Luckily for Hans Meyer, he had not been at headquarters that night. As deputy to Kriminaldirektor Fleisch, Meyer faced the problem of explaining events at the monastery. It was a mess, but Fleisch’s death made things easier. There was already a scapegoat, and Meyer for one would not shed any tears for the man. Especially if he could organise things so that he got Fleisch’s job.
Clearly Fleisch had somehow allowed the prisoners to escape – dying in the process. The Abbot was another casualty, presumably killed by the British for turning them over to the Gestapo in the first place. How Fleisch’s own gun came to be in the Abbot’s dead hand was a detail that failed to make it into Meyer’s final report.
He expected an investigation, but it was a shock when an SS Hauptsturmfuhrer arrived at Meyer’s (formerly Fleisch’s) office two weeks after the incident. The man introduced himself as Dieter Grebben and sat without asking.
Meyer forced a smile. ‘And how can I help?’
Grebben teased off his black leather gloves. ‘These spies – you are sure they were British?’
‘I was not here myself at the time,’ Meyer pointed out. ‘But the men on duty felt that at least one of them was British. Another seemed to be American. He spoke no French apparently.’
Grebben considered this, although he must already have read it in the report. ‘So why send a man who speaks no French into occupied France, do you suppose?’
Meyer shrugged.
‘And why send them to a rather insignificant Gestapo office?’ He smiled. ‘No offence.’
‘They were arrested in the library of the monastery,’ Meyer said. ‘It is in the report.’
‘Yes. The library. We are very interested in this library. Or rather, in whatever the British were looking for.’
‘You think that was why they came here?’
‘I don’t think it was to confess their sins, or for the scintillating conversation. No offence. The American was perhaps an expert of some kind. A man who had to be here in person to identify or study whatever they were after. He was clearly unsuitable in operational terms for the mission, therefore his presence was unavoidable. What were they doing when arrested?’
‘Doing, Hauptsturmfuhrer?’
‘Your report says simply that they were found and arrested in the library. It doesn’t state whether they were looking for something, or copying down information, or drinking tea. I repeat – what were they doing?’
Meyer bit back his instinctive confession that he had no idea. ‘I wasn’t here at the time, you understand.’
‘Oh yes, you have made that very clear. Several times.’
‘So it is probably best if you hear it from one of the officers who was. A first-hand account is always better, I find.’
Meyer excused himself and, after hurried enquiries of his men, established that Witzleben had been there and helped make the arrest.
‘They were on the gallery of the library,’ he told Grebben, standing stiffly to attention and not meeting the SS captain’s stare.
‘Standing?’ Grebben asked. ‘Sitting? Talking? Silent?’ Before Witzleben could answer, Grebben stood up. ‘Show me. I wish to see exactly where they were.’
A few minutes later the three of them were standing on the gallery.
‘They were here, three of them. Standing. Talking, I think. They stopped when we entered the room, of course.’
‘Why here, do you think?’
‘Well, because they were reading a book.’
Grebben turned to glare at Meyer. ‘What book?’
Witzleben opened the door protecting the ancient volumes. He pulled one out, its chain jangling across the wooden reading table. ‘This one.’
‘You are sure? You saw the title?’
‘No, sir. But I remember where it was on the shelf.’
Grebben nodded. ‘Very well. I shall take it with me. Also the volume either side, just in case your memory is at fault. But keep them separate. Cut the chains and bring them to my car.’ He turned and started down the spiral staircase without a backward glance.
* * *
It was almost a month since Colonel Brinkman had last seen his family. He telephoned to let his wife know that he was coming. As he approached the house, he could smell the bread she’d been baking.
Dorothy hurried out to greet him, wiping the flour from her hands on to her apron before embracing him. Brinkman tried not to hug her too tight.
‘Oliver,’ she chided, ‘you’ve lost weight.’
He laughed. ‘You haven’t.’
‘No,’ she agreed.
‘Where’s James?’
‘Back garden,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t mention you might be coming, in case you couldn’t get away.’
The boy was digging in a corner of the vegetable patch with a small trowel. When he saw his father, he leaped up, dropping the trowel and ran to Brinkman, wrapping muddy hands round his father’s legs.
Brinkman laughed. ‘Hello, son. You looking after Mother for me?
‘I’m growing carrots for tea.’
‘Good.’
‘Are you staying at home now? Is the war over?’
‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’ Brinkman extricated himself from the boy’s embrace, and crouched down so he was at eye level with the three-year-old. ‘But I hope it won’t be long, and then I’ll be home for good. But until then you have to be brave and you have to be the man of the house, all right?’
James nodded. ‘All right,’ he conceded, disappointed.
Brinkman stood up and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Good man. Now you get back to your digging while I have a chat with Mummy.’
‘Yes, sir.’ James attempted a salute, then ran back to retrieve his trowel.
Brinkman was aware of Dorothy standing behind him in the doorway, watching them both. He put his arm round her shoulders. She had taken the apron off, and the bulge of her stomach was more noticeable now.
‘It must be hard,’ Brinkman said. ‘It’ll be even harder with two of them to look after.’
She nodded. ‘I know. So you’d better win this war pretty damn quick and come home to help.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ he assured her with a smile. But beneath the smile he wondered which of the wars he was fighting would be the harder to win – the one against the Nazis, or the one against the Vril?
* * *
‘I’m not at all sure how I can help,’ the old man said. His thinning hair was still dark, though his moustache was grey. ‘Some propaganda thing, is it? You want me to write a piece for a newspaper, perhaps?’
‘Nothing quite like that, sir,’ Sarah said. It had been her idea to come, but she hadn’t realised how old he would be. Perhaps Guy was right and they were wasting their time.
‘You could reprint passages from The Rights of Man, of course. Funny how your opinions change and develop, isn’t it?’ he mused.
‘In what way?’ Guy prompted.
‘Hmm? Oh, thirty years ago – twenty even – I’d have said that eugenics was a good thing, broadly speaking. Impractical, of course, but generally a way to advance the human race through selective breeding. Now of course, I’m arguing that it restricts the rights of the individual – as we can see from what’s happening on the continent, and in the United States before that.’
‘Yes, actually,’ Sarah said, ‘we were hoping to talk to you about one of your novels. About where you got the ideas for it, whether any specific research helped.’
‘You know, last year, I said in my preface to the new edition of The War in the Air that my epitaph should be “I told you so, you damned fools”. So if you’ve come to tell me I was right, it’s not exactly news.’
‘It was actually The War of the Worlds we wanted to ask about,’ Guy said.
Mr Wells blinked. ‘Really? Never really rated that one myself. Wasn’t all that successful until that other Mr Welles did his radio show of it a few years ago in America. And people believed it was actually happening.’ He shook his head. ‘I should write something about human credulity.’
‘So where did the idea come from?’ Sarah asked.
‘Where do any ideas come from? Blessed if I can remember now.’
‘But it’s a very imaginative idea, isn’t it,’ Guy pressed. ‘What made you think about beings from another world invading us?’
‘Well they had to be from a more advanced civilisation, that was the point. There was no more advanced civilisation than ours on this world, so I had to look further afield.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘It’s not actually a book about creatures from another world, you know. No, no, no – it’s about imperialism. It’s about the hardship wrought on nations and peoples that are unwillingly absorbed into a larger, foreign empire.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps it’s too imaginative – no one seems to understand what the book is saying. Still, that’s the thing with books, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’ Sarah said.
‘You can always write another one.’ He leaned forward suddenly, fixing Sarah with a steely look. ‘Why are you interested?’
‘Um, well, it’s an interesting idea for a book.’
‘I mentioned The War in the Air just now. People suddenly became interested in that because the fiction became fact. Because it was suddenly and unpleasantly relevant. So let me ask you a slightly different question – have the ideas behind The War of the Worlds, the notion of invasion from another planet, have those ideas suddenly become unpleasantly relevant?’
Guy glanced at Sarah before he answered. ‘I’m afraid we can’t discuss our interest in detail. But you said yourself, the novel is about one culture being conquered by another more advanced civilisation and the consequences of that. I believe there is relevance to what is happening now, perhaps not here in Britain, but across Europe. The German war machine is even now crushing the relatively backward peoples of the Soviet Union.’
‘So any insight you can offer us that might help in the fight against them,’ Sarah said, ‘would be appreciated.’
Wells nodded. ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ he promised.
* * *
‘Disappointed?’ Guy asked as they made their way back from Regent’s Park to the Station Z offices.
Sarah nodded. ‘All our clues at the moment are coming from myths and stories. I just thought here was another one that seems to fit, and the author is actually still alive and we can ask him. I guess it’s just coincidence.’
‘Probably. Or he may remember something – something he read or that he was told, which might help.’
‘We keep chipping away at things, but I don’t know if we’re getting any closer.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Guy agreed. ‘Frustrating, isn’t it? But something will happen soon enough. Too soon, probably.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’m not. Not really. But it just seems like things are coming to a head. Reaching boiling point. The manuscript from France, the axe and the Ubermensch in Los Angeles. I just feel that something’s about to happen, and we have to be ready. Don’t you feel it?’
‘I do, yes. But how can we be ready?’ Sarah demanded, her exasperation coming out in her angry tone. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen.’
‘No, but we are making progress. Maybe…’ He stopped. ‘Yes, that’s possible.’
‘What is?’
‘I was just thinking – perhaps Rudolf Hess knows what’s going to happen. He seemed pretty informed before he clammed up and refused to say anything more.’
‘I thought Alban said MI5 got everything out of him that they could,’ Sarah said.
Guy nodded. ‘Brinkman spent some time with him too. He wanted me in on it, except he couldn’t get me clearance. And you’re right, Alban has had a team going to town on Hess, for all the good it did. But how much of what he says can we believe anyway? From what Leo and Miss Manners say, he’s a narrow-minded, credulous occultist. Even Crowley agrees. Anyway, like you said, he won’t talk to us. But,’ Guy went on, ‘maybe he will talk to someone he thinks actually understands and appreciates what he has to say.’
‘You mean Crowley? I don’t trust Crowley, and I doubt Brinkman would let him near Hess.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of Crowley,’ Guy told her. ‘I was thinking that Rudolf Hess might talk about an imminent invasion from another world to the man who wrote a future history of just such an event. I was thinking he might talk to H.G. Wells.’