Operation Afterlight, page 20
Durban frowned. “I told you to get us to the nearest divert. How much extra time have we taken to get home instead?”
“I don’t think it will make much difference, boss,” Grant said. “And you’re a busy man. You need to be at work tomorrow. What happens if Sarah Lane calls and you aren’t there?”
“I’m sure Squadron Officer Lane will be just fine if I’m not there, Johnny.”
“She likes you.”
“Turn your oxygen up further,” Durban ordered. “You’re getting delirious.”
Grant nodded. The navigator’s hand, Durban noted, barely had the strength left to work the oxygen controls, but it seemed to help. “This operation doesn’t end tonight, does it, sir?”
“No, Clive,” Durban said. “The job isn’t done.”
“Don’t go without me, will you, boss?”
“We’ll talk about that when you’re back from the sick bay.”
“You’d get lost without me.”
“Ha. We’ll be on the ground in fifteen minutes, and you’ll be in an ambulance a minute after that. Save your strength for chatting up those nurses.”
Grant fell silent for a few seconds. Durban felt the man’s gaze on him.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Johnny?”
“Who is Clive?”
Durban shook his head to try to clear the fog from his mind. He hadn’t realised how tired he was. Not just from tonight. From everything. “Clive Lampeter. He was my navigator before I came to 465.”
“You lost him in the crash?”
“How do you know about the crash?”
Grant let his head rest back against his seat. “The boys were talking. Said you were lucky to walk away. That you should still be in the hospital.”
“Rubbish.” Durban checked the time and slowly pushed forward on the controls to begin their descent. Invisible through the cloud, the restless grey waters of the Channel lurked below, with the Norfolk coast tantalisingly close beyond. “I survived, didn’t I?” He paused, letting his voice drop to a whisper, as if it was still possible to keep the truth concealed, like it might somehow change it. “Clive didn’t.”
It would hardly have mattered if he’d shouted it. Grant’s eyes were closed, his mouth hanging open, his body bouncing limply as the Mosquito hit a pocket of turbulence.
“Johnny!”
Nothing.
Gripping the controls, Durban slammed the throttles all the way forward. The starboard engine whined in protest, a puff of smoke bursting from the glowing exhaust. Loyal to the end, the Mosquito surged forward, helped by a dive to gain yet more speed. A strip of scrubby beach flashed beneath him, the sand and fenlands beyond faintly visible in the first stirrings of the rising sun behind him. He was barely conscious of making the radio call to the tower at Charney Breach, warning them of his impending emergency landing, exhorting them to have an ambulance standing by. AFTERLIGHT, Götterdämmerung, even Sarah Lane, all faded away, until nothing remained but the urgent need to not fail Johnny Grant the way he had failed Clive Lampeter.
If it wasn’t already too late.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
London, 5 April
“Hurry and take your seats, gentlemen.” Lord Wolmer stared down the length of the polished tabletop, looking first at Stahl, then across the protective width of the table. The seating plan had not been an accident. “I trust, Miss Lane, that you will conduct yourself with more decorum today?”
“This is a room full of His Majesty’s finest intelligence professionals, Top,” Sir David Leslie said before Lane could respond. “I would recommend that you trust as little as possible.”
A ripple of laughter passed around the conference room, the comment enough to even draw a half-smile from the Minister of Economic Warfare. Sir David was well liked, and the tension in the room had needed that little outlet. For six years, this mismatched group of uniformed services, foreign office, and civilian intelligence agencies had tried to put aside their own rivalries to focus on the common goal of defeating Hitler. Now, with victory seemingly a formality, all those rivalries had resurfaced in an unseemly scrabble for resources and influence in the new, post-war world.
But this war wasn’t over yet.
Gradually, the amused hubbub faded. Only two men hadn’t smiled. One was the civilian from the unidentified agency, his face still half concealed beneath the shadows of his hat. Lane guessed he never smiled. The other man was Stahl, his eyes dark pools beneath the sharp bone of his brow. Empty. Only the occasional blink betrayed any life in him at all.
As for Lane, she had never felt less like smiling.
Air Vice Marshal Sir Basil Embry cleared his throat. He was one of several men strategically placed between her and the German. Just in case. His dark blue uniform made Lane think of Durban, and that thought brought with it a stab of irritation. Not at Andy, of course. It wasn’t his fault that memories of his face distracted her. She wished he was here now, if only so that she could have a more recent memory to replace the look of shock on his face the last time she had seen it. Over two weeks ago now. The night she had stormed out of his office.
Before Uelzen. Before a shell hit his aircraft. Before poor Grant…
At a nod from Lord Wolmer, Embry began his briefing. The raid on Uelzen had been a complete success, he told them. Photo reconnaissance had proved that the modified aircraft had been destroyed by fire. “You’ll be pleased to hear, sir,” the AVM wrapped up, “that all our aircraft returned to England, albeit with three badly damaged and several men wounded.”
Lord Wolmer made an impatient gesture with his hand. “What about their pilots?”
“Immolated,” the man in the hat said.
Embry took a few seconds as if trying to recall what that word meant, then nodded. “No survivors, my Lord.”
“That’s decent news at least,” the Minister grumbled. “Not quite enough to make up for the other… well, we’ll get to that. Miss Lane, you have an update for the group?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She adjusted the papers on the table in front of her. This time she had come prepared, wary of any further reliance on Dennison.
The Colonel hadn’t even met her eyes when she had entered the room. He had merely shrunk tiredly back in his chair. Now he sat playing with his pen, until he saw her watching and hastily stuffed it in his jacket with a guilty look at Stahl.
“As you know, gentlemen,” Lane began, dismissing Dennison from her mind, “we recently traced the Götterdämmerung program to a laboratory just outside Königsberg, in East Prussia. It is likely that development there has been ongoing since at least the autumn of last year.”
“The Soviets have got that place sewn up like a Christmas goose,” the Brigadier grumbled from across the table. “They already have the rest of East Prussia under their control, and right now they have the Red Army artillery working day and night to pound Königsberg to hell.”
“You mean what’s left of it,” Embry said. “Our heavies made a right old mess of the place back in August, too. Is the city completely cut off?”
“Completely,” the Brigadier assured him.
“It’s not,” Lane said. “Sir.”
Ignoring the outraged look on the Brigadier’s face, she rose and walked to the huge, floor-to-ceiling map of Europe that dominated one side of the room. A sliver of spring morning grey snuck through the blinds on the opposite side, casting a weak shadow from her hand as she pointed. “The Russians have overrun most of the region, but the Germans have fought hard to keep this land bridge open.” She ran her fingertip along the coast, down the narrow spit of land that separated the Vistula Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. “Here,” she said. “The port of Pillau. My sources say that a few hundred thousand refugees have been herded onto ships here and moved to central and western Germany.”
“Anything to escape the Soviets,” Stahl said softly.
Irritated, she stared at him. He didn’t meet her eyes. Just continued to stare into space.
“About three weeks ago,” she continued, “an SS transport company in Pillau received orders to make two trips from the port to the site of the Königsberg laboratory. They departed Pillau empty and returned full.”
“That could be anything,” the Brigadier sniffed. “It doesn’t have to be Götterdämmerung. For all you know, Miss Lane, they are moving unwanted furniture or extra toilet paper.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Quite so, sir,” Lane said, ignoring his deliberate slight of the rank she bore on her RAF uniform. “But, right now, German army transportation is down to horses and carts. Even tank crews are begging for petrol. And yet this particular SS unit had permission to draw all the fuel they needed.”
“Damned important toilet paper,” someone muttered. No one laughed.
“They moved Götterdämmerung to Pillau,” Lane said. “For all we know, they already loaded it onto a ship.”
“No.” Stahl shook his head. “It is not ready yet.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the Baltic is not deep enough to hold the corpses if it was.”
“Does it matter?” The Brigadier sneered at the German, then gave Lane a withering look of contempt. “In a few days, a week or two at most, the Russians will overrun Pillau and everything in it. Even if the Huns get the stuff onto a ship, we’ve destroyed their special planes. I think it’s fair to say that our Soviet friends are about to solve our problem for us.”
“No.” The man in the hat tapped his finger once on the table. A sudden silence descended on the room. “We’ve only compounded one problem with another.” He turned slowly to look at Lord Wolmer, the tilting of his head revealing more of the emotionless face beneath the hat’s brim.
To Lane’s shock, the Minister of Economic Warfare coloured. He made a movement in his seat that was as close to squirming as she could have imagined from him. “Don’t give me that look, Quiet.”
“Top,” Sir David Petrie said, the single word sounding more an admonishment than an affectionate nickname, “what did you do?”
“What did you expect me to do, eh?” Lord Wolmer sat upright in his chair, arms folded, chin thrust out in pugnacious defiance. “You’ve all spent weeks telling me how dangerous this thing is, how we must stop it at all costs. So, I made a call to some people who could take care of it for us.”
“You told the Soviets.” Stahl half-rose from his chair, his hands gripping the table. Lane saw his dead-eyed placidity disappear, and a light come to the assassin’s eyes. Not a healthy light. Not life. Just an unreasoning animal instinct.
He was terrified.
What would it take to terrify a man like Stahl?
“Top?” Sir David’s voice broke the sudden silence. “Is this true?”
“Don’t be naïve, David,” Lord Wolmer sneered. “Not one of you could tell me where it was, or how to destroy it, could you? Besides, they are supposed to be our bloody Allies.”
The man in the hat kept his hooded gaze fixed on the Minister. “Are they?”
“Yes,” Lord Wolmer snapped. “They are. I don’t trust Soviet intentions for eastern Europe any more than you do, Quentin, but unlike you and Winston, I’m content to wait for one war to end before I start fighting the next.”
It didn’t surprise Lane that no one had much to add to that. The military men in the room seemed deeply uncomfortable, poised in their seats, hoping to be dismissed. Sir David’s mouth twitched, betraying thoughts that found no spoken form. The man in the hat returned to his contemplation of the table’s surface.
Her eyes met Stahl’s. The fear remained, but now there was something else. An urgent pleading.
“Sir?” The word escaped her lips before she could rein it in.
Lord Wolmer gave an irritated sigh. “What?”
“Were the Russians able to destroy the Königsberg site before that SS company arrived?”
“We passed them the information on Götterdämmerung under the strictest confidence and with the guarantee that they would pulverise the site with artillery as soon as possible.” The Minister paused. “I’m afraid the guarantee proved rather limited.”
“You mean they accepted your invitation to take it for themselves?”
“Careful, woman. I’m growing tired of your impertinence.”
“For God’s sake, Top,” Sir David said wearily, “this is far more important than your ego. Answer the question.”
“Yes, David. They tried to take it. And they were too bloody late.”
“They will try again,” Stahl intoned. “They know it exists now.”
Something in his tone made Lane start and turn to stare at him again.
He returned her gaze. How many of her people had looked into those cold, hateful blue eyes as he came for them, and seen only their death? Even as she thought it, though, her insides lurched and squirmed at the memory of what he had told Andy and her that night in the Wing Commander’s office. Mercy, he had called it. Killing them to save them.
She swallowed. He still pulled the trigger. The why of it changed nothing.
Except everything.
The blood of her agents was still on Stahl’s hands. But now that meant something different.
Stahl blinked. His angular cheekbones dipped as his head twitched in the slightest of nods, and understanding flooded through her.
“You know,” Lane said, “don’t you? You know what Götterdämmerung is.”
“I suspected. Now I know. Because of your work.”
“What?” Lord Wolmer rose from his chair. Disbelief and outrage competed to dominate his expression. “You should have told us a long time ago.”
“Wrong,” Stahl said. “You have already proved you cannot be trusted. I tell you now only because, once you know the truth, you will do anything to stop it.”
“The truth,” the Brigadier snorted. “I’ve been fighting Germans since I was eighteen years old, and I haven’t meant a single one I would trust.”
“Right now, sir,” Lane said, “he’s the only man here I do trust.”
Outraged grumbles filled the air. Embry frowned. The Brigadier’s face turned bright red, a vein springing to pulsing prominence at his temple. Colonel Dennison paled and shrank back, as if to distance himself as far as possible from the woman he had been stupid enough to invite before this august group.
A hint of a smile flickered on the face of the man in the hat.
“Silence, you bloody fools,” Sir David shouted. “The only people I want to hear for the next five minutes are Stahl and Lane.”
“David,” Lord Wolmer warned, “this is my meeting.”
“That silence includes you, Top. Go on, Stahl.”
The German took a breath, perhaps the first in a minute or more. Slowly releasing his fingers from their death grip on the table, he rose to his full height and looked down the length of the table, his icy gaze passing over each man.
Such arrogance, Lane thought. This was the Stahl she knew, the man who had haunted her nightmares for two long years. Like a venomous snake beholding vermin. And just like a snake, he could kill any of them without blinking.
Then he turned to her, and his eyes softened. He walked towards her, past men who sat as still as wax effigies, his feet making no noise, as if he was gliding over the floor. Closer. When he spoke, she knew he was speaking to her alone.
“My farmer friends from Staverton St. Mary could tell you about Coxiellosis,” he said. He stood barely a foot in front of her now. Close enough that she could feel the touch of his breath on her face. “Maybe they know it better as Q Fever. It is a disease of sheep and cattle. When it strikes, you must quarantine the herd. Stop it spreading. Sometimes it makes farmers sick, but they rarely die. In nature, it does not kill. That is where Götterdämmerung is different.”
“They have made it worse?” She already knew the answer.
“Better,” Stahl corrected. “Better at reproducing. Better at killing. Somehow, they have made it not just possible, but simple to spread between two people. Some it will kill in days, but others will make it weeks before they feel the symptoms. By then, they may have passed it to a hundred others. No quarantine can stop that.”
“Don’t be so sure, Stahl,” Sir David said. “We’ve already prevented the aircraft from being able to reach us. I’m sure the Royal Navy can take care of any ships—”
“You do not understand, do you?” Stahl cut him short. He did not take his eyes from Lane’s. “This is not about an attack on your precious England. It is not a last attempt to steal a victory.”
“Hitler’s going to release it on his own people,” Lane said. “Isn’t he?”
Stahl nodded. “One final atrocity. A judgement on the German Volk for failing him.”
Lane drew a shuddering breath.
It all made sense now. Years of intelligence reporting. Months of poring over agent reports. Murdered prisoners. Ovens. The lab outside Hildesheim, the special bombers that had no hope of surviving outside German airspace. Götterdämmerung. The Twilight of the Gods.
It all came together now, so much worse than she could ever have imagined.
A chuckle broke the silence.
“I’m not certain, Brigadier,” Sir David Petrie said, “that I see much cause for mirth.”
“Well, I bloody do,” the soldier said, mirth bubbling in his eyes. “Hitler’s going to wipe out half of Germany and save the British Army a fortune in shells and bullets. Hell, if he does a good enough job, we might not need to go a third round with them in another twenty years!”
“Millions of my people will die,” Stahl said. “And yet you laugh.”
She knew the look in his eyes. The snake was back. The Brigadier saw it, too, his chuckles abruptly fading to nothing. Now, at last, the others in the room saw what she had always seen. SS Obersturmbannführer Jan Stahl. The assassin. The killer without equal.
Stahl’s hand reached towards his pocket. Without thinking, she reached for his arm. Her fingers closed on corded muscle and bone. No soft flesh. No hint of warmth. She almost recoiled.
