  ‘Quite right, quite right,’ said Mayhew with a nod, and a smile that he thought would placate Douglas.

  Douglas said,
‘And don’t tell me you haven’t been waiting for this very thing to happen. I’ll bet your Abwehr friends are drinking champagne tonight.’

  ‘My Abwehr friends are far too puritanical to be doing anything as human as drinking champagne. Their idea of a celebration is fifty press-ups and a cold shower.’

  ‘Is martial law something that the army should celebrate?’ asked Barbara.

  Douglas said, ‘It changes the structure, Barbara.’ He wanted to call her darling but he did not dare. ‘It puts Kellerman and his policemen, SD and SS units directly under the control of the army. Their chain of command to Himmler becomes no more than a channel through which they can complain about what they are ordered to do…after they’ve done it!’

  ‘The army will take over the arrest lists?’ said Barbara.

  Mayhew reached into his pocket and found a red, white and blue armband with lettering on the white section: ‘Im Dienst der Deutschen Wehrmacht’. It made the lawful wearer technically a ‘Wehrmachtmitglied’ and gave him a legal status like that of a German soldier. ‘Very clever,’ said Douglas. With that Mayhew could resist the arrest order issued by Huth.

  ‘The army take over all the arrest lists from the police and SS,’ said Mayhew. ‘I’m no longer a wanted man.’

  Douglas nodded. ‘And will the army send sentries to replace the SS men guarding the King in the Tower of London? Or will they simply supervise matters so that some low-ranking SS officer takes the blame when something goes wrong?’

  Mayhew smiled. ‘How about giving me another shot of that excellent Scotch?’

  Mayhew went through the whole ritual of adding water to his drink, smelling it and tasting it, as if temporizing. But probably he was just relishing the melodrama. ‘Tomorrow night we have a visitor arriving. We’ll need you, Archer. Try and get a bit of shut-eye in the daytime. Wear your long winter underwear, and bring some impressive SS bumph in case we have to talk our way out of trouble.’ Mayhew smiled and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘If Washington gives the OK, we’ll have the King out of the Tower next week, and out of the country the same day.’ He gave Douglas a cigar from his pigskin case.

  ‘I wouldn’t rely too much on that Wehrmacht armband of yours,’ said Douglas. ‘You’ll remain on the arrest sheets for at least six more days, and not many patrol commanders and Feldgendarmerie officers are going to have enough spare time to go through the amendments sheets and cross your name off them. Anyone on the sheets is going to be popped into the van first and the questions asked afterwards.’

  Mayhew nodded reflectively. ‘Anything wrong with that cigar, Archer, old chap?’

  Douglas looked up from the cigar that he’d been toying with. ‘No, not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s a magnificent one. Romeo y Julieta. I found a half-smoked one in the pocket of Dr Spode. I was thinking about it, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to be a detective to solve that one, Archer. The Germans import them by the shipload, in exchange for machine tools and German cars exported to Cuba. Anyone who is in the employ of the Germans, and considered a valuable friend, can get his hands on a regular supply of Havanas.’

  ‘Is that how you get them?’ Barbara asked. It was a part of her skill as a journalist that she was able to say such things without causing offence.

  Mayhew gave a short, mirthless guffaw and a strained smile. ‘Next time I see Generalmajor von Ruff I’ll ask for some,’ he said. ‘It might reassure him of my bona fides.’ He waved away his cigar smoke. ‘So you’re no nearer solving the Spode murder?’

  ‘The brother confessed,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Is that the way it happened?’ said Mayhew. He leaned across the table and gave Douglas his matches.

  ‘The file is still open,’ said Douglas. In the silence the striking match sounded unnaturally loud.

  ‘Well, let’s hope you find a satisfactory way to close it.’ Douglas noted that he didn’t say ‘to solve it’.

  Mayhew got to his feet and reached for his overcoat. ‘I’ll pick you up from your place tomorrow evening, Archer. Right?’

  Ever since Mayhew arrived, Douglas had been agonizing about passing the film to him. Now, spontaneously, he reached out and handed it over. ‘This is film of the documents Spode burned at the flat. I doubt if anyone knows they exist but your Abwehr friends might have found the copying stand, and formed their own conclusions.’

  Mayhew unscrewed the brown-paper wrapping and looked at the roll of negatives. ‘So it was all photocopied.’ He looked at Douglas for a long time and then nodded his thanks. ‘Tomorrow night then?’

  Chapter Thirty

  The next morning Douglas gave General Kellerman his briefing. Kellerman nodded his way through the verbal report and put the file away without looking at it.

  ‘Young Douglas is quite well?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

  ‘You’ve heard of this fine new German School in Highgate?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve heard about it.’ It was for the children of SS and Wehrmacht officers and for those of the officials of the German administration.

  ‘The curriculum is in German, of course, but it’s a wonderful school, and your German is virtually flawless. You could help your son with his homework. That school could give your young Douglas a grand start in life, and I think I could arrange a place there for him.’

  ‘Will there be other British children there?’

  ‘It’s my idea that we should have a few,’ said Kellerman. ‘I’m on the school administration committee. Don’t want the German children to lose contact with their host country…and English children would be valuable from the language point of view. Think your Douglas could manage enough German?’

  ‘He could manage a little. All the schools have German language classes now.’

  ‘It could be a fine start for him.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Douglas. You know what children are like about leaving their friends.’

  ‘That’s right – you ask him. He’s a sensible little chap. He’ll see the advantages. Take him along there one afternoon this week; show him the laboratories, the engineering equipment, the athletic field and so on.’

  Douglas had spent half the night rehearsing how he could tackle Kellerman on the subject of Harry’s arrest. But in the event, Kellerman himself brought it up. ‘And that fine Detective Sergeant of yours,’ said Kellerman. ‘What’s this I hear about his arrest?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Woods, sir. He’s being held by the Amt IV people, next door.’ He had long since discovered that Amt IV was a popular euphemism for Gestapo.

  ‘Amt IV enjoy rather special privileges, you know. My authority with those gentlemen is somewhat limited.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ said Douglas.

  ‘They have direct access to the Reichsführer-SS in Berlin.’

  ‘Even under martial law?’

  ‘Now don’t try to out-think me, Archer,’ said General Kellerman, his face taking on a pained expression. ‘I and my men come under the orders of the Military Commander GB only in matters pertaining to law and order. Administration and discipline remain unchanged. Amt IV is still responsible to Berlin, just as your Standartenführer Huth is still responsible to Berlin. And thus Detective Sergeant Woods is too. Now do you see my position?’

  ‘You can’t interfere, sir?’

  ‘Never get involved in a family quarrel. Isn’t that something that every police force in the world tells its young Constables?’

  ‘I doubt if Sergeant Woods has told the Amt IV interrogators that he is under Berlin’s orders in that way. Standartenführer Huth has rigorously emphasized the secrecy of the work we are doing.’

  ‘This scientific business?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And so he should. Standartenführer Doctor Huth is a fine young officer, and I’m proud to have him on my staff.’ Kellerman nodded his head affirmatively. Having clearly established his claim to be Huth’s confidant as well as his commander, Kellerman modified his
praise a little. ‘Zealous perhaps, and at times somewhat inflexible…but the task he’s been engaged upon is most delicate.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I can see you are worried about Woods. I think I must cancel my weekend in Germany. I’m going to send for Sturmbannführer Strauss and hear all the details of your Sergeant’s arrest.’ Kellerman swung round in his swivel chair and put one Oxford brogue on the footstool. He wore a reflective frown on his wrinkled face. ‘I take it that Woods was submitting the usual type of reports?’

  ‘Yellow flimsies,’ said Douglas. ‘With Berlin file references.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Kellerman. ‘Well, I wouldn’t wish to pry into your investigation, but I don’t see how a few yellow flimsies could affect that, do you?’

  ‘No, sir.’ The yellow multiple-copy sheets were no more than the formality whereby Harry Woods proved he was earning his living. They provided no names, dates or places. They were nothing more than a list of filing numbers, meaningless to anyone other than filing clerks in some remote Berlin archive. And yet Douglas could see that the yellow flimsies would be enough to show Strauss of the Gestapo that Woods’s reports – like Huth’s and Douglas’s own – were going directly back to Berlin.

  ‘Then let me have a couple of Woods’s yellows before I see Strauss at…’ he looked at his diary ‘…I could fit him in at eleven o’clock this morning.’ Kellerman coughed again and beat his chest lightly with his closed fist. ‘It’s all part of the continuous attempt to undermine my position,’ said Kellerman in a tone of voice that was both confidential and plaintive.

  ‘Really, sir?’

  ‘Inefficient old General Kellerman sheltering enemies of the State in his own police HQ. That’s what will be said.’

  ‘I hope not, sir.’

  Kellerman sighed, and with a tired smile he got up from his desk. ‘The alternative is even worse,’ he said. ‘Traitorous old General Kellerman, harbouring enemies of the State…do you see the delicate path one treads?’ He walked over to the fireplace and stared into the blazing coals. ‘Forgive an old man for unburdening himself to you, Superintendent, but you are a most sympathetic listener. And I know you are discreet.’