for six. There are oars underneath. This is the boat they’re going to use,’ Kapp said, triumphantly.
‘Yes.’ Gunther looked back up the beach, to the path where the British party would descend onto the noisy pebbles.
Borsig said, ‘If three of us get under the boat, and the other three crouch down behind it under the tarpaulin, between the boat and the groyne, when they arrive they’ll walk right into our hands.’
Gunther nodded, then smiled. ‘Yes, it’s ideal. Who goes under?’
‘You and Syme and Kapp,’ Borsig suggested. ‘Kapp and Syme are the thinnest, and if you dig away some of the pebbles you’ll get a view of them coming down, then you can give the command signal. We’ll all hear them coming, once they’re on the beach, so when they arrive at the boat I suggest you knock on the side and we push it over onto them, you from below and us from behind. They’ll be completely startled. Then we all jump out and grab them, one each, before they can move.’
‘Yes. Yes, that sounds right.’ Gunther looked at Borsig and Kollwitz. ‘You’ve planned ambushes before.’
‘Yes. In the East.’
‘I have too, in the Gestapo. But only in cities, usually against civilians. I’ll be guided by you.’
‘Thank you. Now, let’s lift the boat up.’
‘It’ll be a bloody cold wait,’ Syme observed.
Kollwitz answered. ‘This is nothing. Try waiting in ambush in the Russian winter.’
They took off the tarpaulin and lifted the boat. It was big and heavy but Borsig and Kollwitz lifted it easily enough. Kapp and Syme slipped under, moving the oars that had been placed under the boat to one side. Gunther felt his muscles protest as he lay down and scrabbled underneath.
‘I’ll give the side of the boat a kick as a signal,’ he said. ‘It’s heavy. You three push hard.’
Gunther dug away at the pebbles until he managed to make a small space between them and the bottom of the boat, enough for him to see through if he lay flat on his stomach. He looked up towards the path to the beach, a dark gap in the promenade. Under the boat it was pitch dark and there was a strong smell of seaweed. Already Gunther’s feet felt like ice. Next to him Syme shifted his bony form, an elbow digging into his ribs. Always some part of Syme had to be twitching or moving. Gunther said, ‘Keep still, for God’s sake. They’ll hear the pebbles if you move about.’
‘All right. Sorry.’
Gunther took off his watch to lay it next to his face. The luminous dial read 11.45. Three quarters of an hour to go until Muncaster’s party arrived.
THAT AFTERNOON, FOLLOWING the meeting with Bert, David went downstairs, back to the empty lounge. Jane, sitting at her desk in the hall, gave him an anxious smile as he passed.
He sat in an armchair and looked out of the window. What was he going to do? Sense and decency and old, bone-deep affection told him he belonged with Sarah. But would she have him now? And it was Natalia who offered him excitement, the chance of something new. More than that, she was someone who understood his past, his true origins.
After a while he went back upstairs, to the room he shared with her. He turned the handle, but the door was locked. He had a feeling Natalia was in there, but there was no sound, no answer to his knock. Then Sarah’s door opened and she stood there, looking at him.
‘Sarah.’
She turned and went back into her room, but left the door open. He followed her in. She sat on the bed, looking at him bleakly. ‘Please don’t say you’re sorry again. I don’t think I could stand that.’
He closed the door and stood with his back to it. ‘What else can I say?’
‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘About my being Jewish. I had to keep it quiet after 1940. All the more after Charlie came along—’
‘You should have told me, David. It would have been a shock, a surprise, I’m not pretending otherwise, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. And I could have supported you.’ She looked at him. ‘But that was just the start of the lies.’ Her eyes bore into his. ‘Whatever love you felt for me ended when Charlie died, didn’t it?’
‘No. But somehow his dying just – pulled us apart. I don’t know why. And then, when I joined the Resistance – I felt guilty for lying to you again, and that just made it all worse.’ He put two fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezed hard. ‘I was a spoiled child and I’m a selfish man.’
She answered quietly, ‘You believe in duty, self-sacrifice. I always admired you for that. But I don’t want you to stay with me out of duty. And I don’t know if I could ever trust you again.’
He thought of his other secret, the last one. Natalia. She hadn’t guessed about that. Poor Sarah, even now she didn’t see it all. He took a deep breath. ‘You haven’t said if you still love me.’
‘I don’t think that’s enough any more.’
He closed his eyes. She sighed, then stood up. ‘David, we mustn’t discuss this now. That’s what I wanted to say. Jane’s worried. Whatever happens afterwards, now we have to concentrate on getting through tonight. We owe it to the others.’
‘Duty.’ David smiled, a sad twitch of the mouth.
‘Yes, duty. And now I think you should go.’
He left the room. Natalia’s door was still locked. So he went back down to the lounge and sat once more staring out at the empty street. It struck him then that for the first time in their relationship Sarah was in charge.
At eight o’clock Jane called them down for dinner. Sarah had been lying on her bed, reading an Agatha Christie novel to try to keep her mind off everything. She took a deep breath and steeled herself to go downstairs. The other four – David, Frank, the Scotsman and the woman with the Slavic accent – were already sitting round one of the tables. Bert was with them, reading a copy of the
Jane had made a beef stew, with potatoes and Brussels sprouts, tasteless like all the food Sarah had eaten in the hotel but hot and filling. Bert looked up from his paper. ‘It says here Goebbels is calling a conference of all the senior army officers. Himmler and Heydrich aren’t invited. Looks like divisions among the Nazis are really starting.’
‘And they’re reportin’ that in the
‘Well, this government wants Goebbels to stop the Russian war. Even Mosley knows it’s unwinnable.’
‘Do you think that could actually happen? Some sort of civil war in Germany?’ Frank asked.
David had been quiet, but now he looked up. ‘Yes. Hitler held all the reins of power himself. There was always the risk everything would fall apart when he died. He said the Third Reich would last a thousand years and people believed him, but what Empire has ever lasted that long? Even the Roman Empire didn’t. A few hundred years, that’s the most any Empires have, and many a lot less.’
‘Like the British Empire,’ Ben said quietly.
‘Yes.’ There was sadness in David’s answer, even now.
Ben asked Bert, ‘I suppose there’s still nothing in the paper about the Jews?’
‘No. But the word I’ve heard is that plans to deport them to the Isle of Wight and then on to Germany are cancelled indefinitely now.’
‘But Goebbels and Himmler both hate the Jews, as much as Hitler did. That’s the one thing those bastards are united about.’
‘The British government are waiting to see what happens,’ Natalia said. ‘If Germany breaks down, and Britain wants to move closer to the Americans, better to have the Jews alive. A bargaining counter. Pawns. The fog was an excuse to cancel the transports, it came at the right time.’
Sarah looked at her. She didn’t like Natalia, she thought her hard and cold. So she was surprised when she went on to say, with feeling, ‘For now they’re abandoned in those detention camps. They must be so cold in this weather, so cold.’
Jane had come in with a tray, heavy with large bowls of steamed pudding and custard. As she served them she said, ‘They’re not the same as us, they don’t have the same loyalty to England.’
