file. The Premier Peer of Scotland, an RAF wing commander and famous
aviator in his own right, Hamilton faced the tall German confidently,
awaiting some explanation. The pilot stood nervously, preparing to
throw himself on the mercy of the duke. Yet he hesitated.
What would happen if he did that? It was possible that there had simply
been a radio malfunction, that Hess was even now carrying out his secret
mission, whatever it was. Heydrich might blame him if Hess's mission
failed. And then, of course, his family would die. He could probably
save his family by committing suicide as ordered, but then his child
would have no father. The pilot studied the duke's face.
Hamilton had met Rudolf Hess briefly at the Berlin Olympics, he knew.
What did the duke see now? Fully expecting to be thrown into chains,
the pilot requested that the officer accompanying the duke withdraw from
the room. When he had gone, the pilot took a step toward Hamilton, but
said nothing.
The duke stared, stupefied. Though his rational mind resisted it, the
first seeds of recognition had been planted in his brain. The haughty
bearing ... the dark, heavy-browed patrician face ... Hamilton could
scarcely believe his eyes.
And despite the duke's attempt to conceal his astonishment, the pilot
saw everything in an instant. The dizzying hope of a condemned man who
has glimpsed deliverance surged through him. My God! he thought. It
could still work! And why not? It's what I have trained to do for five
years!
The duke was waiting. Without further hesitation-and out of courage or
cowardice, he would never know-the pilot stepped away from the iron
discipline of a decade.
'I am Reichminister Rudolf Hess,' he said stiffly. 'Deputy Fuhrer of
the German Reich, leader of the Nazi Party.'
With classic British reserve, the duke remained impassive.
'I cannot be sure if that is true,' he said finally.
Hamilton had strained for skepticism, but in his eyes the pilot
discerned a different reaction altogether-not disbelief, but shock.
Shock that Adolf Hitler's deputy-arguably the second most powerful man
in Nazi Germany-stood before him now in a military hospital in the heart
of Britain! That shock was the very sign of Hamilton's acceptance!
I am Reichminister Rudolf Hess! With a single lungful of air the
frightened pilot had transformed himself into the most important
prisoner of war in England. His mind reeled, drunk with the reprieve.
He no longer thought of the man who had parachuted from the
Messerschmitt before him.
Hess's signal had not come, but no one else knew that. No one but Hess,
and he was probably dead by now. The pilot could always claim he had
received a garbled signal, then simply proceeded with his mission as
ordered. No one could lay the failure of Hess's mission at his door.
The pilot closed his eyes in relief. Sippenhaft be damned! No one
would kill his family without giving him a chance to explain.
By taking this gamble-the only chance he could see of survival-the
desperate captain unknowingly precipitated the most bizarre conspiracy
of the Second World War. And a hundred miles to the east, alive or eat
rea u Hess-a man with enough secrets in his head to unleash catastrophic
civil war in England@isappeared from the face of the earth.
The Duke of Hamilton maintained his attitude of skepticism throughout
the brief interview, but before he left the hospital, he issued orders
that the prisoner be moved to a secret location and held under double
guard.
BOOK ONE
WE T BERLIN, 1 7
A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful spirit
concealeth the matter.
PROVERBS 11.13
CHAPTER ONE
The wrecking ball arced slowly across the snow-carpeted
courtyard and smashed into the last building left on the prison grounds,
launching bricks through the air like mosscovered mortar rounds. Spandau
Prison, the brooding redbrick fortress that had stood for over a century
and housed the most notorious Nazi war criminals for the past forty
years, was being leveled in a single day.
The last inmate of S andau, Rudolf Hess, was dead. He had committed
suicide just four weeks ago, relieving the West German government of the
burden of one million pounds sterling it paid each year to maintain the
aged Nazi's isolated captivity. In a rare display of solidarity,
France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union-the
former Allies who guarded Spandau by monthly turns-had agreed that the
prison should be destroyed as quickly as possible, to prevent its
becoming a shrine to neo-Nazi fanatics.
Throughout the day, crowds had gathered in the cold to watch the
demolition. Because Spandau stood in the British sector of Berlin, it
fell to the Royal Engineers to carry out this formidable job. At first
light an explosives team brought down the main structure like a
collapsing house of cards.
Then, after the dust settled into the snow, bulldozers and wrecking
cranes moved in. They pulverized the prison's masonry, dismembered its
iron skeleton, and piled the remains into huge mounds that looked all
too familiar to Berliners of a certain age.
This year Berlin was 750 years old. All across the city massive
construction and restoration projects had been proceeding apace in
celebration of the historic anniversary. Yet this grim fortress, the
Berliners knew, would never rise again. For years they had passed this
way as they went about their business, rarely giving a thought to this
last stubborn symbol of what, in the glow of glasnost, seemed ancient
history. But now that Spandau's forbidding battlements no longer
darkened the Wilhelmstrasse skyline, they stopped to ponder its ghosts.
By dusk, only the prison heating plant still stood, its smokestack
painted in stark relief against the gunmetal clouds. A wrecking-crane
drew back its mammoth concrete ball. The stack trembled, as if waiting
for the final blow. The ball swung slowly through its arc, then struck
like a bomb.
The smokestack exploded into a cloud of brick and dust, showering what
