Operation Afterlight, page 12
Despite herself, she laughed. That was twice in a few brief minutes. It felt good. Like it had been too long. “Yes,” she said. “If you don’t object.”
“Of course not. I’ve had a room prepared. Come on, I’ll show you.”
She followed but couldn’t resist a look back at the distant hangar and the aircraft inside. Beyond it, more Mosquitoes stood in the open. To her eyes, they had purpose and symmetry, but not beauty, no matter what Durban said. In less than twenty-four hours, she knew, they would leave here and fly east on the strength of her word.
It wouldn’t be the first time she had sent people into danger. She could only hope that, unlike those she had sent before, the young men enjoying a smoke and a laugh over the road would come back.
Chapter Sixteen
London, 21 March
“Unglaublich,” Stahl muttered, turning to yet another page of detailed insights into SS business. “Where did you say you got this reporting?”
“He didn’t,” Anders said, before Colonel Dennison could answer. “Nor will he. Further questions would be unwelcome, Jan. Just keep reading before I need to put it all away.”
Stahl rubbed his chin, eyes sliding down the page so quickly that he almost couldn’t keep track of the words, so keen was his brain to learn all it could. It really was unbelievable. It could only have come from Signals Intelligence, intercepted German communications, but he was familiar with the Enigma encoding device and knew that it was unbreakable. And yet, here was the evidence, printed and proud on the page in front of him. Even at the height of the Abwehr’s success and prestige, Canaris had always admitted that British Intelligence outclassed his own department, but this? It seemed like they knew everything.
Well. Not quite everything.
On one page, he found a complete list – names, ranks, service numbers, even dates of birth - of the twelve experienced pilots recently reassigned to a new training flight at Uelzen, an airfield that had never previously had a training presence, particularly not one with six operational Dornier Do-217s. On the next, he found details of an order sent to the Commander of the Fourth U-Boat Flotilla at Stettin by SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann requisitioning U-78, a Type VIIC submarine, for unspecified “special duties.” He did not yet know why Prützmann needed a submarine, though he had heard talk in the SS that several senior officers and politicians had purchased land in South America. They would need a way to get there.
What he had not found was confirmation of the two things that Sarah Lane hadn’t been able to work out, and that Canaris himself had never known for sure. What Götterdämmerung was and, crucially, where it was.
So, he kept looking. Searching through page after page, everything Anders had found that contained Prützmann’s name or any reference to U-78 or Uelzen. At some point he must have downed a third cup of tea because someone produced a fourth; he did not remember tasting any of them. He found references to prisoner transfers and concentration camps, grateful that they contained the names of the men who would hang for it. He discovered things that sounded exciting, like modified artillery shells, and others that really did not, like replacement ovens and sheep quotas.
But still not what he needed.
“That’s two hours,” Anders said, yawning.
“I need more time.”
“Time’s up.” The Dane reached across and began placing the papers back in their covering folders.
Stahl swore. Three days running, he had found nothing. It was bad enough with the regular files they had given him, but these new reports that Anders had brought in a locked briefcase today had proved doubly frustrating. For hours he had felt like he was on the verge of a breakthrough, that something was just evading his understanding, but it all vanished the moment Anders took the reports away. Canaris would have solved it, he knew. But there was nothing about Flossenbürg in there either, no news of Canaris at all. “When can I look at them again? Tomorrow?”
“Don’t count on it,” Anders said. “Do you know how many strings my boss had to pull just to get you temporary access?”
“I’ve certainly never seen them,” Dennison sniffed from behind the shade of his newspaper.
Stahl sat back in his seat, interlocking his fingers behind his head, listening to the mocking tick of the clock on the wall and grateful that the ever-present paper kept him from having to look at Dennison. The man annoyed him. Stahl’s colleagues at the Reich Security Main Office had not rated Dennison at all and had been shocked to hear of his promotion a few months ago. He was clever, they said, but also thought he knew better than everyone else, which made him stupid. Just as basic errors by SOE’s F Section had delivered dozens of their agents into the hands of the Parisian SS Sicherheitsdienst HQ at 84 Avenue Foch, so had Dennison’s follies revealed the identities of many in Germany. Sometimes, if he was lucky, Stahl would hear early that the Reich’s security apparatus was closing in on an agent, giving him the chance to find the poor bastard before anyone else did. If he was unlucky, he received a call when the SD or the Gestapo were already on their way. Too late.
He wondered if Dennison knew. He must suspect. Whether he cared was something else.
And then there was the woman. The SD had known all about her, too. It was the closest he had ever seen to respect coming from any of them. “This would be easier,” he said to no one but the ceiling, “if Sarah Lane would work with me instead of looking like she would kill me at any opportunity.”
“I’m sorry,” Dennison said. “She’s always been a rather difficult woman.”
“No,” Stahl snapped. Dennison blanched. Anders raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “Do not cheapen her with an apology.” He brought his voice back under control and looked back at the ceiling. “I would want to kill me too, if I knew what she thinks she knows.”
“All the same,” Dennison said, huffing, “she needs to get her emotions under control and do her job. I’ve explained that you have been working for us for two years now, and that all these stories about you killing her agents are obviously mistaken.”
Stahl sighed. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk, and beckoned Dennison closer. “Listen carefully, you arrogant buffoon.” His lips curled with pleasure as he saw the shock in the Colonel’s eyes. “I have not worked a moment for you. Everything I have done, I did for Germany. A better Germany, without war, without Nazism. Sarah Lane is correct. I do have the blood of her agents on my hands. And if they had dropped you into Europe and revealed your name to me, I would have shot you the same way I shot them.”
Dennison fell back in his chair, mouth fluttering, looking at Anders. Not in outrage. In a silent plea for protection.
Anders shook his head. “I think you’ve had too much tea, Jan.”
“Did you ever wonder what happened to those agents you betrayed with your incompetence, Colonel?” It was not anger that drove Stahl’s words, at least not anger at Dennison. “The lucky ones died by my hand. The unlucky? Tortured, stripped of their secrets and their dignity. Some may still be in SS hands now. The rest went to the camps and saw first-hand the crimes that will shame Germany for a thousand years, before they took their turns in the crematoriums…”
The words died on his lips.
“I think, Major Anders,” Dennison said softly, “that I’d like you and your guest to leave my office now.”
“Shut up,” Stahl said. “Anders, show me those files again.”
“Sorry,” Anders said, nodding to the clock. “You know the rules. Seventeen hundred, the files get locked away. I need to return them this evening.”
Stahl was out of his seat and moving before he even thought about it. He wasn’t sure he could have stayed in the seat a moment more if he had tried. Adrenaline flooded his system. Ignoring Dennison’s involuntary whimper at the speed of his movement, he reached the clock in two paces before pushing its fingers with one hand. “There,” he said. “Sixteen fifty-eight. I have two minutes, Anders.”
“That’s not how it works, Jan.”
“Two minutes. That is all. Then you can burn the damned things.”
Anders sighed. “You saw nothing, Colonel.” He opened the case and dropped the files on the desk. “You’ve got ninety seconds.”
Stahl only needed sixty before he stabbed his finger down in triumph. “There.”
“Sheep allocations?” Dennison, curiosity overcoming fear, had moved around the desk for a better look and stood peering over Stahl’s shoulder.
“A cancelled sheep allocation,” Stahl said. “This is a public health laboratory in the suburbs of Königsberg. It specialises in the prevention of bacterial disease among farm animals. Particularly important during wartime. Germany is slowly starving and cannot afford to lose flocks to blackleg. I suspect when we look back through Sarah Lane’s reports, we will find they have been receiving a dozen new sheep every few months. In August 1944 they stop. Why?”
“Perhaps they lost their taste for lamb,” Anders observed dryly.
“Here.” Stahl grabbed a second sheet. “This is the same laboratory. October 1944. Six prisoners requisitioned for duties at this facility. That is not unusual. Slave labour has been the backbone of the Reich’s production for several years. But in November, nine more arrived by bus. December, another fourteen. January, twenty-seven. This is not a big facility, and there are no accommodation areas, no dining areas. They could not house or use that many prisoners if they wanted to, yet they keep demanding more at an increasing rate. And all while the Soviets are cutting off East Prussia and isolating the city. They keep working. More and more new prisoners.”
Dennison stared. A fleck of spittle glistened on his lower lip as it hung open.
Anders stayed silent. Two minutes had long passed, but he made no move to take the papers away. Their eyes met. The Dane knew what it meant. But there was one last piece to play.
“Here,” Stahl said. He fell into his chair, legs no longer able to hold his weight. Something foul was in his mouth, choking him. He barely swallowed it. “The replacement oven,” he rasped. He could not look at the paper now. He did not need to. He knew every word. Wished he did not. “I should have seen it before. It is not for cooking. It is the kind I have seen in the extermination camps. Why risk disease and waste time digging ten thousand graves a day when you can simply turn the dead to ash?”
“It’s inhuman,” Dennison said.
“It is logical,” Stahl said. “The logic of the SS. The same logic that will send them all to Hell. But right now, it is a clue. Götterdämmerung is in Königsberg. That is where they are testing it. And whatever it is, it is killing people every day.”
Chapter Seventeen
Norfolk, 21 March
To her surprise, accepting Durban’s invitation to join him for dinner came naturally. Leaving her overnight bag in her room, Lane followed him, still in uniform, to the dining room. He apologised profusely for the simplicity of her accommodations, and again for not having the time to leave the HQ to take her to a restaurant.
“You know, you can only apologise so many times,” she said.
“You’d be surprised. I still think I have one or two apologies left in me.” He leaned back while a kitchen steward placed two plates in front of them. “I’m saving one for the food you’re about to eat.”
“I’m sure it will be better than anything Mrs Rose would have prepared for us.” Which it was, she quickly discovered, if not by much.
“Mrs Rose? Your housekeeper?”
“Landlady,” she said. “Am I to assume you’ve never cooked a meal in your life, Andy?”
“Alas, it is one of a long list of things I am terrible at.” Durban looked with dismay at the meal in front of him. “Lord knows what I’ll do after the war. Flying is the only thing I’ve ever been any good at.”
The table Durban had chosen was apart from the others, but it proved an unnecessary gesture. It seemed most of the rest of the squadron had received better offers, because only a few other men came in for dinner. Lane saw their surreptitious glances. “I’m guessing you don’t have many women eating in here?”
“You mean me personally?” He smiled. “Don’t worry if they stare. They know something is going on, they just don’t know what. I’m sure the rumours have been going around constantly since you showed up with Embry.”
“And you haven’t tried to quash them?”
“Why would I? The more you try to quash a rumour, the faster it grows. Besides, they know better than to talk away from the airfield. This squadron has done jobs like this before.”
There has never been a job like this, she thought. “What about you? Have you done this before?”
“Not at all,” he admitted. “That’s why I’m enjoying it so much.”
They talked through dinner. In truth, Durban did most of the talking, partly because she peppered him with personal questions, and partly because he was too polite to ask her any in return. About the only thing they truly had in common was that they were both unmarried. She learned he was twenty-five years old, eleven years her junior. Middle-class parents and three sisters. Oxford University. Extensive service career. A long list of decorations, including a DFC and an almost unheard of three bars, though those she had only read about. She imagined he would never consider bringing them up himself, no matter how much she asked. Self-effacing, then. In short, quintessentially British.
Everything she wasn’t.
She also learned that he had a charming voice, and she surprised herself again when she agreed to walk with him while he visited the Ops Room, the Senior Engineering Officer, the Armaments Officer and the ATC personnel, checking in that everything was ok. He introduced her each time as Squadron Officer Lane from Group HQ, giving them nothing to suggest her visit was important or that tomorrow was anything out of the usual. No sign of any stress or nervousness at all.
But she still remembered seeing his fingers shake when he’d started to reach out to comfort her in the hangar.
It was close to nine o’clock when he was done with his rounds and meetings. Oddly, she’d enjoyed herself, even if she had learned little other than that a squadron really was much more than just the aircrew and their machines. But it had been a long day. Four hours with Stahl and Anders, comparing notes, sifting reports like they had every day since the German had walked, uninvited and unwanted, into her life. Four hours that felt like a month. Then the three-hour drive to Norfolk, where the fresh air should have invigorated her, but just left her exhausted. Her room might have been simple, but it didn’t matter. She needed to sleep.
They reached her door, and she put her hand on the cold metal handle.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Yes,” she replied, almost before he’d finished the question.
“I keep the best whisky in my office,” he said. “But the stuff in my room is good too, and the chairs are much comfier.”
“Your room it is,” she said.
She followed him two doors down. His room wasn’t much bigger than her own, but he had done his best to make it seem like a home. A rug on the floor, a nice-looking lamp, a couple of expensively framed landscapes on the wall. The bed was bigger than hers, she noted idly, though made with the same rigorous attention to straight lines and general neatness as hers. Two chairs stood by a round coffee table with an expensive looking crystal ashtray. Durban walked over to the wardrobe and took a bottle and two glasses from the shelf above the ranks of ironed blue shirts.
“No ice, I’m afraid,” he said, motioning her to sit. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologising,” she said. “It’s too British for words.”
He poured two glasses and pushed one towards her. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one.
“Senior Service,” she said. “Did you get them especially because you knew I was coming?”
“Of course not.” He lit it for her and dropped the packet on the table.
“You’re a terrible liar. I should know. I do it for a living.”
He picked up his glass. “What should we drink to? Lying?”
She laughed.
“AFTERLIGHT?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “And not to victory or country or the King either.”
“In that case,” he said, lifting his glass to hers, “here’s to whisky.”
“Perfect.” And it was. Speyside, she guessed. Not too much peat, just the right amount of smokiness.
“You know,” he said after a few moments, “that’s twice you’ve talked about the British like they were an alien species. And it was obvious Embry was going to say something about you the other day in my office.”
“Is there a question in there?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“But I do, Andy.” She sat back in her chair, regarding him across her glass. He looked back without embarrassment. Sighing, she downed her whisky and let him pour her another. “Embry talks too much,” she said. “Most men do. He was going to say that I am not a British citizen.”
“Really? I thought SOE insisted on such things.”
“They do. Normally. But they took me on as a secretary because of my background, and after that, as I proved useful, it was convenient for them to overlook any paperwork issues. My mother was British, but I was born in Poznań.”
“Poland?”
“Yes. Now. When I was born, it was called Posen, and it was in Germany.”
His head tilted slightly to the side as he watched her in silence. Other than that, he hid his surprise well.
“I was born Sarah Silberbaum,” she said, hesitantly. Even within SOE, few knew it, and only Dennison ever brought it up. Silver Tree, he called her, knowing she hated the translation. “My grandfather was a Polish Jew. My father spent his whole life trying to claim he wasn’t. He made a fortune in timber, lost it all, made another fortune in shipping. I grew up in big houses with servants one year, living on the charity of friends the next. I spoke English with my mother, German with my father, Polish with my friends. My father knew people, you understand? Local magistrates. Politicians. Ambassadors. Which meant I knew them. I think that’s what SOE hoped I could bring them. But much as my father tried to pretend otherwise, once the Nazis came along, a family with a name like ours would not stay friends with politicians for much longer.”
