by Jack Higgins
At the side of the road they had a spotlight set up and as the Scammel recovery truck’s winch started to revolve, the Morris came up out of the marsh on to the bank. Garvey stayed up on the road, waiting.
The corporal in charge had the door open. He peered inside and looked up. ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘What in the hell are you talking about?’ Garvey demanded and he moved down through the trees quickly.
He looked inside the Morris, but the corporal was right. Lots of stinking mud, a certain amount of water, but no Steiner. ‘Oh, my God,’ Garvey said as the full implication hit him and he turned, scrambled up the bank, and grabbed for the mike on his jeep’s radio.
Steiner turned in at the gate of Meltham House, which was closed, and halted. The Ranger on the other side shone a torch on him and called, ‘Sergeant of the Guard.’
Sergeant Thomas came out of the lodge and approached the gate. Steiner sat there, anonymous in helmet and goggles. ‘What is it?’ Thomas demanded.
Steiner opened his dispatch case, took out the letter and held it close to the bars. ‘Dispatch from Norwich for Colonel Corcoran.’
Thomas nodded, the Ranger next to him unbolted the gate. ‘Straight up to the front of the house. One of the sentries will take you in.’
Steiner rode up the drive and turned away from the front door, following a branch that finally brought him to the motor pool at the rear of the building. He stopped beside a parked truck, switched off and pushed the motorcycle up on its stand, then turned and followed the path round towards the garden. When he’d gone a few yards, he stepped into the shelter of the rhododendrons.
He removed the crash helmet, the raincoat and gauntlets, took his Schiff from inside his Fliegerbluse and put it on. He adjusted the Knight’s Cross at his throat and moved off, the Mauser ready.
He paused on the edge of a sunken garden below the terrace to get his bearings. The blackout wasn’t too good, chinks of light showing at several windows. He took a step forward and someone said, ‘That you, Bleeker?’
Steiner grunted. A dim shape moved forward. The Mauser coughed in his right hand, there was a startled gasp as the Ranger slumped to the ground. In the same moment, a curtain was pulled back and light fell across the terrace above.
When Steiner looked up, he saw the Prime Minister standing at the balustrade smoking a cigar.
When Corcoran came out of the Prime Minister’s room he found Kane waiting. ‘How is he?’ Kane asked.
‘Fine. Just gone out on the terrace for a last cigar and then he’s going to bed.’
They moved into the hall. ‘He probably wouldn’t sleep too well if he heard my news, so I’ll keep it till morning,’ Kane told him. ‘They hauled that Morris out of the marsh and no Steiner.’
Corcoran said, ‘Are you suggesting he got away? How do you know he isn’t still down there? He might have been thrown out or something.’
‘It’s possible,’ Kane said, ‘but I’m doubling the guard anyway.’
The front door opened and Sergeant Thomas came in. He unbuttoned his coat to shake the rain from it. ‘You wanted me, Major?’
‘Yes,’ Kane said. ‘When they got the car out, Steiner was missing. We’re taking no chances and doubling the guard. Nothing to report from the gate?’
‘Not a damn thing since the recovery Scammel went out. Only that military policeman from Norwich with the dispatch for Colonel Corcoran.’
Corcoran stared at him, frowning. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it. When was this?’
‘Maybe ten minutes ago, sir.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Kane said. ‘He’s here! The bastard’s here!’ And he turned, tugging at the Colt automatic in the holster at his waist and ran for the library door.
Steiner went up the steps to the terrace slowly. The scent of the good Havana cigar perfumed the night. As he put foot on the top step it crunched in gravel. The Prime Minister turned sharply and looked at him.
He removed the cigar from his mouth, that implacable face showing no kind of reaction, and said, ‘Oberstleutnant Kurt Steiner of the Fallschirmjäger, I presume?’
‘Mr Churchill.’ Steiner hesitated. ‘I regret this, but I must do my duty, sir.’
‘Then what are you waiting for?’ the Prime Minister said calmly.
Steiner raised the Mauser, the curtains at the French windows billowed and Harry Kane stumbled through, firing wildly. His first bullet hit Steiner in the right shoulder spinning him round, the second caught him in the heart, killing him instantly, pushing him back over the balustrade.
Corcoran arrived on the terrace a moment later, revolver in hand, and below in the sunken garden, Rangers appeared from the darkness on the run, to pause and stand in a semi-circle. Steiner lay in the pool of light from the open window, the Knight’s Cross at his throat, the Mauser still gripped firmly in his right hand.
‘Strange,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘With his finger on the trigger, he hesitated. I wonder why?’
‘Perhaps that was his American half speaking, sir?’ Harry Kane said.
The Prime Minister had the final word, ‘Whatever else may be said, he was a fine soldier and a brave man. See to him, Major.’ He turned and went back inside.
Twenty
IT WAS ALMOST a year to the day since I had made that astonishing discovery in the churchyard at St Mary and All the Saints when I returned to Studley Constable, this time by direct invitation of Father Philip Vereker. I was admitted by a young priest with an Irish accent.
Vereker was sitting in a wing-back chair in front of a huge fire in the study, a rug about his knees, a dying man if ever I’ve seen one. The skin seemed to have shrunk on his face, exposing every bone and the eyes were full of pain. ‘It was good of you to come.’
‘I’m sorry to see you so ill,’ I said.
‘I have a cancer of the stomach. Nothing to be done. The Bishop has been very good in allowing me to end it here, arranging for Father Damian to assist with parish duties, but that isn’t why I sent for you. I hear you’ve had a busy year.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘When I was here before you wouldn’t say a word. Drove me out, in fact.’
‘It’s really very simple. For years I’ve only known half the story myself. I suddenly discover that I have an insatiable curiosity to know the rest before it is too late.’
So I told him because there didn’t really seem any reason why I shouldn’t. By the time I had finished, the shadows were falling across the grass outside and the room was half in darkness.
‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘How on earth did you find it all out?’
‘Not from any official source, believe me. Just from talking to people, those who are still alive and who were willing to talk. The biggest stroke of luck was in being privileged to read a very comprehensive diary kept by the man responsible for the organization of the whole thing, Colonel Max Radl. His widow is still alive in Bavaria. What I’d like to know now is what happened here afterwards.’
‘There was a complete security clampdown. Every single villager involved was interviewed by the intelligence and security people. The Official Secrets Act invoked. Not that it was really necessary. These are a peculiar people. Drawing together in adversity, hostile to strangers, as you have seen. They looked upon it as their business and no one else’s.’
‘And there was Seymour.’
‘Exactly. Did you know that he was killed last February?’
‘No.’
‘Driving back from Holt one night drunk. He ran his van off the coast road into the marsh and was drowned.’
‘What happened to him after the other business?’
‘He was quietly certified. Spent eighteen years in an institution before he managed to obtain his release when the mental health laws were relaxed.’
‘But how could people stand having him around?’
‘He was related by blood to at least half the families in the district. George Wilde’s wife, Betty, was his sister.’
‘In a sense, the silence of the years was also a kind of protection for Seymour.’
There is another possibility,’ I said. ‘That the terrible thing he did that night was seen as a reflection on all of them. Something to hide rather than reveal.’
‘That, too.’
‘And the tombstone?’
‘The military engineers who were sent here to clean up the village, repair damage and so on, placed all the bodies in a mass grave in the churchyard. Unmarked, of course and we were told it was to remain so.’
‘But you thought differently?’
‘Not just me. All of us. Wartime propaganda was a pernicious thing then, however necessary. Every war picture we saw at the cinema, every book we read, every newspaper, portrayed the average German soldier as a ruthless and savage barbarian, but these men were not like that. Graham Wilde is alive today, Susan Turner married with three children because one of Steiner’s men gave his life to save them. And at the church, remember, he let the people go.’
‘So, a secret monument was decided on?’
‘That’s right. It was easy enough to arrange. Old Ted Turner was a retired monumental mason. It was laid, dedicated by me at a private service, then concealed from the casual observer as you know. The man Preston is down there, too, but was not included on the monument.’
‘And you all agreed with this?’
He managed one of his rare, wintry smiles. ‘As some kind of personal penance if you like. Dancing on his grave was the term Steiner used and he was right. I hated him that day. Could have killed him myself.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Because it was a German bullet that crippled you?’
‘So I pretended until the day I got down on my knees and asked God to help me face the truth.’
‘Joanna Grey?’ I said gently.
His face was completely in shadow. I found it impossible to see his expression. ‘I am more used to hearing confessions than making them, but yes, you are right. I worshipped Joanna Grey. Oh, not in any silly superficial sexual way. To me she was the most wonderful woman I’d ever known. I can’t even begin to describe the shock I experienced on discovering her true role.’
‘So in a sense, you blamed Steiner?’
‘I think that was the psychology of it.’ He sighed. ‘So long ago. How old were you in nineteen-forty-three? Twelve, thirteen? Can you remember what it was like?’
‘Not really—not in the way you mean.’
‘People were tired because the war seemed to have gone on for ever. Can you possibly imagine the terrible blow to national morale if the story of Steiner and his men and what took place here, had got out? That German paratroopers could land in England and come within an ace of snatching the Prime Minister himself?’
‘Could come as close as the pull of a finger on the trigger to blowing his head off.’
He nodded. ‘Do you still intend to publish?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘It didn’t happen, you know. No stone any more and who is to say it ever existed? And have you found one single official document to substantiate any of it?’
‘Not really,’ I said cheerfully. ‘But I’ve spoken to a lot of people and together they’ve told me what adds up to a pretty convincing story.’
‘It could have been.’ He smiled faintly. ‘If you hadn’t missed out on one very important point.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Look up any one of two dozen history books on the last war and check what Winston Churchill was doing during the weekend in question. But perhaps that was too simple, too obvious.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘You tell me.’
‘Getting ready to leave in HMS Renown for the Teheran conference. Called at Algiers on the way, where he invested Generals Eisenhower and Alexander with special versions of the North Africa ribbon and arrived at Malta, as I remember, on the seventeenth November.’
It was suddenly very quiet. I said, ‘Who was he?’
‘His name was George Howard Foster, known in the profession as the Great Foster.’
‘The profession?’
‘The stage, Mr Higgins. Foster was a music hall act, an impressionist. The war was his salvation.’
‘How was that?’
‘He not only did a more than passable imitation of the Prime Minister. He even looked like him. After Dunkirk, he started doing a special act, a kind of grand finale to the show. I have nothing to offer but blood sweat and tears. We will fight them on the beaches. The audiences loved it.’
‘And Intelligence pulled him in?’
‘On special occasions. If you intend to send the Prime Minister to sea at the height of the U-boat peril, it’s useful to have him publicly appearing elsewhere.’ He smiled. ‘He gave the performance of his life that night. They all believed it was him, of course. Only Corcoran knew the truth.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Where’s Foster now?’
‘Killed, along with a hundred and eight other people when a flying bomb hit a little theatre in Islington in February, nineteen-forty-four. So you see, it’s all been for nothing. It never happened. Much better for all concerned.’
He went into a bout of coughing that racked his entire body. The door opened and the nun entered. She leaned over him and whispered. He said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a long afternoon. I think I should rest. Thank you for coming and filling in the gaps.’
He started to cough again so I left as quickly as I could and was ushered politely to the door by young Father Damian. On the step I gave him my card. ‘If he gets worse.’ I hesitated. ‘You know what I mean? I’d appreciate hearing from you.’
I lit a cigarette and leaned on the flint wall of the churchyard beside the lychgate. I would check the facts, of course, but Vereker was telling the truth, I knew that beyond any shadow of a doubt and did it really change anything? I looked towards the porch where Steiner had stood that evening so long ago in confrontation with Harry Kane, thought of him on the terrace at Meltham House, the final, and for him, fatal hesitation. And even if he had pulled that trigger it would still all have been for nothing.
There’s irony for you, as Devlin would have said. I could almost hear his laughter. Ah, well, in the final analysis there was nothing I could find to say that would be any improvement on the words of a man who had played his own part so well on that fatal night.
Whatever else may be said, he was a fine soldier and a brave man. Let it end there. I turned and walked away through the rain.
A Biography of Jack Higgins
Jack Higgins is the pseudonym of Harry Patterson (b. 1929), the New York Times bestselling author of more than seventy thrillers, including The Eagle Has Landed and The Wolf at the Door. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Patterson grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. As a child, Patterson was a voracious reader and later credited his passion for reading with fueling his creative drive to be an author. His upbringing in Belfast also exposed him to the political and religious violence that characterized the city at the time. At seven years old, Patterson was caught in gunfire while riding a tram, and later was in a Belfast movie theater when it was bombed. Though he escaped from both attacks unharmed, the turmoil in Northern Ireland would later become a significant influence in his books, many of which prominently feature the Irish Republican Army. After attending grammar school and college in Leeds, England, Patterson joined the British Army and served two years in the Household Cavalry, from 1947 to 1949, stationed along the East German border. He was considered an expert sharpshooter.
Following his military service, Patterson earned a degree in sociology from the London School of Economics, which led to teaching jobs at two English colleges. In 1959, while teaching at James Graham College, Patterson began writing novels, including some under the alias James Graham. As his popularity grew, Patterson left teaching to write
full time. With the 1975 publication of the international blockbuster The Eagle Has Landed, which was later made into a movie of the same name starring Michael Caine, Patterson became a regular fixture on bestseller lists. His books draw heavily from history and include prominent figures—such as John Dillinger—and often center around significant events from such conflicts as World War II, the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Patterson lives in Jersey, in the Channel Islands.
Patterson as an infant with his mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. He moved to Northern Ireland with his family as a child, staying there until he was twelve years old.
Patterson with his parents. He left school at age fifteen, finding his place instead in the British military.
A candid photo of Patterson during his military years. While enlisted in the army, he was known for his higher-than-average military IQ. Many of Patterson’s books would later incorporate elements of the military experience.
Patterson’s first payment as an author, a check for £67. Though he wanted to frame the check rather than cash it, he was persuaded otherwise by his wife. The bank returned the check after payment, writing that, “It will make a prettier picture, bearing the rubber stampings.”
Patterson in La Capannina, his favorite restaurant in Jersey, where he often went to write. His passion for writing started at a young age, and he spent much time in libraries as a child.
Patterson visiting a rehearsal for Walking Wounded, a play he wrote that was performed by local actors in Jersey.
Patterson with his children.
Patterson in a graveyard in Jersey. Patterson has often looked to graveyards for inspiration and ideas for his books.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.