It was a condition that Wilde could never accept. ‘I am sorry, Prime Minister, my allegiance is to America and President Roosevelt, sir. I can’t promise to keep secrets from my president.’
Churchill waved his hand dismissively, creating a swirl of smoke around him. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to keep secrets from your president. Franklin already knows all that I am about to tell you because I told him personally. That is why you were stood down from your investigation when you returned from Scotland.’
Wilde had not seen that coming, but it certainly explained Bill Phillips’s sudden change of heart. ‘Do Mr Phillips and Mr Winant also know these facts?’
‘They certainly do not. You will be one of very few people to know the truth. The King knows, of course, but the Duchess does not, and nor will she, for I have no intention of making her grief and suffering worse than it already is.’
Wilde waited. There was no point in pushing Churchill to go any faster than he was. The Prime Minister seemed to be weighing up his words. Ash from the tip of his cigar spilled across the bedding. At last he judged the moment.
‘Professor Wilde, I must tell you that the Duke of Kent was murdered by the Nazis on the express orders of Hitler. The motive was vengeance for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.’
‘Are you certain of this, sir?’
‘Of course I am certain. There is no doubt. A message to the effect that the plane would be brought down was delivered by hand to the British embassy in Stockholm half an hour after the Sunderland took off from a lake near the Palace of Drottningholm. This message was then relayed directly to me. Unfortunately, nothing could be done to warn the crew of the plane because they were observing radio silence.’
Reinhard Heydrich. A name to strike revulsion into the heart of all decent human beings. He was the murderous henchman of Himmler and one of Hitler’s most favoured acolytes. The ideal Nazi with a heart of iron. And, as Wilde now knew from the Coburg papers, he was also the leading light at a conference at Wannsee near Berlin in which the fate of Europe’s Jews had been sealed.
Two Czechoslovak agents parachuted in by the Special Operations Executive in London had attacked him in Prague on 27 May. They hurled an explosive device at his car, and Heydrich died of his injuries on 4 June. Hitler’s reprisals had been characteristically brutal.
A whole village had been razed to the ground, hundreds of men murdered and women despatched to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Even the children had been taken away, some to be brought up as Germans, others murdered.
It now seemed even that had not been enough. Hitler wanted to punish England, too, for sending the assassins into Prague.
‘Here, Professor Wilde, read this.’ Churchilll tossed a sheet of paper across the bed.
Wilde picked it up. It had a Sicherheitsdient heading in Gothic script, with the organisation’s Berlin headquarters address: Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, 8. It was written in English and read:
To Mr Winston Churchill. Let it be known that Flight 4026, presently en route to the United Kingdom, will not arrive. Consider this retribution for your country’s part in the murder of SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.
It was unsigned.
‘Is that convincing enough for you?’
Wilde nodded. ‘It’s hard to argue with that, given that it arrived while the plane was in the air.’
‘Also,’ Churchill continued, ‘assassination by plane crash is an established technique of the Nazis. They even used it on their own man Fritz Todt when they wanted to replace him with Speer.’
‘How was the Duke’s plane brought down, Prime Minister?’
‘It is difficult to be certain, but there are three theories. The first is that the oxygen supply was tampered with. It had been planned to fly the plane at ceiling altitude and so, without oxygen, the pilot and other members of the crew would have suffered hypoxia, become drowsy and lost consciousness. The second is that some sort of time bomb was planted to go off soon before arrival in Scotland. Another thought is that a small explosive device might have released a gas into the cockpit to incapacitate the crew, but post-mortem examination has not borne this out. Unfortunately, the wreckage of the plane was so extensive that it has not yet been possible for the investigators to come to a conclusion as to cause. It does, however, seem that the oxygen canisters were empty, which must point to the hypoxia theory. One thing is certain: a Nazi saboteur was to blame.’
‘How would he or she have gained access to the Sunderland? Surely it would have been guarded for the whole of the Duke’s visit?’
‘That is a very good question and one for which I do not have an answer. The obvious thought would be a traitor in our own secret services attached to the Stockholm mission – someone perhaps linked to the egregious Mr Walter Quayle.’
Wilde nodded. It was hard to argue with the Prime Minister’s version of events.
‘Are you satisfied now, professor? And do you understand why the Duke’s mission to Sweden must not be made public?’
‘I do, Prime Minister, and I am profoundly grateful to you for receiving me and taking me into your confidence…’
‘But? You are about to say but.’
‘But I do feel more should be done to put a stop to the extermination of the Jews. If not, then it is possible European Jewry will be wiped from the face of the earth.’
Churchill’s face took on its gravest attitude, the jowls dropped, even the cigar seemed to sag. Wilde was shocked to see tears in the man’s eyes.
‘I have spoken to your president about this,’ Churchill replied slowly, his voice yet deeper and gruffer, almost choking with emotion. ‘And we are agreed that for us to bring this to the fore while we are in a position to do precisely nothing would leave us looking desperately weak, and would play right into Hitler’s hands. But I have granted you The Times piece, and we will leave it at that for the present. Later, perhaps next year, who knows? Good day, professor.’
Coburg tried the bedroom door. It was locked. This space in the bishop’s old farmhouse had become a prison cell while he waited. There were half a dozen British guards outside, although he couldn’t see them. Harriet was somewhere else in the house with the bishop. Occasionally she came to see him to bring food and refreshment and to talk.
‘But what is to happen?’ he had pleaded on her last visit.
‘That is being decided, Rudi. Be patient. Your physical health is improving and your testimony will be broadcast to the world.’
‘I’m going mad. My nights are filled with serpents and horror. I can’t endure another one.’
She had taken him in her arms to comfort him, but he knew that she was repulsed by the film of cold sweat on his arms, his neck and face. He knew, too, that she was revolted by the knowledge of what he had done. Who wouldn’t be? After a few seconds she had pulled gently away. She touched his face with the back of her hand and smiled at him. ‘You will unburden yourself and you will be well again.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he had said, head drooping to his chest.
‘I’ll be back soon. But you must wait here.’
Now here he was alone. It was late afternoon and the gathering clouds told him that night could not be very far away. A chest of drawers stood against the wall by the bed. He looked through them and found various garments. His nostrils were assailed by the pungent smell of camphor. He also found a small pair of nail scissors among other items, probably long forgotten. He took the scissors and placed them on the bedside table, then removed his shoes and curled up on the bed, on top of the counterpane.
The snakes came earlier today. It was only just dark when he saw them. Their hissing was louder, their movements quicker. He could smell their venom. Himmler was there, Hitler and Müller, too, writhing up the wall of the station house to the roof. He hadn’t realised they could climb. He had thought he was safe from them all the while he was well above ground. But these three were rising and there was no escape. Eichmann was with them. He hadn’t seen Eichmann until then. Where had he come from?
They were all over his body now, writhing as they attached themselves to him with their fangs, their forked tongues flicking and licking at his white flesh.
He couldn’t move, could do nothing to stop Eichmann slithering up his chest to his exposed throat, then coiling his cold scales around his neck…
Wilde had been at The Times all afternoon discussing the interview with the designated reporter. They had agreed that Wilde would bring Coburg down to meet the man in the morning.
He arrived back at Red Farm just five minutes after Harriet found Coburg’s dead body. It was obvious that he had used a pair of nail scissors to cut lengths of cord from the sash windows and had then hanged himself from a central beam.
Two members of the guard provided by Eaton were cutting him down and lowering him to the floor.
‘Perhaps it was for the best,’ Harriet said.
‘For him, maybe – but what about the Jews in Poland? They needed his testimony. Now all we have is a batch of documents that will be denounced as meaningless forgeries.’
‘He was broken, Tom.’