With a full tank, they managed to get back into France. If Davenport’s friend the Countess was surprised to see them again, and in SS uniform, she concealed it well. The coded Morse message Davenport had sent from Wewelsburg gave little more than an acknowledgment that their mission had been successful, followed by a pick-up location and a time two days later.
That night, back in their civilian disguises, well rested and nourished, Guy and Davenport said their good-byes to the Countess. They made their way through the estate to a large field where they had already arranged piles of hay from one of the barns. They waited until they could hear the plane’s engines, then Davenport used his cigarette lighter to set fire to the bundles, forming a line down the side of the field.
“Just so long as we’re not lighting up a landing strip for a German night fighter,” he told Guy cheerily.
The plane bounced and slewed to a halt close to the end of the field. It was the same Avro Anson that had brought them to France several weeks previously. A line of ragged bullet holes was stitched along the fuselage.
Guy held his breath as they waited for the pilot to emerge. Would it be Sarah? Was she all right?
“Well, come on if you’re coming,” a familiar voice called.
He could hardly contain his relief. “Thank God you’re OK.” He went to embrace her, but Sarah was already disappearing back inside the fuselage.
“Oh don’t worry about the bullet holes,” she called back.
“Let’s hope we don’t pick up any more on the way back,” Davenport said as they clambered into the aircraft.
But the bullet holes did nothing to dent Guy’s mood. He felt light-headed, though his euphoria dimmed slowly as they made their way back through the cold night. With Sarah piloting the plane, and Guy once again acting as gunner should the need arise, he was left alone with his thoughts. Desperate to ask her what had happened, but unable for the moment to do so.
The flight back was mercifully uneventful, but Guy breathed a long sigh of relief when he recognized the wide dark expanse of the English Channel. He knew they weren’t safe yet. In fact it was more dangerous to come down in the December sea where the cold would kill them in minutes than to crash-land in occupied Europe. But they were nearly home. And despite what they had seen at Wewelsburg, despite what he had never admitted to himself he feared, Sarah was all right.
* * *
He sat for hours, unmoving, mind blank. The glass didn’t move. But gradually a thought formed in Hoffman’s brain. A shape, an image—something he needed.
He finished dressing and made his way briskly through the castle, back down to the Vault.
Streicher was supervising the clean-up. The floor had been scrubbed and the artifacts replaced in their positions on the workbenches. Bullet holes in the tables and up the walls were the only signs that anything had happened here. The shutters over the shattered Vril tank were closed.
“Are you all right?” Streicher asked as Hoffman walked slowly through the chamber, attention focused on the main workbench.
“I’m fine.” His voice was flat and uninflected.
Streicher reached out and caught his arm. “You are sure?”
Hoffman looked down, and Streicher quickly removed his hand. But not so quickly that Hoffman had not seen the glint of silver from the bracelet on his wrist.
“I am now,” he said.
Further along the workbench was a collection of several of the heavy metal bracelets. Hoffman looked round to check no one was watching. Streicher had moved away and there was no one nearby. Hoffman reached out for one of the bracelets, his bare wrist emerging from the sleeve of his jacket. It would take only a moment to put on the bracelet. That was what he had to do. That was why he was here.
But somewhere in the back of his thoughts, he could remember the pain on the faces of those who wore them, as the bands of metal bit into their flesh. He could remember the smoking ruin of Number Five, the sickly stench of burning flesh. Number Nine’s scream as the bracelet was torn from his wrist …
Hoffman’s hand closed on the nearest bracelet. Held it for a moment. He knew what he had to do.
* * *
Christmas was little more than a date on the calendar. Guy went to his mother’s for lunch, both having attended the local church in the morning. Davenport disappeared for a couple of days without giving any hint of his destination. Sarah spent the day alone in her flat. She wrote a long letter to her father, which actually told him little of what she had been doing. She mentioned that she’d been sorry to hear that Andrew Whitman had died in some sort of accident at the embassy.
Sergeant Green enjoyed an army Christmas lunch, which was heavy on vegetables but light on meat and served with thin gravy. Brinkman spent the day in the office, only realizing that it was actually Christmas when Miss Manners brought him a home-made mince pie that was almost all pastry.
“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” he asked her.
She looked at him sternly. “Of course I do. The same place as you. So here I am.”
The war barely paused. But Christmas brought some good news. The Russians were counterattacking the advancing Germans outside Moscow and finally driving back the Panzers. Churchill spent Christmas in the U.S.A., and addressed Congress on Boxing Day. His confidence and rhetoric were tempered by the knowledge that the Japanese were advancing almost unchallenged through the Pacific region.
Station X at Bletchley Park allowed itself little respite for the festive season. There was some levity—even homemade crackers at Christmas lunch. But generally the tireless work of interception, decryption, and analysis went on uninterrupted.
That suited Henry Wiles. He hated interruptions. His personal opinion was that Christmas, and any other public holiday whether religious or secular, was a complete waste of time and opportunity. He was pleased when the brief “holiday” period was over, and predictably irritated to be summoned to London for a meeting.
“I hope this won’t take long,” were his first words as he entered the Station Z offices. He declined Miss Manners’ offer to take his coat and hat, emphasizing his ambition to be finished and away in as little time as possible. He did allow her to take his newspaper.
“Only half finished?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and indicating the uncompleted Times crossword.
“The rest of it was easy,” Wiles said dismissively. “Not worth filling in. Now what do you lot want?”
* * *
The walls of the conference room were covered with maps. Davenport was adjusting the position of a chart of the Mediterranean as Miss Manners led Wiles in. He took a seat at the table, next to Guy Pentecross and opposite Brinkman and Sarah Diamond.
“I think we can start,” Brinkman said. “Sergeant Green will listen out for the phones, if you could take minutes please, Penelope?”
Miss Manners nodded, and took a seat close to where Davenport was now inspecting a map of North Africa.
“Thank you for joining us, Henry,” Brinkman went on. “I know you are extremely busy.”
As a concession to this admission, Wiles removed his hat, placing it on the table in front of him. He lifted his briefcase and put that beside the hat. “So why am I here?”
“Two reasons. First, you suggested on the phone that you had some information for us.”
Wiles sniffed. “True. Supposition and theory, but it might get us somewhere. Second reason?”
“A fresh pair of eyes. Expert eyes. These maps…” He waved for Davenport to explain.
“These maps are arranged precisely as they were in the Vault beneath Wewelsburg Castle. They were obviously significant to Himmler and his team, so we need to know why, and what they show.” Davenport pointed out features on the various charts as he explained. “I’ve marked them up in the same way as they were marked there, though obviously I can’t guarantee I’ve reproduced everything exactly. And of course we don’t always have access to exactly the same charts or maps. Where we do, I’ve fixed the map at the
top, and put an English-language equivalent underneath.” He lifted one of the maps of Europe to reveal a similar one behind it.
Wiles nodded. “I see, I see. Interesting.” He stood up abruptly and took his coat off, dumping it over the back of his chair before hurrying round the table to inspect the maps at close range.
“We’ve all examined them,” Guy told him.
“And drawn a few rather obvious conclusions,” Brinkman added.
“Like the fact that the crosses inside circles…” Sarah began, pointing to the nearest map—which showed southern Italy.
“Are all archaeological sites, yes,” Wiles finished for her. “As you say, obvious.”
“So obvious it took us three days,” Sarah muttered.
“These lines..?” Wiles asked, moving along the row of maps. He traced one of the lines drawn on several of the maps with his index finger. “They were on the German originals?”
“Significant?” Brinkman asked.
“Undoubtedly.”
“Any idea what they are?” Davenport asked.
“Possibly. It’s one of the theories I mentioned.” He turned, taking in the other maps and charts. The wall opposite where he stood had a large map of the British isles, with the bigger map of the Shingle Bay area pinned to one side. “Yes, this will do very well,” Wiles said. “I’ll need a few minutes. And drawing pins obviously.”
Miss Manners got to her feet. “I have plenty of those. Anything else?”
“Reels of cotton. As many different colors as you can find. Thank you.”
Wiles worked quickly, but it was still almost an hour before he was done. He pulled a sheaf of handwritten notes from his briefcase, referring to them constantly as he pinned lines of cotton over the map of Britain. Then he turned his attention to the other maps. He pinned fewer threads on these. Finally he sat down and looked round at his handiwork.
“You want to explain?” Brinkman asked.
Miss Manners and Sarah handed round black tea. There was no sugar and they were out of milk.
“The lines show the paths of UDTs,” Wiles said. “Sometimes we only have a few points, so I’ve extrapolated. We don’t know where they come from, as they just appear. We don’t know where they go as they just disappear. Hence the lines start and stop at the first and last confirmed points of contact.”
“Appear and disappear?” Guy said. “That’s impossible surely.”
“I’m talking about RADAR traces and observations. It could be to do with their speed, if they travel too rapidly to be tracked. It could be their height if they move above or below the detection field. Or perhaps they have some intermittent way of jamming the RADAR and only appear when they want to.”
“Why would they want to?” Davenport asked.
Wiles shrugged. “I didn’t promise you any answers. Just supposition.”
“So what do the threads tell us?” Sarah asked.
“I think I know,” Miss Manners said, staring at the map of Britain. “I’ve seen lines like this before, drawn out across ancient sites.”
“They do seem to go through some interesting archaeological areas,” Davenport agreed. “Is that significant?”
“Possibly,” Wiles said. “You see, I think these UDTs of yours follow Ley Lines.”
Guy shook his head. “Sorry—what lines?”
“They’re ancient paths and tracks,” Wiles said, “I think that’s right isn’t it, Miss Manners?”
She nodded. “There is a theory that ancient sites are joined by paths—some of them still used, others hidden or lost. They are generally straight lines, as we have here,” she indicated the map. “A man called Alfred Watkins coined the term, after he noticed that many ancient sites seem to be in alignment—wayside crosses, burial mounds, churches, standing stones.”
“Some of those would be rather more modern though, surely,” Guy said. “Churches don’t date from the same era as ancient burials and standing stones.”
“But most churches are built on ancient sites that have a religious or ritualistic significance that predates the church,” Davenport told him.
Wiles nodded. “Miss Manners will no doubt correct me if I’m mistaken, but there is also a theory that these paths have some mystic quality or power. Perhaps that they follow magnetic lines of force on the earth, whatever those might be. Dowsers claim to be able to detect Ley Lines, though of course they also claim to be able to detect all sorts of other things too. Someone even suggested that homing pigeons use them for navigation.”
“Seriously?” Brinkman asked.
“The people suggesting it are serious, but whether the idea has any actual merit…” Wiles shrugged.
“It does all sound rather improbable,” Davenport agreed. “Though I suppose the Romans were able to build straight roads so the paths and tracks theory might be on the nail.”
“I should tell you something else that’s interesting,” Miss Manners said. “And that is that our friend Rudolf Hess had all the Ley Lines in Germany mapped out several years ago. Perhaps we should ask him if that’s significant?”
“Assuming he’s talking to us again,” Brinkman said. “Or that we can believe a word he says.”
“Something to look into, I suppose,” Guy agreed. “How close a correlation is there between the UDT paths and these Ley Lines?”
“Ah, yes, well, that’s difficult to say,” Wiles admitted. “Ley Lines are theoretical, so we don’t really know where they all are. We don’t really know if they actually exist at all, come to that. But let’s just say that a significant number of the UDT tracks follow generally accepted Ley Lines. And a good many of the remainder can be extended to cover other ancient sites.” He leaped to his feet, brandishing a pencil which he jabbed toward the map. “Take this short line section, for example.”
“What about it?” Sarah asked.
Wiles was pointing to a short green thread on the map. “It doesn’t follow a Ley Line that we know of, and it doesn’t pass over any significant ancient sites. But extend the line in this direction, and it goes through Hereford Cathedral. Extend it this way and we find it passes over Tewkesbury Abbey.”
“Could be coincidence,” Sarah said.
“Could be,” Wiles agreed. “We shouldn’t discount coincidences however inconvenient they might be. They happen.”
“Or,” Sarah went on, “they might be navigation markers. When you’re flying you look for waypoints, things you can recognize from the air that give you your position.”
“Ah, that’s very good,” Wiles said. “Yes, I remember you mentioned that theory before, when you came up to Bletchley. I confess I was rather more concerned with whether they can turn on a sixpence than how they decide where to do it. But yes, these UDTs perhaps navigate by ancient sites.”
“How would they do that?” Brinkman asked.
But Wiles was tapping the pencil against his chin as he stared off into the distance. “Or, conversely, we might have this the wrong way round. Perhaps that’s why the sites are where they are. They’re not so much convenient landmarks, navigation beacons that have been deliberately established. Points at which to change course, perhaps emitting some signal that we cannot receive or have misinterpreted to give the site some religious or ceremonial significance. What do you reckon?” he asked, looking round.
“Ancient sites originally established to define flight paths,” Guy said. “This is a lot to think about.”
“Then let me give you something else to think about.”
Wiles pulled a folded sheet of squared paper from his briefcase and unfolded it on the table. The paper had a grid marked in letters down one side of the page, and numbers along the other. Some of the squares were shaded black and others left empty.
“You have to squint a bit, but you get the idea.” Wiles held the paper up for everyone to see.
“It’s a picture,” Davenport said. “Yes, if you squint it blurs the squares and makes it easier to make out the image. Looks like a face.”
“So what is it?” Brinkman asked.
“Your MI5 chap said that one of his bods suggested some of the intercepted data we shared with them could be a radio-fax signal. It’s a way of transmitting an image by sending a series of instructions about how to reassemble that image at the other end. Basically you break it down into dots, like these squares only smaller, then indicate whether each dot is black or white. This data seems to use a coordinates system rather than just a linear sequence, but even so—we get an image.”
Guy looked at Davenport. “Like that poor man was drawing.”
Davenport nodded. “That must be it. The transmissions, some of them anyway, are the images that those people see and interpret.”
“They’re transmissions from an Ubermensch?” Sarah said.
“It would make sense,” Brinkman agreed. “Is it possible to triangulate where these transmissions come from and go to?”
“Most of the data we have is in a different form, and comes from the UDTs,” Wiles said. “It may be navigational, or progress reports, or observations or even comments on the weather and local cloud cover for all we know. These images … Well we have relatively few because we’ve not been looking for them. There are undoubtedly others waiting unidentified among the radio traffic that hasn’t been decrypted. There’s a lower priority given to anything that’s not from one of the known Tunny lines.”
“The what?” Sarah asked.
“Oh sorry, enemy communications lines that we’ve successfully penetrated. We name them after fish and sea creatures. God knows why. Someone obviously thought it was a good idea. So Jellyfish is the link between Berlin and Paris. Anything outside those lines, or where we know there’s significant enemy presence, could turn out to be local wireless stations broadcasting the weather forecast, or some amateur with a crystal set. So a lot of it is ignored or discarded. Most of it is probably never picked up at all. We can try to triangulate what we have, but really we need more data. The more the better. Quantity rather than quality in this instance, I’d say.”
“And that will tell us where there’s an Ubermensch?” Davenport asked.
“Possibly. Or it might do more than that,” Wiles said. “From what I can tell, the people the Germans have who pick up these image signals are merely intercepting the data, just as we are. They are not the intended recipients of the transmissions.”
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