‘I’ve friends all along the coast, most of them Resistance. I’ll be all right.’
‘Why did you join?’ David asked.
‘Don’t like being told what to do by Nazis and Fascists. It’s as simple as that, my friend. That’s all it needs to be.’
‘If you’ve the courage,’ Sarah said.
It was unbearably cold; David could barely feel his hands on the oars. He looked at Sarah again. ‘How’s Ben now?’
‘Quiet.’ She looked at him and said. ‘Why didn’t Natalia come with us?’
David didn’t answer, lowering his head over the oars. Then he felt a hand on his arm. He looked up. Sarah smiled at him, through the blood on her face, her old reassuring smile, the smile he had never deserved. He smiled back, sadly. Then Eddie sat up, pointing. ‘Look!’ he shouted. ‘Over there!’
They all turned to look.
Ahead of them they made out an enormous shape in the water, dark, like a whale. Eddie took out his torch and flashed a series of red signals. After a moment red flashes appeared in return. They rowed harder. They made out a giant cigar-shaped object, its flanks wet and slippery. They saw deck rails, a long gun-barrel. As they came up to it the submarine towered over them; they made out a conning tower bristling with periscopes, dark-clad figures moving in front. The conning-tower hatch opened and a powerful light shone on them, blinding them for a second.
David shouted out the password. ‘Aztec!’
The boat bumped against the side of the submarine, its dark flanks glistening above them in the moonlight. A rope was thrown across the rail by one of the figures beside the conning tower; Eddie caught it and made it fast.
‘Aztec it is,’ a confident American voice shouted back. ‘Let’s get you safe aboard!’
THEY ARRIVED SECRETLY at Chartwell early in the morning, three large unmarked cars driving steadily along the lanes, stirring up clouds of autumn leaves. As a conference room they used the big dining room with its views over the lawns and the lake, sitting round the table. There were no civil servants present, only a note-taker for each side: Jock Colville for the British Resistance and a clerk from the Prime Minister’s office for the government.
Colville hadn’t seen Beaverbrook in person since 1940. The Prime Minister was subdued, with none of his usual energy and bombast, his round little shoulders slumped, his lined face pale. He was accompanied by three of his senior Cabinet ministers. Foreign Secretary Rab Butler greeted the Resistance negotiators with bonhomie as though they were old friends who had happened not to meet at the club for a while. Ben Greene, though, the Coalition Labour leader, already looked a defeated man, his huge fat body slumped over the table. Only Enoch Powell showed defiance. His thin white face was full of angry contempt, his voice coldly severe throughout the meeting though his eyes, as always, burned passionately.
The Resistance was represented, besides Churchill, by three key politicians who had followed him since the time of the 1940 Peace Treaty. Clement Attlee and Harold Macmillan were both coldly formal towards the men who had put them beyond the law, and had wanted to capture and kill them; Aneurin Bevan, though, could not hide an air of triumph.
Colville had worried about Churchill, for the old man was failing. He had had a stroke earlier in the year, and though he had recovered physically the mental slowing and lack of focus that had begun to show in recent years were growing. But sometimes, as on this morning, Churchill could still gather his resources of energy to remarkable effect. He left much of the talking to his colleagues, but dominated the table, gloweringly contemptuously at his old foes, his interventions always sharp and decisive.
Events had moved fast since Hitler’s death the previous December. Goebbels, despite initial hesitation, had been unwilling to defy the SS determination to fight the Russian war to the end. In March a group of army officers, in alliance with Albert Speer and influential German business leaders, banded together with sections of the Nazi Party who realized the Russian war was unwinnable. They launched a military coup, assassinating Goebbels, and promising a permanent settlement with ‘Russian interests’ before the war brought Germany and Europe to total ruin. A temporary ceasefire with Russia had been agreed. But Himmler and his million-strong SS forces had immediately launched a counter-coup with the support of most of the Nazi party. Civil war had erupted across Germany, the fighting men on the two sides treating each other with the same savagery they had shown previously to the conquered peoples, German civilians fleeing to the countryside or cowering in cellars. In Russia, too, Wehrmacht and Waffen SS forces had begun fighting each other. Hitler had held all power in his hands for twenty years and with him gone the whole ramshackle, rivalry-ridden structure had collapsed. Taking advantage, the Russians abrogated the ceasefire and began marching west.
The army had hoped for a quick victory but the civil war had lasted over six months, the army winning control of each German region slowly and painfully. They had the support of the navy and most of the civilian population, and it was an open secret that the Americans, with Adlai Stevenson now in office as President, were sending supplies to the army through Hamburg. But under Himmler, who had declared himself the new Fuhrer, and his deputy Heydrich, SS forces had everywhere fought to the last man. A week ago Vienna had fallen, leaving the remaining Nazi forces besieged in their last redoubts in the Bavarian and Austrian Alps, running out of food and fuel. The Eastern Front had completely collapsed and the forces of the Russian Federation were sweeping westward, further and faster than anyone could have expected. They had uncovered terrible things, labour camps as bad as anything Stalin had created, and vast extermination camps, gassing plants and crematoria. They now had control of most of the Ukraine and parts of eastern Poland. A week ago they had broken through into the Crimean peninsula, from where rumours were coming of savage massacres of German settlers. Without the threat of German forces behind them the European satellite regimes were tottering and falling; everywhere in the east ethnic Germans, even those who had lived there peacefully for centuries, were being massacred or fleeing west. In France secret talks were under way between the Petain–Laval government and the French Resistance; the French Jews had been freed from the detention camps where they had been held for months. In Italy, Mussolini had been removed by his own Fascist Party, and in Spain General Franco had just been overthrown and shot by a group of army officers. There was confusion, and in places fighting, across Europe. In Britain there had been a pitched battle in Senate House, Rommel and the army people against the SS. The army had won. Rommel was still ambassador; the SS faction had all been killed or imprisoned. Rommel promised elections in Germany, once the civil war was over. And now Britain’s turn had come.
Round the Chartwell dining table, Beaverbrook offered Churchill a senior role in a Government of National Unity, all the men present forming a new government, Mosley and the Fascists excluded. Churchill brusquely refused, insisting the British Resistance alone was morally entitled to govern. They would deal with any of Mosley’s people who resisted them, then call elections.
‘The Fascists will want to hold onto the power they have,’ Beaverbrook said. ‘Best to have us on your side to negotiate with them.’
‘You are no longer of any account,’ Bevan answered brutally. ‘And what power they have, you gave them.’
Beaverbrook looked stunned. He said, ‘We used to be friends, Nye.’
‘That was my mistake. A long time ago.’
Beaverbrook spread his arms wide. ‘The Jews will be released from their camps. I’ve already said so publicly. I never wanted them detained in the first place.’
‘And all of their homes and property will be returned to them,’ Churchill insisted. ‘Those supporters of Mosley, and yours, who moved into their houses will be booted out.’
‘That could be complicated—’
‘Booted out!’ Churchill shouted. ‘The whole bloody lot of them!’
‘Very well. And I’ve promised I’ll sack Mosley as Home Secretary. That proves our goodwill.’
‘But will Mosley go quietly?’ Attlee asked. He had said little so far, puffing quietly on his pipe, though his eyes
