Bright Dart Page 13

  ‘Woodhouse?’ said Dryland.

  ‘The Home Guardsman who shot and killed Haase. He’s been subpoenaed to attend.’ Truscott raised his eyes and fixed them on a wall chart above and behind Dryland’s head. ‘The findings of the court should roughly take the line that, for some unaccountable reason and contrary to the briefing he’d received before the exercise began, Haase attempted to escape after he’d been arrested by a member of the crown forces.’

  ‘From what little I’ve heard, they hadn’t been arrested, had they?’

  ‘In this instance,’ Truscott said firmly, ‘you could say that when they were challenged by the sentry they were technically under arrest. Certainly, all the evidence you will hear will point to that conclusion.’

  ‘Supposing it doesn’t?’ Dryland said. ‘What if Scholl’s evidence differs?’

  ‘That, my dear Tony, is your cue to suggest to the President that perhaps the witness is still suffering from shock.’

  Truscott smiled encouragingly. ‘I’m sure you will be able to pull it off—everyone I’ve met thinks very highly of you.’

  Dryland knew that he was being flattered but he still experienced a warm glow of pleasure. ‘I’m still puzzled about one thing,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Why Abercorn House? I thought Force 272 was based on Trawsfynydd?’

  ‘They’ve gone into quarantine; apparently, word came through from Germany that the operation is set to go, and the Director of Plans has given it his blessing. It seems that we are willing to try any harebrained scheme if there is the slightest chance that 99

  it will help to finish the war this year.’ Truscott suddenly busied himself with the papers on his desk. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I’m allowed to tell you,’ he said. His tone of voice implied that they had nothing further to discuss.

  Gerhardt was back where he had started almost six weeks ago, only this time he was not a prisoner. Abercorn House was one of those stately homes whose owner had been clever enough to sell it off to a government department before the repair bills got out of hand. Surrounded by spacious gardens and with a fine view of the rolling countryside, it was also cold, draughty and riddled with dry rot.

  In its better days the ballroom had been impressive but now the chandeliers high up in the ceiling were coated with dust, and someone, thinking to preserve the wood, had dark-stained the oak panels around the walls. Elegant men and women had once graced this room, but now most of the floor space was taken up with a scaled model of the city of Münster and its surrounding area. Ashby checked the model against the mosaic of aerial photographs displayed under a sheet of perspex on the table.

  ‘I can’t see any errors of detail,’ he said, ‘can you?’

  ‘Not with the model.’

  ‘But you have other reservations?’

  Gerhardt flushed. ‘It’s not for me to say.’

  ‘Oh, but it is,’ Ashby said coldly. ‘After all, it is your friends who have made this operation possible.’

  ‘Very well, since you put it like that, I think we should leave Scholl behind. He is too immature and unstable.’

  ‘And what about the others?’

  Gerhardt shrugged his shoulders. ‘They will suit our purpose.’

  ‘Even Cowper?’

  ‘Of course, why not? I personally do not care for him but he has cunning and he can be ruthless, like the good Sergeant Stack.’

  ‘And you?’

  Gerhardt looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said woodenly, ‘I do not understand you.’

  Ashby slipped his left hand into the map pocket of his battledress and brought out an envelope. Tipping the contents on to the perspex, he arranged the four enlarged snapshots in their correct order.

  ‘They’re getting a little curled around the edges,’ he said, ‘but you should have no difficulty in recognising them.’

  Gerhardt barely gave them a passing glance. ‘If I so wished, I could deny that I was responsible.’

  ‘You could.’

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  ‘I could draw your attention to the fact that the executioners were drawn from the 4th SS Police Division.’

  ‘And I might believe you.’

  ‘But it would not be the whole truth. I ordered the executions and I have no regrets. Does that shock you?’

  ‘No, but I wish you’d seen fit to tell me when we met.’

  ‘Should I then have made a confessional? Are you perhaps a priest who can give me absolution?’

  ‘Don’t get arrogant with me. If I am to be tarred with the same brush, the least you owe me is some sort of an explanation.’

  ‘Explanations,’ Gerhardt said irritably, ‘of what use are they?

  Do you think you can fight a war without getting your hands dirty? I could talk all night and still you would not understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Unless you have been there and seen it with your own eyes, it is impossible to imagine what it is like to fight on the Russian Front. It is …’ He paused, groping for an apt description. ‘It is like stepping back into the Dark Ages. On the third day of the war, we found the body of a Luftwaffe pilot; he had been lynched by the peasants, you understand, and every orifice in his body had been filled with earth and stones. If one of our assault engineers was unfortunate enough to be taken prisoner, he was invariably burnt to death with his own flamethrower. I do not know who first started this brutality—it is like the chicken and the egg—but certainly we were not slow to respond. The partisans were the worst and we had good reason to fear them. It was easy to lose your way in Russia; there were few roads and our maps were hopelessly out of date and inaccurate. One night, early in September ’41, we lost a truck on its way up to us from the supply point. I do not know how it happened, perhaps the driver missed a directional sign, but four days later we found the burnt-out truck in a wood some twenty kilometres off the route. The driver had been beheaded.’ Gerhardt pointed to the photographs, ‘Those seven partisans did it.’

  ‘You sound very sure of your facts.’

  ‘A detachment of the 4th SS operating in our rear area flushed them out of a woodcutter’s hut. They were armed with a couple of bolt-operated Moissim Nagant rifles and a PPSH sub-machine-gun but they surrendered without firing a shot. When the SS

  searched them, they found the driver’s pay-book.’

  ‘And on the strength of that, they were hanged?’

  ‘You might have acted differently,’ Gerhardt said quietly, ‘but it was enough for me. The partisan is a peasant working in the fields who expects to be treated as a civilian one minute and as a soldier the next. His kind come out in the night and kill the wounded. I should feel guilty about executing them?’

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  Ashby picked up the photographs, shuffled them into a neat pile and then tore them across. ‘The subject is closed,’ he said calmly. ‘Please give Major Ottaway my compliments and say that I should like to see him.’

  Gerhardt clicked his heels, bowed stiffly and then stalked out of the room. His face was white with anger. In being honest, he had been defiant and typically, he had expected understanding and sympathy for his point of view. In common with so many of his fellow countrymen, he was quick to shift the blame, and he had tried to give the impression that the conduct of the Wehrmacht in Russia, if not beyond reproach, was at lest excusable in the circumstances. As Ashby knew well, this was complete nonsense, for in March 1941, informed by Keitel that they would be required to implement the notorious Commissar Order in the forthcoming campaign, the army chiefs had at first demurred and then reached a happy compromise. The secret field police and the SS commandos would administer the rear areas and were therefore free to execute captured soviet political commissars, provided the army didn’t know about it.

  Ottaway said, ‘You sent for me. Colonel?’

  Ashby turned to face him. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he said.

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘For being dragged before the court of
inquiry tomorrow. I didn’t think it would come to that.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me any.’

  ‘It should be over in a day.’

  ‘It’s no sweat then?’

  ‘No; in fact you should be able to leave first thing on Thursday morning.’

  Ottaway looked puzzled. ‘Leave? Why should I leave now?’ he said.

  ‘Because your job is finished. Believe me, I’m very grateful for all the help I’ve received from you.’

  Ottaway pointed a foot at the floor model. ‘Is this where it all happens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Enschede is in Holland, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ Ashby said guardedly.

  ‘And if I read the scale correctly, it’s about fifty kilometres away from the objective.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘At a guess I’d say the objective was somewhere in Münster. Would I be right?’

  He saw the change of expression on Ashby’s face. ‘Oh, I get it,’

  he said quickly, ‘forget that I asked.’

  ‘I’m glad you understand.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Colonel.’ Ottaway produced a packet of Lucky 102

  Strike, offered one to Ashby and lit it with a Zippo lighter. ‘Can I tell my people that everything is set to go?’

  ‘Bormann has taken the bait.’

  ‘Well now, that really is something.’ Ottaway snapped his fingers. ‘Have you got all the volunteers you need?’

  ‘I haven’t asked them yet but it will be a mere formality.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘I have my reasons.’

  ‘I’d be interested to hear them.’

  Ashby hesitated briefly. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘why not? As the sponsor of the project, Gerhardt can’t back out; for ideological reasons, Frick wants to be in at the death of National Socialism; and Scholl is romantic enough to see it as a glorious crusade.

  Stack will go because he can’t tell the difference between a request and an order and obeying orders is second nature to him; Quilter has an outsized inferiority complex and when he hears that everyone else has volunteered, he will fall in line because otherwise he couldn’t face himself. And Cowper? Well, it seems Cowper hopes to make the army his career after the war, so he’d have to think twice before refusing.’

  ‘And where do I come in, Colonel?’

  ‘You, Jack, are an observer for the State Department who are alarmed in case we do something which might upset that special relationship that Roosevelt thinks he has with Stalin. You weren’t thinking of joining us, were you?’

  Ottaway shook his head. ‘Not on your life,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t even come along for the ride.’

  ‘Well, of course, that leaves you with a rather a difficult problem.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘If you’re not there to watch every move, how do you know that we won’t make a deal with the German High Command?’

  ‘How could I stop you even if I was there?’

  Ashby shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, I daresay your OSS would figure out a way. After all, once you got the message out, it would be up to your State Department to do the rest and I don’t imagine that would present any difficulty. At this stage of the war we are very much the junior partner, and whether HMG likes it or not, we will follow the Washington line in the end.’

  Ottaway said, ‘When do you plan to move out?’

  ‘Monday the 9th of October.’

  ‘All right, Colonel, maybe I will take off on Thursday morning. I think I ought to have a long talk with my Director!’

  Ashby stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray crudely fashioned from the lid off a tin of Players. ‘Shall I be seeing you again?’ he said quietly.

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  ‘You know you will because after I’ve made my report, I won’t have any choice.’ He dropped his cigarette on to the floor and trod on it. ‘I’ll be back on Sunday afternoon.’

  He was almost at the door when Ashby said, ‘Give my regards to Miss Bradley when you see her.’

  Ottaway looked back and smiled wryly. ‘Colonel, if ever you get stuck for a job after the war,’ he said, ‘you could always take up mind-reading.’

  As soon as Dryland finished speaking to him on the telephone, Pitts opened the drawer of his desk, took out Cowper’s letter and tore it up. In the right hands and at the right time, it could have been used against Ashby with telling effect at the court of inquiry, but Dryland simply hadn’t the courage of his own convictions.

  Clearly, no one in the War Office wanted the court of inquiry to probe too deeply into the Haase affair, and once that had been made clear to Dryland, he had performed a complete volte-face.

  Pitts was forced to the conclusion that, if it became necessary to stop Ashby, then Tony was not the man to do it. As an ally, he was totally unreliable and he was well shot of him.

  Pitts got up, crossed the room and opened the large security cabinet which stood in the corner of his office. From the top shelf he lifted out a bottle of Cockburn and carefully filled a wine glass. In times of stress, a glass of port always helped to restore his sense of well-being and enabled him to see things in their true perspective.

  The sonic boom was loud enough to startle him, the explosion which followed buffeted the windows, and the rushing noise at the end sounded like an engine blowing off steam. The glass slipped from his nervous fingers to shatter on the floor and, as the wine formed a pool about his feet, he stood rooted in fear, unable to move until the moment passed and gradually his heart ceased to flutter. However much the scientific advisers decried the effectiveness of the V2 rocket as a strategic weapon, the fact remained that, not only was it impossible to give forewarning of its arrival, but there was also no defence against it. Its advent was another reminder to Pitts that war was just an obscene lottery.

  The first item of any real intelligence value produced from the phone tap on Lammers reached the Gestapo Headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse on the G-Shreiber teleprinter during the early afternoon of Wednesday, 6th October. The transcript showed that the call, routed via Cologne, had been placed by Fraulein Margerete Axmann, and at first, Kastner was inclined to believe that it had been made for purely social reasons. However, one 104

  passage towards the end of their conversation caused him to change his mind. In passing, Lammers had said, ‘it is a pity that Rudi can only pay us a brief visit,’ and Axmann had replied, ‘One must not complain—in times like these we should be grateful that he is able to leave Rastenburg even for a few hours.’

  It was not conclusive but it was enough to convince Kastner that he’d been right to continue the investigation; still, until he could show that Rudi was undoubtedly Bormann he thought it advisable to tread warily. Kaltenbrunner would never support him if he put a foot wrong because Himmler was ultrasensitive where Bormann was concerned. For the first time, he began to speculate whether Himmler, even if confronted with the most damning evidence, would ever find the nerve to take action against the Deputy Führer. And then, remembering the gossip which this timid, muddleheaded and hesitant man inspired, Kastner was left with the uneasy feeling that the Reichsführer SS would look for an expedient solution.

  He knew only too well the treatment handed out to those who were no longer in favour. To be given command of an Einsatzgruppen, to become a mere butcher, was to take the final step over the abyss. In July 1941 he’d seen Artur Nebe’s men in action outside Minsk and vividly recalled the sergeant who sat on the lip of the antitank ditch stupefying himself with Schnapps while he waited for the next batch of naked prisoners to climb down into the pit and lie face down on the pile of corpses. In the course of one day, this NCO had exterminated one thousand six hundred and eighty-three men, women and children and, breaking all previous records, had established a personal best. Six months later the sergeant was a confirmed alcoholic, a year later he was committed to an asylum for the insane, and Nebe himself had become sufficiently unbalanced to join forces with the traitor Stau
ffenberg and was now under sentence of death. And for a man credited with being the father of the gas chamber, this was perhaps the final ironic twist.

  In this autumn of uncertainty, a man had to be careful even if Kaltenbrunner did want quick results. If an open breach with Bormann was to be avoided, it would be wise to leave Osler well alone, but, on the other hand, Christabel Gerhardt was a woman without apparent influence, and since the policy of harassment had so far proved a failure, sterner measures were called for. It occurred to Kastner that, if the hints were broad enough, Wollweber could be prodded into arresting her and then, if anything unfortunate should happen during interrogation, he could always disclaim responsibility. The more he thought about it the more Kastner liked the idea.

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  12

  HIS NAME WAS Yates, he was a twenty-six-year-old Major in the Rifle Brigade who, following his successful escape from Oflag VIIc at Laufen near Salzburg in the spring of 1943, had subsequently been attached to MI9. One month after the D-Day landings, he’d returned to France to participate in an operation which involved the rescue of some one hundred and thirty-eight Allied pilots who were being sheltered by the Maquis in the Forest of Fretteval close by Châteaudun. In August he was back in London again organising an escape network in Holland, and he had been ordered to report to Abercorn House because it was considered that his connections with the Dutch Underground would prove invaluable.

  He sat beside Truscott in the darkened room staring at the floor model which was barely illuminated by a chandelier high up in the ceiling, and wondered what the hell it was all in aid of.

  A tall figure carrying a pointer staff, which was about the size of a billiard cue, stepped forward into the pool of light and said,