On the same afternoon that Red had his meeting with Cal and Heidrun at Charlottenburg, important things happened in England that transformed the Hess investigation.
The task of tracing the legless ex-pilot, Warrant-Officer Perry, was right up Dick Garrick’s street. He had spent the morning putting out requests for information to as many organizations as he could reach on a Sunday. He had started with the RAF Association and the British Legion. An Air Commodore (retired) was given an urgent message at 9.45 on Banstead golf course and abandoned the fifteenth hole to drive to London and consult an Air Ministry list of disabled pensioners. He reported at 11.50 that Warrant-Officer Perry had received regular payments from the RAF Benevolent Fund until 1977. He had lived in Motspur Park, Surrey, and supplemented his pension by working at home, wrapping cutlery in plastic for a catering firm who supplied British Airways passenger flights. His wife had died that year, and he had notified the Trustees that his circumstances had altered, and he no longer needed assistance. He had moved from Motspur Park, and the RAF had lost touch with him.
A phone call to the house was unproductive. It had changed owners three times since the Perrys had left, and none of the neighbours could help. The catering firm, too, reported that they knew nothing of Warrant-Officer Perry’s present whereabouts.
The trail went cold. At the back of Dick’s mind was the stark possibility that Perry was dead by now. The RAF records showed that he would be eighty-three if he had lived this long.
‘Where else can we try?’ asked Jane, who had sat with him by the phone for the whole of the morning.
‘Pensions and Social Security,’ said Dick, ‘but not until tomorrow when the offices are open again, and God knows how long it will take to trace him in their records. It might save us time tomorrow if we check the Death Registrations.’
‘We’ve got to assume he’s alive.’
‘True.’
‘Medical records? He must have had a doctor in Motspur Park. The doctor must have known him well. He would remember an amputee.’
Dick clicked his fingers. ‘Better than that, the limb-fitting centre at Roehampton. He must have gone there for artificial legs. It’s the only place this side of London. They must keep up-to-date records.’
He got on the phone again. A few minutes later, he lifted his thumb to Jane. ‘Found him! He’s alive and well and living on Richmond Hill at the Star and Garter home for disabled ex-servicemen.’
They were there within the hour, presenting themselves to a sister who told them how pleased she was that they had come. ‘I can’t remember when he last had a visitor, and he’s such a darling. I wheeled him out onto the terrace.’
‘How’s his mental state?’ asked Dick.
‘I won’t answer for it if you give him too much of that,’ said the sister, eyeing the bottle of scotch in Dick’s hand. ‘In the normal course of events, he’s very sharp for a man of his age. Would you like to come this way?’
Warrant-Officer Perry was in a wheelchair, looking down on the sinuous sweep of the Thames. He appeared so frail under his blanket that Jane hesitated to shake his hand, but he extended it, bony and heavily pigmented with liver spots, and gripped hers surprisingly hard. Under his straw hat, his eyes were misty brown behind glasses that magnified them strongly. Receding gums had given him the nutcracker look of old age, but he kept up appearances with an RAF tie.
Once the introductions were over, and the whisky stowed away under the blanket, Dick explained that he wanted to talk about the war.
‘You can call me Frank if you like,’ said the old man.
‘Fine. This is Jane and I’m Dick,’ he said, for the second time. ‘As I said, I’m interested in what you did in the war.’
Frank said, ‘I appreciate the hard stuff. Good of you to bring it.’
‘I believe you were a pilot, Frank.’
‘I’ll keep it in my cupboard. It’s not the others I don’t trust. It’s the nurses.’
Jane said quietly to Dick, ‘Don’t rush him. He’ll tell us in his own time.’
‘I was in the RAF,’ said Frank. ‘We’re in a minority here. The place is full of the army. I did plenty of flying until I was bombed out in 1944 and lost my legs. Direct hit on my house in Raynes Park. One of them VIs. Buzzbombs, we called them. I was down the Anderson shelter in the garden, but we caught the blast, you see. The door blew in and the whole damn thing fell in on us. The wife got out with just a few scratches, but I was trapped. They had to take one of my legs while I was lying there. The other was no good either. I didn’t know much about it.’
Having got his story over, Frank said, ‘Got a cigarette?’
Jane produced one from her bag and helped him to light it. She said, ‘What were you flying, Frank?’
‘Ansons mostly. You wouldn’t have heard of them. I don’t mind betting you’ve heard of Spitfires and Hurricanes, though. I wasn’t one of them glory boys in the Battle of Britain. I was ferrying people about in my old bus.’
‘VIPs?’
‘All sorts.’
‘It was important work, though,’ ventured Dick.
Frank Perry drew thoughtfully on the cigarette. ‘Who sent you here? You must have had the dickens of a job to find me.’
‘You wouldn’t know his name,’ Dick started to explain.
‘D’you mind?’ said Frank quite sharply. ‘I may look old to you, but I haven’t lost my faculties. I can remember plenty of people I knew in the war. Flight Sergeant Whittingham. He was a card.’ It was the beginning of a rambling catalogue of RAF personnel, a roll-call of everyone still billeted in Frank Perry’s memory. As it was plainly a point of self-esteem that he remembered so many, it was difficult to cut him off without offence. Probably he recited this list by the hour to anyone in the home who would listen, and probably no one would.
The question in Dick’s mind was whether the old man’s memory would recall anything it had not included in the recitative. He exchanged a look with Jane, and broke into the monologue: ‘Did you ever make a flight to Dublin?’
Frank Perry carried on for a moment as if he had not heard, and then asked, ‘Where?’
‘Dublin. Did you fly on missions to Dublin?’
There was a long hesitation. ‘Why do you ask me that?’
Dick sighed, and Jane took over. ‘It could be important to us. We work on a newspaper.’
The old man chuckled. ‘And you come to me for news? Young lady, the only news I ever get is who gets out on the terrace first in the morning. I gave up reading the papers when my eyes got bad.’
‘People want to know what really happened in the war,’ persisted Jane. ‘We were told that you flew on several secret missions.’
‘Who told you?’
‘A former MI5 officer.’
‘MI5 told you?’
‘That’s how we heard about you,’ said Dick.
Warrant-Officer Perry stared down at the Thames Valley as if he had never seen it before. ‘They told me to keep my mouth shut. Why do they send you to see me if I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut?’
Jane was about to speak, but Dick mouthed a negative and shook his head slightly. The crucial question had just been put. Its impact would be greater if it had an unrestricted drop.
Frank Perry made up his mind. ‘I suppose it’s not important any more. In my day, if you made a promise, you kept it, and I have until now. I’d almost forgotten about it. But if those secret service Johnnies have changed their minds, I suppose there’s no harm in it any more. Yes, I’ll tell you about my trips to Dublin. The first one was in 1940, before the Battle of Britain, but not long before.’
‘July?’ suggested Dick.
‘About then. I was based at Uxbridge. One morning, the CO calls me into his office and leaves me there with two blokes in civvies. I didn’t know it at the time, but they must have been secret service. They give me a lot of stuff about top security and then brief me for a flight to Dublin. I have to pick up a party of four civilians at the airport and fly them to Kidlington. That’s Oxfordshire.’
‘We know,’ said Dick.
‘They kept telling me it was top secret, dangerous talk costs lives and all that, and even my CO didn’t know where I was going. I was a steady sort of bloke and I think they picked me out for this one. Anyway, I flew into Dublin and found myself being shunted out to the edge of the airfield, a mile away from the main buildings. There was one small hangar there, for private planes. I refuelled and had a cuppa, and I remember I had to pee against the hangar wall, begging your pardon, miss.’
Jane smiled. ‘We’ve all had moments like that.’
‘Yes, well, in no time at all a big black car drives out to the hangar, and four men get out. One is English, your civil servant type, very nobby, and the others are foreigners.’
‘Germans,’ said Dick.
‘As I discovered,’ Frank Perry confirmed. ‘Well, the Englishman gets them aboard and tells me to take off. I ferry them over the Irish Sea and down to Kidlington using the flight path MI5 had given me. When we land, a staff-car comes out to the runway to meet them, and off they go. My orders are to make the return trip next morning, and that’s what I done.’
‘Just the once?’ asked Dick.
‘No, six times.’
‘Six?’
‘That’s what I said. In the end it was getting as regular as a twenty-seven bus.’
‘Can you remember any of the dates?’
‘I can, as a matter of fact. The second trip was on my birthday 18 September 1940. There was another one about three weeks later, and then nothing until the middle of March. Then it got busy. One in April and one in May. Then it stopped.’
‘This was May, 1941? Do you happen to remember the date of the final trip you made?’
‘Yes, it was the first Friday in May. There was always a NAAFI dance at Uxbridge, and I had to miss it, more’s the pity.’
Dick was making notes. He asked Frank Perry to confirm the dates again. July, 18 September, and October 1940; and mid-March, April, and 2 May 1941. ‘I expect you wondered what it was all about,’ Dick prompted him.
‘Wasn’t my business,’ said Frank firmly. ‘I’d been told to keep my nose out of it, and I did.’
‘But you discovered they were Germans.’
‘Well, it was obvious, really, from the way they talked. They was speaking English most of the time, but you can tell it’s a Jerry from the way he says certain words, can’t you?’
Dick nodded. ‘Did you overhear them, or did you speak to them yourself?’
‘I never spoke to them myself. But in the old bus, they had to shout to be heard above the engines.’
‘We heard that one of them knew your name.’
Frank thought for a moment. He seemed to be tiring. ‘Now you mention it, something happened on one of the later runs. I got to Dublin and refuelled at the hangar as usual, and when the motor-car arrived, the British bloke who always escorted them told me one of the Germans wanted to search the plane before we took off. I wasn’t too pleased and I told him. I mean, what did they expect to find – a bleeding bomb? Well, these civil servants know how to smooth you down, don’t they? He told me they had a security wallah with them. Gestapo, I suppose he was. Quite a young fellow. We had to play along with him. So he went through the plane with me, and of course he didn’t find anything except my flying-jacket on the back of the pilot’s seat. Blow me if he didn’t pick it up and take my documents out of the pocket. “So you’re Warrant-Officer Perry,” he said. “Yes,” I said. “Want to make anything of it?” He gave me a dirty look and handed back my papers and that was the last I saw of him. He must have stayed behind in Dublin, because he wasn’t on the trip to England.’
Dick went on probing, as conscientious in his way as the Gestapo officer had been. ‘Were the Germans you flew to England the same individuals each time?’
‘I think two of them were,’ answered Frank. ‘There was always a third one in the party, but I can’t recall that I ever recognized the same bloke on another trip.’
‘Would you say they were probably diplomats?’
‘I don’t think they were servicemen, anyway.’
‘And it was always the same routine in England? You flew to Kidlington and there was a staff car waiting?’
‘Yes.’ Frank took off his glasses and wiped them. ‘I mean no. We didn’t always fly into Kidlington. Once it was Brize Norton and another time it was Benson. And there’s something else I wanted to tell you, if I can remember it.’ He replaced the glasses and stared around the terrace. There were only two other residents outside, and they were well out of earshot, but he still leaned forward confidentially. ‘The driver. I had a word with the driver of the car a couple of times, when we were getting the party aboard. He was in the Army. A Sergeant in Transport Command. One time I asked him where he took them, and he said it was usually some big house in the country, miles from anywhere.’
‘The same one?’
‘No. Different each time. But there was one thing the same. Whichever house he had to take them to, there was always this big saloon car standing in the drive. Being in Transport Command, he knew all about cars. It had no markings, no flag or anything, but he knew who those Germans had come to see. Who do you think? Only the blinking Prime Minister, Winston Churchill!’
Jane’s mind reeled. Churchill, the greatest Englishman, the man who had exhorted the nation to defy the Third Reich in the darkest days of the war, had been secretly, regularly, receiving its envoys. Churchill, who had pledged that Britain would go on to the end, fighting in France, on the seas and oceans, the beaches, the landing grounds, the fields, the streets and the hills, defending her island, whatever the cost might be.
She was numb with the enormity of it. She was not a blind worshipper of Churchill. She had often rebelled against her parents’ image of the man as a mix of the finest qualities of the British bulldog, St George and Jesus Christ. She would remind them of blots on his war record, like the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Dresden. Yet how could anyone begin to account for this massive inconsistency? She was so stunned that she totally failed to notice the silver-haired man in a dark blue suit who was waiting to intercept Dick and herself as they moved off the terrace and into the building.
She just heard his voice saying, ‘May I have a private word with you both?’ She and Dick stopped together. She found herself looking into a pair of expressionless grey eyes above a thin, insipid smile.
Dick came down to earth first. ‘What about?’
‘If you would kindly step outside the building …’ His voice was mild in tone, but so overloaded with reproach that he might have been apprehending shop-lifters.
‘Who are you?’ Dick asked.
‘Not here, if you don’t mind.’
Dick exchanged an uncomprehending glance with Jane and they allowed themselves to be led through the building to the main entrance. Three or four old soldiers were outside in wheelchairs, watching the traffic pass in and out of Richmond Park. The grey eyes flicked over them and then focussed in the opposite direction.
‘Let’s walk towards the Terrace Gardens.’
‘If you’ve anything to say, you can say it here,’ Dick obdurately told him.
Another glance at the war veterans. ‘Very well. I think it right to inform you that the residents of this home are all ex-members of the armed forces, and come under the jurisdiction of the Official Secrets Act. They are not at liberty to disclose information to the press about sensitive matters.’
‘Just who are you?’ Dick angrily demanded.
‘A member of the security services.’
‘There’s nothing illegal in what we’re doing,’ said Dick. ‘It’s supposed to be a free country.’
Jane added, ‘We phoned the matron to arrange this visit.’
‘I know you did, Miss Calvert-Mead,’ said grey-eyes, pausing to let the fact that he knew her name sink in. ‘But you omitted to advise the matron of the matters you wished to raise with Warrant-Officer Perry.’
‘He was under no duress,’ said Dick.
‘He is an old man, Mr Garrick. Sometimes people take advantage of old men. As I mentioned, he is covered by the Official Secrets Act. Any information he may unwittingly have disclosed to you is also likely to be covered by the Act.’
‘So what do you intend to do about it?’ Dick snapped back. ‘Prosecute? Haul the old man into court in his wheelchair? Is that the way this country treats its war veterans?’
‘No, but we can prosecute journalists who take advantage of the same old man.’
‘Is that a threat?’ said Jane.
He ignored her. ‘I doubt if this line of enquiry will reflect much credit on your newspaper, either. I believe you pride yourselves on being one of the more reliable organs of the press. Old men’s memories are notoriously unreliable.’
Jane started to say, ‘We wouldn’t publish anything we hadn’t confirmed,’ but Dick gripped her arm, over-riding her words with some of his own.
‘Leave it, Jane. We don’t have to justify ourselves to someone who doesn’t even tell us his name.’ He steered her towards his car.
As they turned away, the security officer said to their backs, ‘You’ll be wasting your time if you go on with this.’
‘What did he mean by that?’ Jane asked Dick when they were fastening safety-belts.
‘It sounded ominously like the threat of a D Notice.’
She took a long breath. ‘They can’t kill this story. It’s got to be told.’
He started the Renault, and backed it slowly, watched by the security officer.
‘What a wimp!’ said Jane.
‘Just a functionary, doing his job.’
‘A bloody obnoxious job. If he goes back inside and scares that old man …’
‘He won’t,’ said Dick. ‘He’s assigned to us. Watch him get into his car and follow. I reckon we alerted them by going to see Salter-Smith. The pressure is really on now.’
Jane watched in the wing-mirror, and saw Dick’s prediction confirmed. Grey-eyes got into a blue Volvo and cruised into position behind them.
‘Where are we going now?’
‘To my place to check some facts,’ answered Dick.
‘We’re going to need all the evidence we can get to win this one with Cedric.’
Jane saw the sense of that. Dick was right about the pressure. It was coming from every direction: the secret service, Cedric, and Red in Berlin. And now there was this incredible lead on Churchill: a vast new avenue of enquiry to explore. Would it lead to Hess, or off into new territory? She kept thinking of Red, primed for action. On the phone to Cedric he had joked about some German girl making demands, but that was typical of Red. The message that had come over to Jane was a strong appeal for quick results. She sensed that he saw trouble looming, and in Berlin trouble came in ugly forms.
‘I’m going to call Cedric as soon as we get there,’ Dick announced. ‘We’ve got to go out to Henley and see him tonight.’
Mindful of phone-tapping, Dick kept the call as uninformative as possible. Fortunately, Cedric caught on to the urgency of the request and agreed to see them at whatever time they could arrive. It was already 4.00 p.m.
Dick put two meat-pies in the microwave and brought out some Perrier water. At his suggestion, they spread a large sheet of paper on the floor and made a simple timetable: a vertical line down the centre: on the left, the dates Frank Perry had given for the German visits; on the right, the principal developments in the corresponding period of the war.
| GERMAN MISSIONS | WAR EVENTS | |
| 1940 | ||
| 10 May | Churchill becomes PM. Hitler forces break through France | |
| 24 May | German advance on Dunkirk halted on Hitler’s orders | |
| 2 June | Dunkirk evacuation complete | |
| 22 June | Franco-German Armistice | |
| 16 July | Hitler orders preparation for invasion of Britain | |
| 19 July | Hitler offers Britain peace in Reichstag speech | |
| (?)July – First mission | ||
| 10 Aug | Battle of Britain begins | |
| 17 Sept | Hitler postpones invasion of Britain indefinitely | |
| 18 Sept – Second mission | ||
| (?)Oct – Third mission | ||
| 14 Nov | Blitz begins | |
| (?) Dec | Hess’s first attempt to fly to Britain | |
| 1941 | ||
| (?) Jan | Hess’s second attempt | |
| (?) March—Fourth mission | ||
| 6 Apr | Germany invades | |
| Greece and Yugoslavia | ||
| 10 Apr | German advance in Libya | |
| 21 Apr | Allies withdraw from Greece | |
| (?) Apr – Fifth mission | ||
| 2 May – Sixth mission | ||
| 10 May | Hess arrives in Scotland | |
| 16 May | Blitz ends | |
| 22 June | Germany invades Russia |
Before it was all on paper, Jane could see a pattern emerging, a pattern dominated by Hitler’s curious love-hate attitude towards Britain. He had not planned to go to war with Britain. He had counted on a bloodless agreement on terms that would recognize Germany’s power over mainland Europe.
When Churchill had succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister, there were fighting words from the new leader about blood, toil, tears and sweat, but Hitler, of all people, understood rhetoric. His tanks had rolled through France and the Low Countries, providing their own eloquent testimony to German invincibility. They could have annihilated the British Expeditionary Force, but Hitler astounded his Panzer commanders by arriving in person at battle headquarters and ordering them to halt. The miracle of Dunkirk, the evacuation of over 300,000 British troops, was by grace of the Führer. Why? Was it a magnanimous gesture to the new Prime Minister? When the last troops had been lifted off the beaches, Churchill thundered his response: ‘We shall never surrender.’
Hitler was unconvinced. He had completed the defeat of France. He had signed an armistice allowing the Pétain government jurisdiction over two-fifths of the country: another display of magnanimity.
He still had no desire to invade Britain. He was counting on a compromise peace. But in July he made preparations, and massed his forces on the Channel coasts.
This was the pattern: a show of strength followed by an offer of peace. As Operation Sealion ostentatiously got ready, Hitler stood up in the Reichstag and issued a ‘final appeal’ to Britain’s ‘reason and common sense’.
And at about this time, in July 1940, according to Frank Perry, a party of Germans had been secretly flown into Britain for a meeting with Churchill. Numerous peace feelers had been put out through neutral countries, but this was in another class. If it were true, it was sensational: Churchill actually talking to Germany.
‘What do you think?’ Dick asked, when he had finished.
Jane didn’t conceal her excitement. ‘You can almost see Hitler’s mind at work. He makes a concession, and then sends his people over to get a reaction from Churchill. The Reichstag speech, then the cancellation of the invasion, then two deputations to Churchill in three weeks. It looks as if he really believed he could pull off a peace deal.’
‘Let’s not forget that the Luftwaffe were given a drubbing in the Battle of Britain.’
‘Exactly!’ said Jane. ‘What better incentive for Hitler to stop the conflict?’
Dick nodded. ‘Hitler’s motives are clear from the start, but that’s not the story, is it? The story is Churchill. What was he up to, talking to the Nazis while he was hurling defiance at them in Parliament?’
Jane had asked herself the question a dozen times and found no answer. Everything she knew about Churchill rebutted it. For all his faults, he had never made any secret of his implacable opposition to Hitler and the Nazis. ‘You ask: “What is our aim?” I can answer in one word: “Victory!”Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be: for without victory there is no survival.’
She made an effort to be analytical. ‘Either he was seriously considering Hitler’s overtures, or he was boxing clever, trying to win time.’ As she said it, she found the latter idea so engaging that it showed in her voice.
‘… and that’s the more appealing explanation?’ Dick suggested in a voice that showed he disagreed.
‘History supports it,’ Jane answered stoutly. ‘There wasn’t a deal and the Allies defeated Hitler.’
‘Six sets of talks was boxing very clever indeed,’ said Dick with heavy irony. ‘The Germans must have felt they were getting close to a deal.’ He casually threw in another shaft. ‘And where does Hess fit in?’
‘Hess?’ Jane had almost forgotten him. ‘He acted independently. He has always said he came without Hitler’s knowledge.’
Dick raised one sceptical eyebrow. ‘Yet he was regarded as totally loyal to his Führer, the most reliable of all the Nazi leaders. So far as I know, he has never to this day repudiated Hitler.’
‘Hitler repudiated him. He was in a screaming fury when he heard what had happened.’ She hesitated, staring at Dick. ‘What are you suggesting – that Hitler was play-acting?’
‘No. He was angry, all right – in despair that Hess had failed.’ Dick leaned towards her in a more conciliatory way. ‘Like you, Jane, I’ve read everything I can find on Hess. I simply can’t accept that he flew to Britain without Hitler’s prior knowledge. He was with Hitler from the beginning, in prison with him, helping him to write Mein Kampf. I think he was sent by Hitler to clinch a deal with Britain. It was to be the culmination of all the secret missions, the ultimate proof of Hitler’s good faith.’
‘Are you saying that Hitler thought Churchill was ready to come to terms?’
‘Listen, we heard this afternoon that they’d been talking secretly on and off for ten months. Churchill must have given the Germans enough encouragement to keep coming, but there were no tangible results for Hitler. Time was running out, and he was getting impatient with Churchill, but he had the ace of trumps to play.’
‘What was that?’
‘Barbarossa. The invasion of Russia. In their political thinking, Hitler and Churchill had many differences, but they shared one dominating principle: a pathological hatred of Bolshevism. They both believed that Russia wanted world domination. So why not sink their differences and smash the Soviet menace together?’
‘Hitler and Churchill on the same side?’ Jane shook her head at the suggestion.
‘You’ve got to see it in terms of Britain’s desperate position in 1941,’ Dick urged. ‘We were alone in Europe. Churchill hadn’t persuaded America to join in the fighting. Things had gone badly in the Middle East and the Balkans. Our cities were being blitzed. Parliament itself was a heap of rubble. The pressure to cut our losses must have been overwhelming.’
Jane said, ‘Yes, but Britain wasn’t in the business of invading other nations. Our people wouldn’t have consented to that.’
‘Some of them would. Remember that Hess tried to get in touch with the diehards – the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party – and in those days some of them were very extreme indeed.’
‘That doesn’t square with what you were saying just now,’ Jane pointed out. ‘Why didn’t he go straight to Churchill?’
‘Because basically Hess was sent to raise a posse. As Hitler saw it, Churchill had dithered for too long, listening to the secret delegations, maybe even talking terms, but refusing to come to a deal. The German plan was to win support from the diehards, put pressure on Churchill, and give him an ultimatum: join us, or face a revolt from your own supporters.’
Jane was intrigued, if not entirely convinced. ‘But the plan fell through because Churchill got to hear of it prematurely?’
‘No,’ said Dick, surprising her. ‘That wouldn’t account for what happened after. Remember that astonishing period of forty-eight hours after Hess arrived, when no one knew what was happening. Churchill was at odds with his Ministers. Statements were prepared and rejected. Beaverbrook told the press to provide a smokescreen of rumour and speculation. I have a hunch that Churchill decided to accept the offer Hess had brought.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘All right,’ said Jane eventually, ‘what went wrong?’
Dick shook his head. He had no answer yet.
Jane leant forward on her elbows, thinking. ‘It’s horribly plausible. It accounts for so much. The treatment of Hess at Mytchett Place – the psychiatrists, the injections, the amnesia. Something extremely damaging to Britain had to be suppressed from his memory before the Nuremberg Trials.’
‘You’re not kidding!’ said Dick. ‘Can you imagine the reaction of our Russian allies if he gave evidence that Churchill had seriously considered joining the German invasion?’
Jane nodded. ‘It wouldn’t do much for present-day Anglo-Soviet relations. If there’s anything in this, I’m not surprised MIS are onto us.’
Dick got up to look out of the window.
‘Is he down there?’
‘The car is. I can’t see him. He’s probably on the roof with the SAS.’
Jane made an effort to laugh, but the presence of the Volvo was not amusing. They both felt the unease of being under surveillance.
Jane brooded on what she had just been invited to believe. It was shocking and repugnant, yet a thread of credibility ran through it. She searched for a break in the thread. ‘I’m still not convinced that Hitler sent Hess over. Are you sure it wasn’t just a quixotic adventure dreamed up by Hess to make his own impact on the war? That’s the way everyone tells it.’
‘Everyone?’ Dick repeated sceptically. ‘You mean Churchill and his Ministers in their various memoirs.’
‘And the German press statements,’ added Jane.
‘Can’t you see it was in their interests to cover up the truth? Neither the British nor the Germans wanted the Russians to know what was almost hatched between Hitler and Churchill.’ He snatched a book from the shelf above him and started leafing through it. ‘But the people close to Hitler knew. Listen to this, written in 1951, by Göring’s biographer, Willi Frischauer: Every single surviving member of Göring’s entourage … is convinced that Hitler not only hoped to make peace with the West, but to persuade the British Government to join in Germany’s attack on Russia. Hitler’s bewilderment in Berchtesgaden was due to the fear that his plot had failed.’
Jane was silent, weighing what she had heard. She didn’t mention it to Dick, but she had at the back of her mind a phrase from Albrecht Haushofer, after one of his meetings with Hess: From the whole conversation I had the strong impression that it was not conducted without the prior knowledge of the Führer. This assessment from the judicious, reflective man who had shared in the planning of the flight carried conviction. ‘All right,’ Jane declared. ‘I’m prepared to go along with you almost all the way. I’m even prepared to believe that Churchill was in two minds about accepting Hitler’s offer.’
‘Good! We’re going places.’
‘To Cedric’s, you mean?’
‘Not yet.’ He smiled sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry, but we haven’t buttoned it up. We still don’t know what made Churchill turn the offer down.’
Jane gave a shrug. ‘The War Cabinet, I suppose. They weren’t all rabid anti-Bolsheviks.’
‘They weren’t all consulted,’ said Dick tersely.
‘They were eventually.’
‘Only to a limited extent,’ insisted Dick. ‘I’ve seen a note in Churchill’s own handwriting in the Public Record Office saying Hess also made other statements which it was not in the public interest to disclose.’
‘Barbarossa?’
Dick didn’t answer. A useful idea had just occurred to him. ‘I wonder if the PRO has a copy of Churchill’s appointments diary. Then we can find out exactly who was in on the discussions.’
Jane shook her head. ‘I have news for you. There was a diary, but it mysteriously disappeared, and hasn’t turned up since.’
‘Are you certain about that?’
‘Positive. Sir John Colville mentions it in his memoirs. He ought to know.’
Dick hammered his fist on the table. ‘You see? It’s a cover-up, Jane.’ He reached for another sheet of paper. ‘We’ll make our own bloody diary. We’ve got enough books and notes. Let’s get it all down, everything we know about Churchill’s actions and decisions from the time Hess landed.’
It took another hour and a half of double-checking, but the result was spectacular.
‘Now we’re ready for Cedric,’ Dick declared.
They each had an armful of books when they went out to the Renault at 7.10 p.m. The Volvo was nowhere in the street. If they felt relieved, it was only temporary. Jane was watching as they drove away, and a green BMW started up and pulled out behind them. It stayed in obvious attendance all the way out of London and along the M4 to Henley. The driver was younger than grey-eyes. He sported a heavy dark moustache and was wearing a tan-coloured windcheater. Presumably MI5 was no different from any other organization when it came to duties at unsocial hours. The junior officers copped the night-shift.
They were at Cedric’s inside the hour, drawing up in front of the converted cottages while the BMW was obliged to cruise slowly past, seeking a less obvious parking spot.
‘If Cedric says anything, we’ve no idea who was in that car,’ Jane murmured before they got out.
Cedric hailed them like old friends. Here in his weekend home, he was unrecognizable as the tyrant in the editor’s chair. He kissed Jane and took over the books she was carrying. There was coffee waiting inside.
He sat benignly in his armchair, smoking cigars and listening to Dick relating the visits to Salter-Smith in Brighton and Frank Perry in Richmond. When the question of Churchill’s secret meetings with the Germans came up, Dick made some remark to the effect that it must sound like something out of a spy story. Cedric shook his head and amazed them both by saying, ‘I believe every word of it.’
Jane’s eyes widened. She exchanged a baffled look with Dick.
Cedric shifted in his chair, and it was almost possible to believe he was embarrassed over something. ‘I owe you both an apology, because a call came in last week from Washington, and I didn’t see its relevance at the time, so I didn’t pass it on. You remember our man found a report in the National Archives about ex-President Herbert Hoover, who was taking an interest in the Hess case?’
Dick nodded. ‘You mentioned it the other day on the Embankment.’
‘Regrettably, I didn’t tell you everything. Hoover claimed to be getting his information from reliable inside sources in London. This is the part that will interest you. He heard that Hess was the seventh German emissary of peace sent to England since the outbreak of war, and that the others had all come through Dublin and been picked up from there by a British plane.’
Jane clapped her hands in excitement. ‘Fantastic! Frank Perry had it right.’
Cedric remarked penitently, ‘I deserve a kick up the backside.’
‘To hell with that,’ said Dick. ‘Is there anything else you haven’t told us?’
‘You know as much as I do now,’ Cedric humbly assured them both. ‘Probably more, by the expressions on your faces. Let’s have it. What else have you dug up?’
‘Plenty,’ Dick crisply answered, ‘but Jane will tell you later. There isn’t a lot of time. How long will it take me to get to London Airport from here?’
‘The airport?’ Cedric blinked in surprise. ‘It’s not more than twenty-five miles. Where do you need to go?’
‘Paris.’
‘Paris? You mean tonight?’
When you had the ascendancy over Cedric, you didn’t yield. Dick went on, ‘I need to see Justin Stevens – the guy who put together that story on the Resistance for the colour magazine last year.’
‘Justin Stevens. Dick, what is this …?’
‘I need his address.’
‘I should have it in my desk.’
Jane crossed the room and picked up the phone. ‘I’ll make the flight reservation.’