by Jack Higgins
Garvey took a chance and flashed his torch. The young private on his right gave a cry of horror. Garvey ran the torch quickly along the south aisle, then said into the field phone. ‘I don’t know what’s happening, Major, but you’d better get in there.’
A moment later, a burst from a Thompson gun shattered the lock on the main door, it crashed back and Harry Kane and a dozen Rangers moved in fast, ready for action. But there was no Steiner and no Devlin. Only Arthur Seymour kneeling in the front pew in the guttering candlelight, staring up into the hideously swollen face of Harvey Preston hanging by his neck from the centre pole of the rood screen.
Nineteen
THE PRIME MINISTER had taken the library overlooking the rear terrace at Meltham House for his personal use. When Harry Kane came out at seven-thirty Corcoran was waiting. ‘How was he?’
‘Very interested,’ Kane said. ‘Wanted chapter and verse on the whole battle. He seems fascinated by Steiner.’
‘Aren’t we all. What I’d like to know is where the damn man is now and that Irish scoundrel.’
‘Nowhere near the cottage he’s been living in, that’s for sure. I had a report over the radio from Garvey just before I went in. It seems that when they went to check out this cottage of Devlin’s, they found two inspectors from Special Branch waiting for him.’
‘Good God,’ Corcoran said. ‘How on earth did they get on to him?’
‘Some police investigation or other. Anyway, he’s highly unlikely to turn up there now. Garvey is staying in the area and setting up a couple of road blocks on the coast road, but we can’t do much more till we get more men.’
They’re coming in, my boy, believe me,’ Corcoran said. ‘Since your chaps got the telephones working again, I’ve had several lengthy discussions with London. Another couple of hours should see the whole of North Norfolk sealed up tight. By morning most of this area will be, to all intents and purposes, under martial law. And it will certainly stay that way until Steiner is caught.’
Kane nodded. ‘There’s no question that he could get anywhere near the Prime Minister. I’ve got men on his door, on the terrace outside and at least two dozen prowling out there in the garden, with blackened faces and Thompson guns. I’ve given it to them straight. They shoot first. Accidents we can argue about afterwards.’
The door opened and a young corporal entered, a couple of typewritten sheets in his hand. ‘I’ve got the final lists if you’d like to see them, Major.’
He went out and Kane looked at the first sheet. They’ve had Father Vereker and some of the villagers look at the German bodies.’
‘How is he?’ Corcoran asked.
‘Concussed, but otherwise he seems okay. From what they say everyone is accounted for except for Steiner, his second in command, Neumann, and the Irishman, of course. The other fourteen are all dead.’
‘But how in the hell did they get away, that’s what I’d like to know?’
‘Well, they blasted their way into the sacristy to get out of the line of fire from Garvey and his men up on the leads. My theory is that when Pamela and the Prior girl got out through this priest’s tunnel, they were in such a hurry they didn’t close the secret door properly.’
Corcoran said, ‘I understand the young Prior girl was rather sweet on this scoundrel Devlin. You don’t think she could be involved in any way?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. According to Pamela the kid was really bitter about the whole thing.’
‘I suppose so,’ Corcoran said. ‘Anyway, what about casualties on your side?’
Kane glanced at the second list. ‘Including Shafto and Captain Mallory, twenty-one dead, eight wounded.’ He shook his head. ‘Out of forty. There’s going to be one God Almighty rumpus when this gets out.’
‘If it gets out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘London is already making it clear they want a very low profile on this one. They don’t want to alarm the people for one thing. I ask you, German Fallschirmjäger dropping into Norfolk to seize the Prime Minister. And coming too damn close for comfort. And what about this British Free Corps? Englishmen in the SS. Can you imagine how that would look in the papers?’ He shuddered. ‘I’d have hung the damn man myself.’
‘I see what you mean.’
‘And look at it from the Pentagon’s point of view. A crack American unit, the elite of the elite, takes on a handful of German paratroops and sustains a seventy per cent casualty rate.’
‘I don’t know,’ Kane shook his head. ‘It’s expecting a hell of a lot of people to keep quiet.’
‘There’s a war on, Kane,’ Corcoran said. ‘And in wartime, people can be made to do as they are told, it’s as simple as that.’
The door opened, the young corporal looked in. ‘London on the phone again, Colonel.’
Corcoran went out in a hurry, and Kane followed. He lit a cigarette which he held in the palm of his hand when he went out of the front door and down the steps past the sentries. It was raining hard and very dark, but he could smell fog on the air as he walked across the front terrace. Maybe Corcoran was right? It could happen that way. A world at war was crazy enough for anything to be believable.
He went down the steps and in a moment had an arm about his throat, a knee in his back. A knife gleamed dully. Someone said,
‘Identify yourself.’
‘Major Kane.’
A torch flicked on and off. ‘Sorry, sir. Corporal Bleeker.’
‘You should be in bed, Bleeker. How’s that eye?’
‘Five stitches in it, Major, but it’s going to be fine. I’ll move on now, sir, with your permission.’
He faded away and Kane stared into the darkness. ‘I will never,’ he said softly, ‘to the end of my days even begin to understand my fellow human beings.’
In the North Sea area generally, as the weather report had it, the winds were three to four with rain squalls and some sea fog persisting till morning. The E-boat had made good time and by eight o’clock they were through the minefields and into the main coastal shipping lane.
Muller was at the wheel and Koenig looked up from the chart table where he had been laying off their final course with great care. ‘Ten miles due east of Blakeney Point, Erich.’
Muller nodded, straining his eyes into the murk ahead. ‘This fog isn’t helping.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Koenig said. ‘You might be glad of it before we’re through.’
The door banged open and Teusen, the leading telegraphist, entered. He held out a signal flimsy. ‘Message from Landsvoort, Herr Leutnant.’
He held out the flimsy, Koenig took it from him and read it in the light of the chart table. He looked down at it for a long moment, then crumpled it into a ball in his right hand.
‘What is it?’ Muller asked.
‘The Eagle is blown. The rest is just words.’
There was a short pause. Rain pattered against the window. Muller said, ‘And our orders?’
‘To proceed as I see fit.’ Koenig shook his head. ‘Just think of it. Colonel Steiner, Ritter Neumann—all those fine men.’
For the first time since childhood he felt like crying. He opened the door and stared out into the darkness, rain beating against his face. Muller said carefully, ‘Of course, it’s always possible some of them might make it. Just one or two. You know how these things go?’
Koenig slammed the door. ‘You mean you’d still be willing to go in there?’ Muller didn’t bother to reply and Koenig turned to Teusen. ‘You, too?’
Teusen said, ‘We’ve been together a long time, Herr Leutnant. I’ve never asked where we were going before.’
Koenig was filled with a wild elation. He slapped him on the back. ‘All right, then send this signal.’
Radl’s condition had deteriorated steadily during the late afternoon and evening, but he had refused to remain in bed in spite of Witt’s pleadings. Since Joanna Grey’s final message he had insisted on staying in the radio room, lying back in an
old armchair Witt had brought in while the operator tried to raise Koenig. The pain in his chest was not only worse, but had spread to his left arm. He was no fool. He knew what that meant. Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered now.
At five minutes to eight, the operator turned, a smile of triumph on his face. ‘I’ve got them, Herr Oberst. Message received and understood.’
‘Thank God,’ Radl said and fumbled to open his cigarette case, but suddenly his fingers seemed too stiff and Witt had to do it for him.
‘Only one left, Herr Oberst,’ he said as he took out the distinctive Russian cigarette and put it in Radl’s mouth.
The operator was writing feverishly on his pad. He tore off the sheet and turned, ‘Reply, Herr Oberst.’
Radl felt strangely dizzy and his vision wasn’t good. He said, ‘Read it, Witt.’
‘Will still visit nest. Some fledglings may need assistance. Good luck.’ Witt looked bewildered. ‘Why does he add that, Herr Oberst?’
‘Because he is a very perceptive young man who suspects I’m going to need it as much as he does.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Where do we get them from, these boys? To dare so much, sacrifice everything and for what?’
Witt looked troubled. ‘Herr Oberst, please.’
Radl smiled. ‘Like this last of my Russian cigarettes, my friend, all good things come to an end sooner or later.’ He turned to the radio operator and braced himself to do what should have been done at least two hours earlier. ‘Now you can get me Berlin.’ There was a decaying farm cottage on the eastern boundary of Prior Farm, at the back of the wood on the opposite side of the main road above Hobs End. It provided some sort of shelter for the Morris.
It was seven-fifteen when Devlin and Steiner left Molly to look after Ritter and went down through the trees to make a cautious reconnaissance. They were just in time to see Garvey and his men go up the dyke road to the cottage. They retreated through the trees and crouched in the lee of a wall to consider the situation.
‘Not so good,’ Devlin said.
‘You don’t need to go to the cottage. You can cut through the marsh on foot and still reach that beach in time,’ Steiner pointed out.
‘For what?’ Devlin sighed. ‘I’ve a terrible confession to make, Colonel. I went off in such a Devil of a hurry that I left the S-phone at the bottom of a carrier-bag filled with spuds that’s hanging behind the kitchen door.’
Steiner laughed softly. ‘My friend, you are truly yourself alone. God must have broken the mould after turning you out.’
‘I know,’ Devlin said. ‘A hell of a thing to live with, but staying with the present situation, I can’t call Koenig without it.’
‘You don’t think he’ll come in without a signal?’
‘That was the arrangement. Any time between nine and ten as ordered. Another thing. Whatever happened to Joanna Grey, it’s likely she got some sort of message off to Landsvoort. If Radl has passed it on to Koenig, he and his boys could be already on their way back.’
‘No,’ Steiner said. ‘I don’t think so. Koenig will come. Even if he fails to get your signal, he will come in to that beach.’
‘Why should he?’
‘Because he told me he would,’ Steiner said simply. ‘So you see, you could manage without the S-phone. Even if the Rangers search the area, they won’t bother with the beach because the signs say it is mined. If you get there in good time you can walk along the estuary for at least a quarter of a mile with the tide as it is.’
‘With Ritter in his state of health?’
‘All he needs is a stick and a shoulder to lean on. Once in Russia he walked eighty miles in three days through snow with a bullet in his right foot. When a man knows he’ll die if he stays where he is, it concentrates his mind wonderfully on moving somewhere else. You’ll save a considerable amount of time. Meet Koenig on his way in.’
‘You’re not going with us.’ It was a statement of fact, not a question.
‘I think you know where I must go, my friend.’
Devlin sighed. ‘I was always the great believer in letting a man go to hell his own way, but I’m willing to make an exception in your case. You won’t even get close. They’ll have more guards round him than there are flies on a jam jar on a hot summer day.’
‘In spite of that I must try.’
‘Why, because you think it might help your father’s case back home? That’s an illusion. Face up to it. Nothing you do can help him if that old sod at Prinz Albrechtstrasse decides otherwise.’
‘Yes, you’re very probably right. I think I’ve always known that.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because I find it impossible to do anything else.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do. This game you play. Trumpets on the wind, the tricolour fluttering bravely in the grey morning. Up the Republic. Remember Easter nineteen-sixteen. But tell me this, my friend. In the end, do you control the game, or does the game possess you? Can you stop, if you want, or must it always be the same? Trench-coats and Thompson guns, my life for Ireland until the day you lie in the gutter with a bullet in your back?’
Devlin said hoarsely, ‘God knows, I don’t.’
‘But I do, my friend. And now, I think, we should rejoin the others. You will naturally say nothing about my personal plans. Ritter could prove difficult.’
‘All right,’ Devlin said reluctantly.
They moved back through the night to the ruined cottage where they found Molly rebandaging one of Ritter’s thighs. ‘How are you doing?’ Steiner asked him.
‘Fine,’ Ritter answered, but when Steiner put a hand on his forehead it was damp with sweat.
Molly joined Devlin in the angle of the two walls where he sheltered from the rain, smoking a cigarette. ‘He’s not good,’ she said. ‘Needs a doctor if you ask me.’
‘You might as well send for an undertaker,’ Devlin said. ‘But never mind him. It’s you I’m worried about now. You could be in serious trouble from this night’s work.’
She was curiously indifferent. ‘Nobody saw me get you out of the church, nobody can prove I did. As far as they’re concerned I’ve been sitting on the heath in the rain crying my heart out at finding the truth about my lover.’
‘For God’s sake, Molly.’
‘Poor, silly little bitch, they’ll say. Got her fingers burned and serves her right for trusting a stranger.’
He said awkwardly, ‘I haven’t thanked you.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me.’ She was a simple girl in many ways and content to be so and yet now, more than at any other time in her life, she wanted to be able to express herself with complete certainty. ‘I love you. That doesn’t mean I like what you are or what you’ve done or even understand it. That’s something different. The love is a separate issue. It’s in a compartment of its own. That’s why I got you out of that church tonight. Not because it was right or wrong, but because I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d stood by and let you die.’ She pulled herself free. ‘I’d better check on how the lieutenant is getting on.’
She walked over to the car and Devlin swallowed hard. Wasn’t it the strange thing? The bravest speech he’d ever heard in his life, a girl to cheer from the rooftops and here he felt more like crying at the tragic waste of it all.
At twenty past eight, Devlin and Steiner went down through the trees again. The cottage out there in the marsh was in darkness but on the main road, there were subdued voices, the dim shape of a vehicle. ‘Let’s move a little closer,’ Steiner whispered.
They got to the boundary wall between the wood and the road and peered over. It was raining hard now. There were two jeeps, one on either side of the road and several Rangers were sheltering under the trees. A match flared in Garvey’s cupped hands, lighting his face for a brief moment.
Steiner and Devlin retreated. The big negro,’ Steiner said. ‘The Master Sergeant who was with Kane, waiting to see if you s
how up.’
‘Why not at the cottage?’
‘He probably has men out there, too. This way he covers the road as well.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Devlin said. ‘We can cross the road further down. Make it to the beach on foot as you said.’
‘Easier if you had a diversion.’
‘Such as?’
‘Me in a stolen car passing through that road block. I could do with your trenchcoat, by the way, if you’d consider a permanent loan.’
Devlin couldn’t see his face in the darkness and suddenly didn’t want to. ‘Damn you, Steiner, go to hell your own way,’ he said wearily. He unslung his Sten gun, took off the trenchcoat and handed it over. ‘You’ll find a silenced Mauser in the right-hand pocket and two extra magazines.’
‘Thank you,’ Steiner took off his Schiff and pushed it inside his Fliegerbluse. He pulled on the trenchcoat and belted it. ‘So, the final end of things. We’ll say goodbye here, I think.’
‘Tell me one thing,’ Devlin said. ‘Has it been worth it? Any of it?’
‘Oh, no.’ Steiner laughed lightly. ‘No more philosophy, please.’ He held out his hand. ‘May you find what you are searching for, my friend.’
‘I already have and lost it in the finding,’ Devlin told him.
‘Then from now on, nothing really matters,’ Steiner said. ‘A dangerous situation. You will have to take care,’ and he turned and went back to the ruined cottage.
They got Ritter out of the car and pushed it to where the track started to slope to a five-barred gate, the road on the other side. Steiner ran down and opened it, pulling a six-foot length of rail off the fence which he gave to Ritter when he got back.
‘How’s that?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ Ritter said bravely. ‘Do we go now?’
‘You, not me. There are Rangers down there on the road. I thought I might arrange a small diversion while you get across. I’ll catch up with you later.’
Ritter grabbed his arm and there was panic in his voice. ‘No, Kurt, I can’t let you do this.’