by Iles, Greg
PROLOGUE
10th MAY, 1941
The North Sea lay serene, unusual for spring, but night would soon fall on a smoking, broken continent reeling from the shock of war. From the bloody dunes of Dunkirk to the bomb-shattered streets of Warsaw, from the frozen tip of Norway to the deserted beaches of the Mediterranean, Europe was enslaved. Only England, beleaguered and alone, stood against the massed armies of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, and tonight London was scheduled to die. By fire. At 1800 hours Greenwich time, the greatest single concentration of Luftwaffe bombers ever assembled would unleash their fury upon the unprotected city, and over seven hundred acres of the British capital would cease to exist.
Thousands of incendiary bombs would rain down upon civilian and soldier alike, narrowly missing St. Paul’s Cathedral, gutting the Houses of Parliament. History would record that strike against London as the worst of the entire war, a holocaust. And yet, all this—the planning, the casualties, the Goliathan destruction—was but the puff of smoke from a magician’s gloved hand. A spectacular diversion calculated to draw the eyes of the world away from a mission so daring and intricate that it would defy understanding for generations to come. The man behind this ingenious plot was Adolf Hitler, and tonight, unknown to a single member of his General Staff, he would reach out from the Berghof and undertake the most ambitious military feat of his life.
He had worked miracles before—the blitzkrieg of Poland, the penetration of the “impassable” Ardennes—but this would be the crowning achievement of his career. It would raise him at last above Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon. In one stunning blow, he would twist the balance of world power inside out, transforming his mortal foe into an ally and consigning his present ally to destruction. To succeed he would have to reach into the very heart of Britain, but not with bombs or missiles. Tonight he needed precision, and he had chosen his weapons accordingly: treachery, weakness, envy, fanaticism—the most destructive forces available to man. All were familiar tools in Hitler’s hand, and all were in place.
But such forces were unpredictable. Traitors lived in terror of discovery; agents feared capture. Fanatics exploded without warning, and weak men invited betrayal. To effectively utilize such resources, Hitler knew, someone had to be on the scene—reassuring the agent, directing the fanatic, holding the hand of the traitor and a gun to the head of the coward. But who could handle such a mission? Who could inspire both trust and fear in equal measure? Hitler knew such a man. He was a soldier, a man of forty-eight, a pilot. And he was already in the air.
Two thousand feet above Amsterdam, the Messerschmitt BF-110 Zerstdrer plowed through a low ceiling of cumulus clouds and burst into clear sky over the glittering North Sea.
The afternoon sun flashed across the fighter’s silver wings, setting off the black-painted crosses that struck terror into the stoutest hearts across Europe.
Inside the cockpit, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief. For the last four hundred miles he had flown a tiring, highly restricted route, changing altitude several times to remain within the Luftwaffe’s prescribed corridors of safety. Hitler’s personal pilot had given him the coded map he carried, and, with it, a warning. Not for amusement were the safety zones changed daily, Hans Bahr had whispered; with British Spitfires regularly penetrating Hermann Göring’s “impenetrable” wall of air defence, the danger was real, precautions necessary.
The pilot smiled grimly. Enemy fighters were the least of his worries this afternoon. If he failed to execute the next step of his mission perfectly, it would be a squadron of Messerschmitts, not Spitfires, that shot him into the sea. At any moment the Luftwaffe flight controllers expected him to turn back for Germany, as he had a dozen times before, test flying the fighter lent to him personally by Willi Messerschmitt, then returning home to his wife and child, his privileged life. But this time he would not turn back.
Checking his airspeed against his watch, he estimated the point at which he would fade from the Luftwaffe radar screens based on the Dutch island of Terschelling. He’d reached the Dutch coast at 3:28 Pm. It was now 3:40. At 220 miles per hour, he should have put forty-four miles of the North Sea behind him already. German radar was no match for its British counterpart, he knew, but he would wait another three minutes just to make sure. Nothing could be left to chance tonight. Nothing.
The pilot shivered inside his fur-lined leather flying suit. So much depended upon his mission: the fates of England and Germany, very possibly the whole world. It was enough to make any man shiver. And Russia, that vast, barbaric land infected by the cancer of communism—his Fatherland’s ancient enemy—if he succeeded tonight, Russia would kneel beneath the swastika at last!
The pilot nudged the stick, dipping the Messerschmitt’s left wing, and looked down through the thick glass canopy. Almost time. He looked at his watch, counting. Five … four … three … two …Now! Like a steel falcon he swooped toward the sea, hurtling downward at over four hundred miles per hour. At the last instant he jerked the stick back and levelled out, skimming the wave tops as he stormed north toward Aalborg, the main Luftwaffe fighter base in Denmark. His desperate race had begun. Fighting through the heavy air at sea level, the Messerschmitt drank fuel like water, but the pilot’s main concern now was secrecy. And finding the landing signal, he reminded himself. Two dozen training flights had familiarized him with the aircraft, but the detour to Denmark had been unexpected. He had never flown this far north without visual references. He was not afraid, but he would feel much better once he sighted the fjords of Denmark to starboard.
It had been a long time since the pilot had killed. The battles of the Great War seemed so vague now. He had certainly fired hundreds of rounds in anger, but one was never really sure about the killing. Not until the charges came, anyway—the terrible, bloody, heroically insane assaults of flesh against steel. He had almost been killed—he remembered that clearly enough—by a bullet in the left lung, one of three wounds he’d taken while fighting in the famous List regiment. But he had survived, that was the important thing. The dead in the enemy trenches … who knew, really?
He would kill tonight. He would have no choice. Checking the two compasses strapped to his left thigh, he took a careful bearing, then quickly returned his eyes to the horizon indicator. This close to the surface of the sea, the water played tricks on the mind. Hundreds of expert pilots had plowed into the waves simply by letting their concentration falter for a few moments. Only six minutes to Aalborg, he thought nervously. Why risk it? He climbed to one thousand feet, then levelled out and craned his neck to survey the sea below. Waveless, it receded before him with the gentle curve of the earth.
Except … there … dead ahead. He could see broken coastline … Denmark! He had done it! Feeling a hot surge of adrenaline, he scanned the clouds for fighter patrols. If one spotted him, he decided, he would sit tight, hold his course and pretend to be a straggler from an early raid. The hard, empty northern land flashed beneath him. His destination was a small ancillary strip just short of Aalborg air base. But where was it? The runway … his special cargo … where?
A thousand feet below, the red flash of railway flares suddenly lit up in parallel lines to his left. The signal! A lone green flare indicated the proper direction of approach. The pilot circled wide until he had come 180 degrees, then began nursing the Messerschmitt in. The strip was short—no margin for error. Altimeter zero. With hated breath he felt tentatively for the runway. Nothing… nothing… whump! The wheels dropped hard onto concrete. The plane shuddered from the impact but steadied fast. Cutting his engines, the pilot rolled to a stop thirty metres beyond the last two flares.
Before he could unfasten his harness, two ground crewmen slid the canopy back over his head. Silently, they helped him with his straps
and pulled him from the cockpit. Their rough familiarity startled him, but he let it pass. To them he was just another pilot—a somewhat irregular mission perhaps, operating solo from a practically deserted strip south of the base—but just a pilot, all the same. Had he removed his flying helmet and goggles, the crewmen would have exhibited quite a different attitude, and certainly would not have touched him without permission. The pilot’s face was known to every man, woman, and child in Germany, indeed to millions across Europe and the world.
Without a word, he walked a little way off the strip and unzipped his suit to relieve himself. There were only the two crewmen, he saw, and they had been well briefed. From a battered tank truck one pumped fuel into the plane while the other toiled with special fittings beneath the Messerschmitt’s left wing. The pilot scanned the small runway. There was an old sock-type wind indicator, a pile of scrap parts left from pre-war days, and, several yards down the strip, a small wooden shack that had probably once housed some Danish mechanic’s tools.
It houses something quite different now, I’ll wager, he thought. Zipping up, he walked slowly toward the shack, alert for any sign of human occupation. The sleek black bonnet of a Daimler jutted from behind the ramshackle building, gleaming like a funeral hearse. The pilot slipped around the shack and peered through the windshield of the car. Empty. Remembering his instructions, he wound a long flying scarf around the lower half of his face. It made breathing difficult, but combined with his flying helmet, it left only his eyes visible to an observer. He entered the shack without knocking.
Darkness shrouded the interior, but the fetid air was pregnant with human presence. Someone, not the pilot, lit a lantern, and the room slowly revealed itself. A major wearing the smart black uniform of Himmler’s SS stood less than a metre from the pilot. Unlike most of his type, this representative of Himmler’s “elite corps” was quite fat. He looked more accustomed to the comforts of a soft billet like Paris than a battle zone. Behind him, a thinner man dressed in a leather flying suit sat rigidly in a straight-backed wooden chair. Like the pilot, his face was also draped by a scarf. His eyes darted nervously between the newcomer and the SS man.
“Right on time,” the SS major said, looking at his watch.
“I’m Major Horst Berger.”
The pilot nodded, but offered no name.
“Drink?” A bottle appeared from the shadows. “Schnapps? Cognac?”
My God, the pilot thought. Does the fool carry a stocked bar about in his car? He shook his head emphatically, then jerked his thumb toward the half-open door. “I’ll see to the preparations.”
“Nonsense,” Major Berger replied, dismissing the idea with a flick of his bottle. “The crewmen can handle it. They’re some of the best from Aalborg. It’s a shame, really.”
It is, the pilot thought. But I don’t think you’re too upset about it. I think you’re enjoying all this. “I’m going back to the plane,” he muttered.
The man in the wooden chair stood slowly.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Major Berger barked, but the man ignored him. “Oh, all right,” Berger complained. He buttoned his collar and followed the pair out of the shack.
“They know about the drop tanks?” the pilot asked, when Berger had caught up.
“Ja. “
“The nine-hundred-litre ones?”
“Sure. Look, they’re fitting them now.”
Berger was right. On the far side of the plane, two ground crewmen attached the first of two egg-shaped auxiliary fuel containers to the Messerschmitt’s blunt-tipped wings. When they finished, they moved to the near side of the aircraft.
“Double-check the wet-points!” the pilot called.
The chief mechanic nodded, already working.
The pilot turned to Major Berger. “I had an idea,” he said. “Flying up.”
The SS man frowned. “What idea?”
“I want them to grease my guns before we take off.”
“What do you mean? Lubricate them? I assure you that the weapons are in perfect working order.”
“No, I want them to pack the barrels with grease.”
Behind Major Berger, the man in the flying suit stepped sideways and looked curiously at the pilot.
“You can’t be serious,” Berger objected. He turned around. “Tell him,” he said. But the man in the flying suit only cocked his head to one side.
“But that’s suicide!” Major Berger insisted. “One chance encounter with a British patrol and—” He shook his head. “I simply cannot allow it. If you’re shot down, my career could take a very nasty turn!”
Your career is over already, the pilot thought grimly.
“Grease the guns!” he shouted to the crewmen, who, having fitted the empty drop tanks, now anxiously pumped fuel into them. The chief mechanic stood at the rear of the fuel truck, trying to decide which of the two men giving orders was really in charge. He knew Major Berger from Aalborg, but something about the tall, masked pilot hinted at a more dangerous authority.
“You can’t do that!” Major Berger protested. “Stop that there! I’m in command here!”
The chief mechanic shut off the fuel hose and stared at the three men at the edge of the runway. Slowly, with great purpose, the pilot pointed a long arm toward the crewman under the wing and shouted through his scarf: “You! Grease my guns! That’s a direct order!”
The chief mechanic recognized the sound of authority now. He climbed onto the fuel truck to get a grease gun from his tool box. Major Berger laid a quivering hand on a Schmeisser machine pistol at his belt. “You have lost your mind, I believe,” he said softly. “Rescind that order immediately, or I’ll put you under arrest!”
Glancing back toward the crewmen—who were now busy packing the Messerschmitt’s twenty-millimetre cannon with heavy black grease—the pilot took hold of his scarf and unwrapped it slowly from his head.
When his face became visible, the SS man fell back a step, his eyes wide in shock. Behind him the man in the flying suit swallowed hard and turned away.
The pilot’s face was dark, saturnine, with eyes set deep beneath bushy black brows that almost met in the centre. His imperious stare radiated command. “Remove your hand from that pistol,” he said quietly.
For several moments Major Berger stood still as stone. Then, slowly, he let his hand fall from the Schmeisser’s grip.
“Jawohl, Herr … Herr Reichminister.”
“Now, Herr Major! Be about your business! Go!”
Suddenly Major Berger was all action. With a pounding heart he hurried toward the Messerschmitt, his face hot and tingling with fear. Blood roared in his ears. He had just threatened to place the Deputy Führer of the German Reich—Rudolf Hess—under arrest! In a daze he ordered the crewmen to speed their packing of the guns. While they complied, he harried them about their earlier maintenance. Were the wet-points clear? Would the wing drop tanks disengage properly when empty?
At the edge of the runway, Hess turned to the man in the flying suit. “Come closer,” he murmured.
The man took a tentative step forward and stood at attention.
“You understand about the guns?” Hess asked.
Slowly the man nodded assent.
“I know it’s dangerous, but it’s dangerous for us both. Under certain circumstances it could make all the difference.”
Again the man nodded. He was a pilot also, and had in fact flown many more missions than the man who had so suddenly assumed command of this situation. He understood the logic: a plane purported to be on a mission of peace would appear much more convincing with its guns disabled.
But even if he hadn’t understood, he was in no position to argue.
“It’s been a long time, Hauptmann,” Hess said, using the rank of captain in place of a name.
The captain nodded. Overhead a pair of Messerschmitts roared by from Aalborg, headed south on patrol.
“It is a great sacrifice you have made for your country, Hauptmann. You and me
n like you have given up all normality so that men like myself could prosecute the war in comparative safety. It’s a great burden, is it not?”
The captain thought fleetingly of his wife and child. He had not seen them for over three years; now he wondered if he ever would again. He nodded slowly.
“Once we’re in the plane,” said Hess, “I won’t be able to see your face. Let me see it now. Before.”
As the captain reached for the end of his scarf, Major Berger scurried back to tell them the plane was almost ready. The two pilots, enthralled in the strange play they found themselves acting out, heard nothing. What the SS man saw when he reached them struck him like a blow to the stomach. All his breath passed out in a single gasp, and he knew that he stood at the brink of extinction.
Before him, two men with the same face stood together shaking hands! And that face! Major Berger felt as if he had stumbled into a hall of mirrors where only the dangerous people were multiplied. The pilots gripped hands for a long moment, their eyes heavy with the knowledge that both their lives might end tonight over foreign soil in the cockpit of an unarmed fighter.
“My God,” Berger croaked.
Neither pilot acknowledged his presence. “How long has it been, Hauptmann?” Hess asked.
“Since Dessau, Herr Reichminister.”
“You look thinner.” Hess murmured, “I still can’t believe it. It’s positively unnerving.” Then sharply, “Is the plane ready, Berger?”
“I… I believe so, Herr—”
“To your work, then!”
“Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!” Major Berger turned and marched toward the crewmen, who now stood uncertainly against the fuel truck, waiting for permission to return to Aalborg. Berger unclipped his Schmeisser with one hand as he walked.
“All finished?” he called.
“Jawohl, Herr Major,” answered the chief mechanic.
“Fine, fine. Step away from the truck, please.” Berger raised the stubby barrel of his Schmeisser.
“But … Herr Major, what are you doing! What have we done?”