Red’s casual revelation that he was somehow in collusion with Cedric had made Jane coldly angry. Just when she was making efforts to modify her reactions to Red, she had to face the possibility that he was Cedric’s sidekick. If he asked her to write the woman’s angle on Hess, she’d bloody resign. It was so unjust. There she was, thinking she’d earned the right to be on an investigative team and lapping up the boss’s praise, reciting her pieces like a good girl, when all the time she was way down the ladder. She was certain of one thing: she wasn’t going to let any of them, least of all Red Goodbody, spin her around and make a fool of her. She’d find out what was trumps and then they could all watch out.
Cedric stood waiting for his guests to settle in the room where they had first met. ‘I neglected to tell you at the beginning that Red has done some preliminary work,’ he said without preamble. ‘I should have mentioned it when we looked at the BBC news item on Hess’s ninetieth birthday. Red was on the spot in Berlin, so I asked him to follow up the statements attributed to Hess’s son.’
‘Blaming the Western powers?’ Dick prompted.
‘Yes. And I also caught something on ITN. Their coverage of the birthday was briefer, but even more intriguing. They quoted Wolf Hess as saying that his father was being kept prisoner because he knew too much about British efforts to make peace with Germany in 1941.’
‘British efforts?’
Cedric gave a nod. ‘That’s what they said. I obtained a transcript, just to be sure. This was a new angle so far as I was concerned, and I wanted to know more, so I asked Red to follow it up.’ With a wave, Cedric invited a report from his Berlin correspondent, who had given up his window-seat to squat on the carpet with his back against the wall. Relieved to step out of the spotlight, Cedric picked up his cognac and sat down.
‘You want to know what I got from Wolf Rüdiger?’ Red asked without looking up. ‘He says there were secret peace initiatives between Nazi Germany and Britain. Our people knew in advance that Hess was coming. Hess came over expecting to negotiate with the War Cabinet.’
‘If that’s true, it’s dynamite,’ said Dick. ‘Britain expected Hess?’
Cedric must have been gratified. His team exhibited all the symptoms of shock, incredulity and craving for more information that sell a newspaper in millions. Dick fired a volley of questions at Red. Jane was pink with disbelief at this challenge to the legend of defiant Britain going it alone.
‘Where did Wolf Hess get this information?’ she pressed Red. ‘From his father?’
‘He’s not saying.’
‘Why?’
Red gave a shrug. ‘Prison regulations. Hess still wants out, doesn’t he? If you ask me, it comes from someone else. Hess isn’t given a chance to talk about the war.’
‘So who do you put your money on?’ asked Dick.
‘Maybe someone feeling angry about the way Hess has been treated.’
‘But is the source reliable?’
‘Wolf Rüdiger said he has proof.’
‘Proof? Do you believe him?’
Red was non-committal. ‘It’s a new card to play, isn’t it?’
‘He won’t say any more, off the record, I mean?’
Red shook his head.
‘Cedric, it’s bloody nonsense!’ Jane said in a rush. ‘Britain was in no mood for peace in 1941. It was all-out war, for God’s sake! The country had come through Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. Churchill said victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror –’
‘Don’t quote Churchill at me, Jane. I was around at the time,’ Cedric told her sharply, and then softened it by adding, ‘even though I look so well-preserved. It wasn’t all good old Winnie and knees-ups in the shelters, you know.’
Methodically, Cedric took his scalpel to the legend of a people united in the great war effort. He described the effects of months of night bombing by the Luftwaffe. He spoke of the homeless, refugees and evacuees, of looting and tragedy in overcrowded shelters. He destroyed the myth of a dedicated workforce with the information that over a million working days were lost in industrial stoppages during 1941, and absenteeism doubled in the munitions factories.
Jane was restive. She was being manoeuvred into something alien to her thinking. ‘All that may be true, Cedric, but the nation was solidly behind Churchill. There was no question of doing a deal with Hitler.’
Cedric shook his head. ‘Churchill’s credit wasn’t so high as you make out, my dear. I can tell you from personal experience that those stirring speeches of his were greeted in at least one not untypical home with mild derision. You see, in 1941, he hadn’t yet earned the right to undisputed leadership. He was rather a suspect politician.’
‘People still wondered whether Chamberlain’s way might have been better in the long run?’ suggested Dick.
‘I can tell you that many Conservatives still harboured resentment at the way Chamberlain had been ousted,’ Cedric confirmed. ‘What’s more, we had a series of humiliating defeats abroad. In April of the year we’re talking about, the British forces were swept out of Greece inside three weeks and out of Cyrenaica, by Rommel, in ten days. The Greek campaign was described as “another Winston lunacy” by Churchill’s own military planners.’
‘Hess certainly picked his moment to fly in,’ said Dick.
‘Too true. Three days before the Hess flight, Churchill faced a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, and took some flak from Lloyd George about the conduct of the war. The Commons backed Churchill handsomely, but the rift was there.’
‘Not to mention the House of Lords,’ added Dick.
Jane gave vent to an agitated sigh that said she was surrounded by bigots.
Cedric eyed her keenly, betraying concern. Clearly, he was uneasy at the prospect of one of his team out of sympathy with the others. If she was to be won round, it required a show of sensitivity from someone besides himself. Oddly, he decided that she might respond best to the least sensitive man in the room.
‘Red,’ he asked, ‘do you think I’m wasting everybody’s time?’
The answer from Red was not unhelpful. ‘I’m still here, aren’t I, Cedric?’
Jane pounced at once. ‘But you’re not convinced yet? You’re not really convinced?’ Her eyebrows peaked in anticipation.
Red grinned. ‘I have my reputation to consider, don’t I?’
Jane’s posture relaxed a little. She glanced towards Red, then back to Cedric, and fingered a strand of her blonde hair.
‘The plain truth is that none of us is totally convinced,’ Cedric conceded. ‘I’ve brought you together to investigate the story, to examine it, test it, probe for more evidence. To my knowledge, no other paper in the world has followed it up. OK, it’s forty-three years on, but if there actually was a rebel group in this country doing deals with the Nazis, there must be people still alive who knew what was going on.’
‘This is sensitive ground,’ said Dick. ‘A minefield.’
‘But one hell of a story,’ said Red.
Cedric hoisted himself upright and went round with the brandy.
‘Would you care to give us a scenario?’ Jane suggested to Red, with irony.
‘I don’t mind making a stab at it,’ he offered. ‘As I see it, the Nazis through 1940 and ’41 are definitely looking for a deal with Britain. Hitler has conquered Western Europe and driven the British Army out of France, and now he has his sights set on Russia. Winston Churchill doesn’t want to know about it, but he’s new in the job and they reckon the British won’t go along with all that stuff about blood, toil, tears and sweat. The Nazis get intelligence reports of some right-wing people who would like to ditch Churchill. Hess makes some soundings through his spies and gets encouraging noises back.’
‘For which there’s no evidence whatever,’ put in Jane.
She stung Red into saying bitterly, ‘For Christ’s sake, you asked for a scenario, not a sworn statement.’
‘Who were these people, then?’
‘Big shots. We’re not talking about a few eccentrics with Nazi leanings. These are establishment people. They have to be, else why weren’t they exposed as traitors at the time? Why did MI5 erase them from Hess’s memory?’
As no one responded, Red went on, ‘So Hess devises this amazing plan to fly to Britain and make personal contact with these people behind Churchill’s back. If they agree to ditch Churchill, Germany will offer them peace and guarantees about their property. That, or something like it, is the deal he offers the Duke of Hamilton on 11 May 1941. How am I doing, Cedric?’
‘Carry on.’
‘OK. Up to now, everything is shaping up, and then it all goes wrong. You see, Hess doesn’t know that MI5 intercepted that letter to Hamilton. What can Hamilton do? He tries to get in touch with Sir somebody at the Foreign Office.’
‘Sir Alexander Cadogan,’ said Dick.
‘Thanks. And by pure chance Churchill’s private secretary comes in on the call. So it’s curtains for Rudolf Hess. The whole plot is revealed to Churchill. A massive cover-up is ordered. Hess is handed over to the shrinks at Mytchett Place and soon forgets all about the people he came to meet. And just in case any of it comes back while he’s at Nuremberg, Churchill’s doctor and the Brigadier write that report saying his memory is unreliable.’ Red stopped and folded his arms. ‘Did I leave something out?’
Nobody was emboldened to answer. As he had promised, Red had made a stab, and it was a strong stab, rough, but close enough to the target to impress even Jane. As a journalist, she found the storyline, told in one piece, hard to resist.
So the silence was not a void. It was filled with thoughts of what needed to be done to test the truth of the story. Soon they would be talking assignments.
Dick gave Cedric a long look. ‘But you still have something to tell us, haven’t you?’
Their editor-in-chief declined to answer for a moment, self-indulgently holding back, mindful that his hold on the story had to be relinquished.
‘There is something else, yes,’ he admitted. ‘Someone else. A possible contact.’
‘Who is he?’
‘That’s the first problem. He wouldn’t wish to be identified. Used to work for MI5. Retired some time in the mid-seventies, so he’s pretty old.’
‘Is that the second problem?’ asked Dick.
‘No. The second problem is that he’s a cantankerous old sod who may not tell you a thing if he doesn’t like your face.’
‘So it’s a job for Jane,’ said Red.
It was the nearest thing to a compliment she had heard from him and it infuriated her to realise that it pleased her. She didn’t react.
Cedric shook his head. ‘I think not. He has a chapter in his book on why women and homosexuals can’t be trusted, and it gets up my nose.’
‘He’s in print, then?’ said Dick.
Cedric winced in an exaggerated way. ‘God, no! It’ll never be published. It’s the most turgid stuff imaginable. He offered us the first serial rights. Marched into my office one Monday morning with the manuscript. That’s how I got to know him. It sounded promising. Ex-MI5 agent tells all.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Bugger all. Not a single name worth mentioning. Everyone in it is coyly described as a personage, so you have a personage from the north, a personage of foreign origin, even an ecclesiastical personage. I asked him if he meant a personage from a parsonage, and he didn’t see the joke, didn’t see it at all. The shame of it is that he’s prepared to talk pretty openly about personalities.’
‘Hess?’
Cedric nodded at Dick. ‘He claims to know the inside story.’
‘Did you try to open him up?’
‘It wasn’t the moment,’ answered Cedric. ‘I was mainly concerned to explain why we couldn’t publish his abysmal stuff.’
‘Did he throw a fit?’ asked Red.
‘He expressed himself forcibly, and slammed the door as he left.’
‘How do we follow that?’
Cedric held up his right hand and rubbed the thumb against the forefinger. ‘He has an expensive lifestyle for a civil service pensioner.’
‘So who gets the job?’
Cedric smiled. ‘I’ll tell you in the morning.’