Sarah spoke up. ‘You mean kill them? Someone innocent?’
Natalia said, ‘Of course not. Who do you think we are? We knock them out and tie them up.’
‘I’m used tae doin’ that,’ Ben said cheerfully.
Bert looked at Sarah. He said, ‘There’s one last thing, Mrs Fitzgerald. It’s essential that if the worst comes to the worst none of you are taken alive. That’s why everyone’s been given cyanide pills.’
She took a deep breath and looked at David.
He said, ‘I’m sorry, but if they caught us—’
‘Dear God,’ she said quietly.
‘Geoff had one,’ David told her. ‘But he didn’t get the chance to use it. The fog caused a lot of confusion. That won’t be a problem tonight.’
Sarah looked round the group. ‘Do all of you have them?’
‘I don’t,’ Frank said.
‘You’d be taken care of,’ Ben promised. ‘You know that.’
‘But you couldn’t in the fog in London. No-one could see me. Like David said, it was all confused.’
Sarah looked at her husband again. Bert took a deep breath, reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny circular pill.
‘Let me,’ David said. He took it from Bert and held it out to Sarah. ‘We got this for you,’ he said. ‘It’s only to be used if they’re about to capture us.’ Suddenly his eyes filled with tears and Sarah had to make an effort not to cry too. She took a deep breath, then held out her hand. David laid the pill in her palm. He said, his voice choked, ‘You put it in your mouth and bite down. There’s a tiny glass phial inside. It’s instantaneous, you wouldn’t feel a thing.’
‘So the two of us would go together in the end,’ she said, quiet sadness in her voice.
‘Yes, we would.’
This is what it’s like for someone who’s never thought of ending their life, Frank thought. It’s hard. He glanced at Natalia. She was looking at David, her face expressionless.
They spent an hour going over the details until they had everything committed to memory. Eventually Bert picked up his map. Jane said, ‘We’ll have something to eat in a little while. Nobody should go out for the rest of the day, please.’ Bert rolled up the map, and he and Jane went out.
The five of them were left sitting there. Sarah got up and moved to the door. She walked wearily, like someone wading through water. David followed, put his hand on her arm, but she said quietly, ‘I still need some time on my own. We’ll talk later.’ She went to her room. After a moment David went out too. Frank heard his footsteps going downstairs.
‘Will they be all right?’ Ben asked.
‘They’ll have to be,’ Natalia said bluntly.
Frank looked at her. He thought how all his life he had been a watcher, an observer. Sometimes he had surprised himself how much he guessed about the lives, the thoughts of other people. And he had got to know these people well, this last week. He hadn’t met Sarah until just now but he could see – surely anyone could – how much she loved David, how desperately she had been hurt. But he saw that Natalia loved David, too. Then, looking at her, another thought came to Frank, a quite different idea.
He stepped forward, his legs surprisingly stiff. ‘Natalia,’ he said. ‘Can I talk to you about something? On your own?’
Ben said quietly, ‘It’s not our business.’
‘Please,’ Frank said.
Natalia looked surprised. Then she smiled and shrugged. ‘All right. Why not? We can go next door to my room.’
She walked to the door, Frank following, Ben watching them go.
GUNTHER WALKED STEADILY along the path that led from Brighton to Rottingdean, under the high chalk cliffs. His shoes, rubber-soled like those of Syme walking behind him and the SS man Kollwitz ahead, barely made a sound on the concrete path. They walked in silence as close as possible to the cliff itself, in case any Resistance people were watching the sea from the cliffs above. All wore heavy dark coats, thick black roll-neck sweaters, black gloves and balaclavas. They had blackened their faces, too, with charcoal. Kollwitz, one of the four SS men accompanying the operation and a veteran of covert actions in Russia, said it could make all the difference in an ambush. Three other SS men were approaching Rottingdean from the other side, where the under-cliff walk continued on eastwards: Kapp, who had assisted with Drax’s interrogation, Hauser from the basement, and Borsig, another veteran of Special Operations in Russia and like Kollwitz attached to SS Intelligence at the embassy. The two groups would meet at Rottingdean Gap, where there was a small pebbled beach connected to the village above by a path.
It was bitterly cold, a light but knife-like breeze blowing off the Channel. The tide was coming in, quietly and gently, for the sea was dead calm. In the moonlight Gunther could see the little white wavelets where the surf broke, not far below the path. A half-moon was high in a starry black sky, casting a long silver reflection on the sea. He remembered Michael talking about swimming in the Black Sea, how beautiful the shore looked with the mountains in the distance. He stumbled for a moment, catching his foot on a lump of chalk that had fallen from the cliff face. Syme reached out and grasped his arm in a firm grip, helping him right himself.
Gunther nodded his thanks. He swore inwardly; he should have been more careful. He was conscious of how much less fit he was than the other two men, how flabby.
They had spent the morning poring over maps in Gessler’s office, assisted by a Special Branch man from Sussex, another of Syme’s valuable connections. The man knew nothing except that the Branch were working with the Germans to intercept someone the Germans wanted and who would be in Rottingdean that night. The man had mentioned that Special Branch had their own concerns just now; since news of Hitler’s death there had been several near-riots in the Jewish detention camps, and police everywhere had been put on standby in case help was needed. Along with Gunther, Syme and the Special Branch man the four SS men Gessler had chosen for the operation had also been present. Two of them Gunther had not met before; Kollwitz was a young man in his late twenties, attached to SS Intelligence at the embassy. He had a youthful, strangely unmarked face, blond hair and blank light-blue eyes. His colleague Borsig was also attached to Intelligence. He had a square, hard face with dark hair and heavy brows above eyes as sharp as a cat’s. Kapp, the eager youngster who had been at Drax’s interrogation, quick and lithe, had served in the East; Hauser, the officer in charge of the basement, was older and heavier, but still a strong, solid presence. All four were utterly loyal to the SS. Like Gunther, they wore suits for the meeting so as not to spook Syme’s Special Branch contact, though they looked uncomfortable in them. Gessler alone wore his usual black uniform and cap. As embassy staff, the Germans all spoke good English.
Syme’s colleague told them Rottingdean was small, little more than a village. Because it lay in a gap between the cliffs it had been an ancient haunt of smugglers. The Resistance were not strong there, the local people kept themselves to themselves. There was some tourist trade in the summer but the place would be very quiet on a cold December night. The local police had been told a Special Branch operation would be taking place on the beach and that they were to stay well away, even if shots were fired. However, by taking the cliff path Gunther’s party need not actually go into Rottingdean at all. They could walk along from Brighton while the other three approached from the opposite direction.
Gessler thanked the Special Branch man and he left. The others gathered round the map. The Resistance people would probably have watchers on the cliffs along the coast, looking out over the Channel to spot any unusual activity on the sea, but they would have no reason to believe the Germans would be waiting for the fugitives on the beach. Gessler told them that according to the radio intercepts, a fisherman would meet Muncaster’s party in the village and take them down to the beach, where a boat lay ready; they would then row out to sea to meet the submarine. They would have to walk from the village down a broad asphalt path to a short promenade, then down to the little pebbly beach. Gunther and Syme and the SS men would have to find cover and hide themselves on the promenade or the beach so that when Muncaster’s party came down at half past midnight they could rush them, take them by surprise.
Kollwitz asked, ‘There will only be one boatman with them? There won’t be other Resistance people there, or
