Operation Afterlight, page 22
Little wonder that the gate guard had recognised her. She had been here so many times. Too many times.
“Are you coming, Sarah?” If her hesitation embarrassed Anders, he kept it to himself. No emotion at all. She knew he had been here just as many times as her, but if the experience had let any demons loose on his soul, his face gave no sign.
“What are his chances, Anders?”
Anders grinned. “Any other man, I’d say the chances of successfully pulling this off were zero. Stahl? I’d give him ten percent. Twenty, if he’s lucky. He’s good, Sarah. Almost as good as me.”
“I meant of surviving,” she said.
The grin became a frown. “I don’t understand the question.”
Pull it together, she told herself. Move. Take control. Do your job, just like every other time.
This is what you do.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Major,” she sniffed, brushing past him and waiting impatiently for him to close the door before hitting the light switch. With a low hum and a click, the two electric bulbs sprang to life, illuminating the exposed brick interior with its thick wooden double shelves and the exposed beams of the high ceiling.
Stahl stood in the centre of the room, motionless as a statue and with the face to match.
“Ok.” It amazed her how business-like she could make her voice sound despite the roiling chaos in her stomach. She’d always been able to do that in this place. Her agents were nervous enough already, she had told herself; perhaps her feigned confidence might give them confidence for real. She had never had the chance to ask any of them if it worked. “Let’s get you ready, Stahl.”
SOE had already laid the equipment she had requested out on the shelves, half a dozen items next to a large kitbag. She went straight to it, beckoning him to follow and then tapping her fingers on the shelf until he did so.
“Walther P38,” she said, pointing to the pistol that lay on the counter next to four magazines. She did not pass the weapon to him, nor even touch it. “Standard SS issue.”
“I know,” Stahl said. He lifted the pistol, turning it one way, then the other, examining it. Somehow, it seemed to complete him, like he’d been less than whole without it. Satisfied, he put it down again and waited, his eyes on the counter or the wall, anywhere but her.
She swallowed. “Your papers,” she said, handing him a leather file folder.
He flicked through them. “Obersturmbannführer Karl-Heinz Plendl,” he read. “Will they pass?”
“They’re good, Jan,” Anders said. “We got the originals from a dead man in Holland last week, and our best forgers have worked on them. Unless documents issued in East Prussia are different, you’ll be fine.”
He nodded. “Uniform?”
“In the holdall,” Lane said, pointing. “SS field uniform, plus a spare set. Tailored for you.”
“He’ll need a radio, too,” Anders said. “To contact us when he locates the target building.”
Lane shook her head. “Too obvious. It will be a dead giveaway if a patrol stops him. Besides, he won’t be able to reach England from East Prussia. The range is too far.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I’ve written callsigns and frequency details of the British Embassy in Stockholm for you. Learn them, then destroy the paper. Someone will monitor at all times. They will pass your message on, but you will need to gain access to a radio.”
An RAF sergeant knocked on the door. Lane vaguely recognised him from previous visits. “Is there a Major Anders here? Telephone call for you in the Ops Room.”
“Probably Quiet checking up on me,” Anders said. “I’ll only be a minute. Don’t leave without saying goodbye, Jan.” He winked and followed the NCO from the room, leaving Lane and Stahl alone with the empty silence of the barn.
Stahl sighed, slipped off his jacket, and unbuttoned his shirt.
“There’s a place inside you can change.”
“I would rather have it over with,” he said. His breath hung in the unheated air of the barn as he slipped off the shirt, but he gave no signs of noticing the cold. The skin of his torso was pale, flesh pulled too tight over taut muscle and the sharp ridges of his ribs.
No scars that she could see, nor any markings at all, including under the arms. “No blood group tattoo.”
“You are thinking of the Waffen SS.” He reached for the folded uniform without looking at her. “They have their blood type tattooed for the medics in case they suffer wounds in combat. That is not my role.”
“Too dangerous? But of course, you would choose easier prey.” She regretted her mocking tone as soon as she spoke. Whatever Stahl had done, she had to see past it now. He was working with her now. More than that, his role was critical. If Götterdämmerung was to be stopped…
“My choice had nothing to do with it,” Stahl said. “You do not waste a scalpel blade on cutting down a tree. The SS trained me for efficiency. A precision tool for specialised targets.”
But even if they were on the same side now, that couldn’t clean his slate altogether. Nothing could. “Like unarmed women?” The words tore their way free of her lips.
“Sometimes,” he said. He pulled on a new uniform shirt, his attention on the buttons as he fastened them with slender fingers. “Unarmed men, too. Armed targets increase the chance of failure. I was too good to take such risks.” His voice echoed in the room, as cold as the brick walls.
So many times, she had wondered how men like Stahl could do the things they did and remain sane. It was obvious, watching him, hearing the ice in his words. There was no feeling. This wasn’t a man at all. It was as he said. A precision tool, executing his mission without compunction, without the weakness of emotion to cloud his actions or delay the simple pull of a finger on a trigger.
And yet, she had seen the horror in his eyes in Durban’s office. Heard the anguish in his voice when he had talked of Hildesheim and what he had seen in the aerial photographs. The same photographs she had looked at and yet thought only of a job well done.
She turned away as he unbuckled his trousers, letting her eyes play over the well-remembered walls and shelves. This place had become so familiar to her these last few years. The drive down. The briefings. The delay for the aircraft to arrive, interminably long when waiting for one to make a dawn landing from France with a returning agent safely onboard, yet all too brief when sending her people into the darkness. Most familiar of all was this place, this barn, this gateway between safety and the nightmares of Occupied Europe. So many times, she had recounted the same last warnings, handing out weapons and equipment and advice in equal measure, while the agent about to depart for the first, second, possibly last time, stood and listened and pretended to be brave.
No, she corrected herself, feeling her teeth grind and her fingernails digging into her palms. They were brave. It was she who was the coward, working in her warm office, saying goodbye and then heading back to London while, time after time, they never came back at all.
Even now, it was Stahl who was going. Not her. Never her.
A gentle cough behind her. She sniffed, took a sharp breath and the briefest indulgent moment to compose herself, and turned.
“How do I look?”
SS Obersturmbannführer Jan Stahl had dressed, and despite the familiar surroundings and the comfort of knowing she was in the heart of England, surrounded by British soldiers, Lane still had to restrain a sudden, suffocating panic. “Like the devil,” she whispered.
“Good.” Stahl adjusted the collar. Lane’s stomach lurched as she watched his fingers brush against the four squares and two horizontal bars of his rank on one side, the stylised lightning bolts on the other. The stylised runes of the SS. To her eyes, the ultimate symbol of hatred, more so than the Swastika itself. Many ordinary Germans had no choice which flag they fought under.
The men of the SS chose their own flag.
“You picked the size perfectly,” Stahl said.
“You wear it well.”
He smiled, a thin veneer of faked amusement beneath eyes deep with sorrow. “Perhaps. Or perhaps it wears me.”
Enough, she told herself. Time was ticking. Out in the darkness beyond the walls, she heard a muffled cough and a low roar. An aero engine starting. As always, the sound brought a wave of nausea with it. “You’ll be flying in on a No. 161 Squadron Lockheed Hudson,” she said. “We’ve cleared a flight path for you across France and Switzerland. Your drop zone is fifty miles inside Bavaria, outside a small town called Oberammergau.”
“I selected the location myself,” Stahl reminded her gently.
“Of course. Sorry, Jan.” Odd, that his first name should slip from her lips now. “You are sure you can find transportation from there to northern Germany?”
“That will be easy,” he said. “SS rank still means something. The tough part is getting onto a ship into Pillau.”
“If the Soviets haven’t taken the city.”
“If they have,” he said softly, “it is already over.”
He turned and took the pistol from the shelf, sliding it easily into the holster at his waist and securing it in place. She watched as he smoothly went through his final preparations, packing the second set of uniform into a holdall, placing the forged papers inside his field jacket. But for the hateful uniform, he could have been any of her agents. Just like them, he gave no overt sign of fear.
And, just like them, she would probably never see him again.
The door swung open, the cool night breeze bringing the sound of Twin Wasp radial engines.
“Ah, Anders,” she said. “Right when you’re needed, as always. Do you know where the parachutes are?” The question faded from her mind as she saw the look on his face.
“Stahl?”
The German turned. “I am ready, Anders. Do not tell me there is a change of plan.”
The Dane shook his head. “That was London. We just got word from Germany. There’s a capture or kill order out for you for treason. Issued by Himmler himself.”
“I am honoured that Heinrich would take the time,” Stahl said.
A sudden tightness descended on her chest, setting her innards quivering. “Anders, if the SS are hunting for him…”
“Sarah, the Reich is in chaos. Russian tanks are closing on Berlin, and the SS is putting out fires from the Oder to the Rhine. They won’t have time to look for defectors, and even if they did, why would they think he would come back to Germany? There is every chance he makes it through.”
“He’s right,” Stahl said. “It changes nothing. Where are the parachutes?”
“Jan, there’s something else.” Anders hesitated, his eyes briefly flickering back to Lane. “They executed Wilhelm Canaris today at Flossenbürg concentration camp. Our source said—”
Stahl held up one hand to cut him off. Motionless, he drew in a single breath that hissed and rattled in his throat. For a second, the reptilian eyes closed.
A second.
No more.
With machine-like efficiency, the eyes clicked open. “My parachute, Anders?”
Major Anders nodded. “On the aircraft. It’s ready when you are.”
“Then let us go,” Stahl said.
She stopped him on the way to the door. She didn’t mean to. Just found herself moving to cut him off. “Jan,” she began, voice halting as she realised she had nothing else to say.
“Selbstmitleid,” he said, softly.
She repeated the word. “Self-pity?”
“Andrew Durban asked me what the German word for melodrama is. I think this is what he was really asking. Tell him for me, please?”
“Of course,” she mumbled.
He stepped around her, then halted and leaned close to her ear. Even now, despite everything, she flinched. “Sarah,” he said, pretending not to notice, “tell Durban that when the time comes and I show him the building, don’t hesitate.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And don’t miss.”
“He won’t.”
Anders called for Stahl again, and in another second he was gone, out into the night and the roaring of the waiting Hudson.
Lane didn’t follow. She leaned back against the brickwork, ignoring the cold that seeped through her fur-lined leather flying jacket. There she stood, her mind as empty as her whole body felt, until the Hudson’s engines reached a crescendo and quickly faded away into nothing. The sound made her think of Andy, but not of his face or the way he looked at her and how much she missed him. It made her think of their differences. Andy always needed to see his aircraft come home. But she could never watch her agents leave.
Not even this last one.
Chapter Thirty-One
Norfolk, 10 April
Durban pushed the paper away and let his father’s pen drop onto the desk.
This should have been the easiest letter of them all to write. No research into personnel files needed, no handwringing over how best to address it or what flowery, misleading phrases to use to soften the blow. And yet, instead, it continued to elude him. He had got no further than the addressee line. The delights of the spring morning outside provided no inspiration, nor could the sunlight streaming through his office window do anything to dispel the gloom that seemed to hang within it.
A knock at the door. Two knocks, then one, oddly tremulous, barely audible above the sound of a Mosquito engine test outside Hangar Six, half a mile away. “What is it, Bony?”
“Signal from HQ, sir,” Flight Lieutenant Wright said.
“Urgent?”
“Not marked so, sir.”
“Put it with the others.” Durban made a vague motion towards his growing to-do pile, which was topped as usual with a noise complaint from Matlock’s Farm.
Wright hesitated.
“Well? Put it there and bugger off, will you?”
The Operations Officer blanched.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Durban said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry, Bony.”
“Rough night, sir?”
“Rough month. Rough war, if I’m honest.”
“Have you heard anything from Sarah Lane, sir?”
“Squadron Officer Lane only contacts us when she needs to,” Durban said firmly. “Which, if we’re very lucky, will be never. What can I do for you?”
“Well, sir,” Wright said, “a few weeks ago you remarked you were expecting something like this, and that I was to bring it straight to you if it arrived.”
Durban frowned. Puzzled, he reached out and took the folded paper, flipping it open and angling it for better sunlight.
“It’s a request for volunteers, sir,” Bony said. “For service in the Far East.”
“I can read,” Durban snapped. He scanned it all the way to the end, repeated the process, marvelled that rereading did not make it any better. His gaze lingering on the paper, he handed it back. “The bastards. The absolute bastards.”
“Sir?”
Anger flooded through him. Too much to remain polite. Too much to stay seated. The desk shook as he all but leapt to his feet, the wastepaper basket by his desk flying across the room, barely missing Bony before crashing against the metal of his filing cabinet. Balled up pieces of paper scattered across the cheap carpet, silent testament to days of failures to finish a single letter.
Outside in the corridor, two young airmen stood open-mouthed, almost trembling, their desire to be anywhere else plain on their faces. He should have felt embarrassment, Durban knew, at the loss of control itself, not just being caught in the act. Instead, he gave them a hard stare and slammed the office door. “Haven’t they done enough?”
Bony’s mouth twitched as he scrambled to find words. “Who, sir?”
“The boys,” Durban grated. “Kittens. Barton. Even Finnegan, for Christ’s sake.” He motioned beyond the window. “There are men and women out there who have been doing this since 1939. Most of the ones who started the war are already gone, buried over here if their families were lucky, scattered in bloody little pieces over Germany if they weren’t. Did you ever do the maths, Bony?”
“I—”
“Four percent loss rates for Bomber Command. Thirty missions for a first tourist crew. That’s a less than thirty percent chance of surviving if you only do one tour, but who does? You finish your tour, you go off to do an instructor tour teaching the next bunch of poor saps who are going to get butchered over Germany, and what happens?” He remembered it well. Sensed the sweat on his neck, felt his hands tremble the way they had then. “You feel the guilt. At first you think you’ve done your bit and you’ll get over it, but it keeps gnawing away. Night after night. Gets so you can’t sleep. You know they are going to want you to do a second tour soon enough, but it doesn’t matter. You must go now. Because if it isn’t you, it will be someone else taking it in the neck in your place.”
Damn, he wanted a drink. Instead, he paced the length of the room. He left the door clear, giving Bony an out, knowing the younger man wouldn’t dream of using it without permission. “You’ve already used up every bit of God-given fortune to survive one tour. Now they’ve brought you back for another. Second tour is twenty ops. Fifty total. Less than thirteen percent make it through two tours.”
“You’ve done four tours, sir?”
“It’s not about me,” Durban said, angry at the interruption, yet glad for it. “I’m talking about everyone. Anyone who ever flew a sortie or dodged a German bullet. Because believe me, this war doesn’t care how much time you’ve put in. I’ve seen incompetent pilots who made it through an entire tour without a scare, and I’ve seen brilliant aviators who bought it on their first trip over the Channel. This war has a thousand ways to kill you. Most of them you can’t control, and you’ll see none of them coming.”
Bony lowered his eyes. “We’ve all lost friends.”
Durban ran his hand through his hair, letting his fingers close so tightly that they tugged at the roots. The pain made his eyes water, but he welcomed it anyway. A reminder that he, at least, was still alive. Blinking, he pointed to the signal in Bony’s hand. “How many copies do you have of that?”
