The Darkest Hour (18 page)

Windsor studied the papers, flicking back and forth between the sheets before glancing up.

“Did you get to meet your son? I’m looking at the dates here, and it seems . . .”

Rossett didn’t reply.

“Hmm, unfortunate.” Windsor studied him for a moment, then returned to the papers. “On your release, you returned to Wapping to work as a Police Sergeant, from which you were seconded to the Office of Jewish Affairs. You joined the Nazi Party in early 1945 and you hold an honorary rank in that organization.”

Windsor looked up again, then wiped his nose once more.

“Is anything I’ve said thus far inaccurate, Sergeant?”

Rossett still didn’t reply. He just took a sip of tea from the mug he was still holding. Windsor sniffed and wiped his nose again before taking a sip of his own drink.

“Hot lemon, best thing for a cold,” he said to Rossett as he placed the tin cup back on the table. “Damned London is always so damp this time of the year, gets me every time.”

Windsor wiped his nose again and then studied the files in silence before looking up. “It says here that the Germans think very highly of you, Rossett. They see you as being loyal to the cause.”

Rossett lit a cigarette.

“Seems they are intending giving you an Iron Cross. Congratulations.” Windsor didn’t smile as he spoke. He was matter-of-fact, like a civil servant relaying facts about a planning matter. Rossett found it disconcerting and spoke for the first time, then cursed himself for breaking his silence.

“First I’ve heard.”

“Yes, well, it was to be a surprise that your friend Koehler has arranged. I expect he thinks it’ll be good for propaganda, you getting a medal from the king and then one from the Führer. It’ll look good in the
Daily Mail,
you setting an example.”

Rossett took a drag of the cigarette and swallowed the smoke, breathing it out through his bloodied nose with a whistle. He stared at Windsor a moment, then shrugged.

“What’s this about?”

“All in good time. Now, let me see . . .” Windsor ran his finger along the pages before glancing up again. “It says here you have personally supervised the removal of over six thousand Jews from London in the last two years or so and have helped facilitate the removal of many more around the country by assisting other forces in the setting up of their own Jewish offices. It appears you are a very thorough man, Sergeant Rossett, no stone unturned.”

“I’m just doing my job.”

“Doing it rather well?”

Rossett shrugged and felt his cheeks burn. When the facts were read so coldly they made hard listening.

“Where do you think these Jews are going?” Windsor picked up his cup again. “Have you ever asked?”

Rossett shook his head.

“Best not to, eh?” Windsor took a sip and placed the cup down on the table before turning another page and leaning forward to study the text. “I’ve a copy of your bank statement here. You don’t appear to be well rewarded for your dirty deeds.”

Rossett looked down at the document and was surprised to see it was an up-to-date statement of his account. His surprise must have registered on his face, because he noticed Leigh chuckle behind his boss and wink.

Windsor looked up from the papers.

“Many of your colleagues get a bounty from the Nazis for carrying out such an unsavory role, yet you don’t. Why is that?”

Rossett shrugged again.

“Is it because you enjoy what you do?”

“I just do my job.”

“Do you not like Jews?”

“I just do my job. I do as I’m told.”

“Do you not like them?” Windsor asked again, this time placing the papers down. “I’m curious, because I can’t imagine sending that many people to their deaths without hating them.”

“I don’t send them to their deaths. They go to France.”

Windsor smiled and shook his head.

“You don’t actually believe that, do you? That they just go to France to live happily ever after?”

“I just do my job.”

“They are murdered, all of them. Shot, stabbed, gassed, or starved, but all of them—men, women and children—die.”

Windsor stared at Rossett, who swallowed and then shook his head.

“That’s all bollocks, propaganda spread by you lot.”

“I don’t think so, and I don’t think you believe that either, not when you really think about it,” said Windsor softly.

“What would be the point? What would be the point of just killing them? Tell me.”

Windsor reached down to the case and produced another file, which he placed on the table and then opened before spinning the contents around so that they faced Rossett. Rossett saw some grainy photographs. One showed a pit full of bodies, all skin and bone, gray and dead. At the top of the pit stood a line of waiting ghosts, heads bowed, waiting to fall forward after the volley of bullets that would come from the guns trained on them from behind.

Rossett squinted at the photo and then leaned back as far as the handcuff would allow.

“Propaganda. I’ve seen it before. The government in exile churns that stuff out all the time. I’ve heard they use actors and try to stir things up here with them. That’s all bollocks, I just do my job and pay no attention, simple as that.”

Windsor nodded, picked up the photo, and placed it with several others, most showing similar scenes of grim, gray despair and death. He left the folder on the table next to Rossett’s shackled hand and Rossett frowned as his eyes roamed across the pictures.

“Are you sure, Sergeant?”

“Of course. Who would just stand there waiting to be shot like that?”

“The same people who quietly walk onto the trains at Nine Elms, that’s who.”

Rossett thought about the shuffling early-morning loads he’d seen leave so many times. It was true that not many of them ever struggled or tried to fight back. He could think of barely a handful who had ever tried to run away. He’d assumed it was because they trusted him when he told them they were going to work on farms in France. Why wouldn’t they? He believed it himself.

He looked at Windsor, who had also sat back from the table and was holding the tin cup under his nose, breathing in the steam off the hot lemon, eyes staring at Rossett through the haze.

“What confuses me, Sergeant Rossett, is why today is different, why today, of all days, you decided to stop doing your job.”

Rossett glanced at Leigh and then back at Windsor.

“I don’t understand.”

“Every day, you get up and do your job for Jerry. You don’t ask questions, you don’t cause problems; you just go and do what you do. We know this. We’ve watched you. We’ve even thought about killing you to stop you, and we would have if the powers that be hadn’t thought it would be bad propaganda seeing off the brave British Lion. So we’ve let you get on with it, let you do your dirty deeds for the Germans. And you’ve done it bloody well, right up until today, and quite frankly, I want to know what’s happened today for you to say enough is enough, to throw it all away to rescue one Jewish boy. I want to know why.”

Rossett thought for a moment and nodded toward Leigh, who had lit another cigarette. He replied, “I was using the kid as an excuse to spring the resistance lads who were at Charing Cross. I couldn’t let his lot be shot, could I?”

“Nice try, Sergeant.” Leigh raised an eyebrow and smiled.

“Come along, Sergeant, please don’t waste my time.”

Rossett looked from Leigh to Windsor and then back again. He traced his finger through some spilt tea and then sighed deeply. “I felt bad about the boy, all right?” Rossett looked up at Windsor.

“Really? How very noble.” Windsor smiled at Rossett and then steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. “It’s just that I wondered . . .” Windsor suddenly reached down again into the case, and Rossett wondered what mystery he would pull out next. He was dismayed to see it was Jacob’s pouch, the one with the sovereigns.

“I wonder if your newly found conscience was pricked by these?” Windsor emptied some of the coins onto the table, then placed the pouch down next to them.

“It wasn’t the money. Why would I have gone back when I already had it in my pocket?” Rossett replied, shaking his head and looking first at Windsor and then up at Leigh.

Windsor smiled, reached into his pocket, and produced another handkerchief, this one clean.

“I think, perhaps, you were going back for this, or rather its friends, the ones the boy has told you about.” Windsor placed the handkerchief on the table and slowly unfolded it to reveal a small cut diamond, shining in the bare light of the weak bulb. The size of a little fingernail, it glistened and seemed to light the room itself.

Windsor traced his index finger around the diamond, causing it to roll on the cloth and catch the light, then looked at Rossett.

“I think the boy is the key to more of these, and you went back to get that key. You haven’t found your conscience; you’ve merely found your price. When I asked the boy about the diamond he told me you knew where the rest of them are buried, that he’d told you his part of the secret and you knew where the rest of these things are hidden.”

Rossett stared at the diamond. He’d never seen anything like it before in his life. For some reason, his mind flashed back to his wife and a promise he’d made a million years before, on the night he had asked her to marry him:
“One day I’ll buy you a beautiful ring.”
He’d meant it. She’d laughed, but to him it was vow, a vow he hadn’t fulfilled.

She’d died before he could buy her the ring, and he suddenly felt ashamed. With his free hand, he wiped his forehead, feeling the gash in his palm stinging and suddenly glad of the pain. He then sat back from the table as far as he could, as if to distance himself from the diamond and the photographs of the dead and the dying.

His head throbbed both from the beating and the pressure he was under, and he closed his eyes a moment to rest his senses.

“I didn’t know anything about any diamond.” Barely whispering, the fight gone out of him.

Windsor smiled and shook his head.

“Sergeant, please, let’s not play games.”

Rossett shook his head slightly and spoke softly again.

“I didn’t know about the diamond, ask the boy. I don’t know how all this has come about. I don’t know anything about any diamonds.”

“You had it in your pocket, with the coins. Did you not know about them either?”

“I hadn’t really looked. I didn’t know it was there.” Rossett knew the truth sounded unlikely even as he said it, but he said it anyway, eyes still closed.

Windsor looked at the file as Rossett spoke, then absentmindedly picked up the diamond and folded it back into the handkerchief before slipping it into his pocket. He sighed and chewed his bottom lip, looking at Rossett’s lowered head before speaking again.

“John, it won’t serve you to lie to us. We’ve already spoken to the boy. He has told us you’re going to get the rest of the diamonds. I know you are lying.”

The use of his first name caused Rossett to lift his head and open his eyes; he heard it so little nowadays, it almost felt like Windsor was talking to someone else.

Windsor tilted his head sympathetically and continued, as if talking to a child, “You aren’t leaving here. You do know that, don’t you? We’ll find out soon enough where the diamonds are. We can trace your movements today, speak to people you’ve spoken to. We will find out your plan. One way or another. Even if it means spending some time interrogating the boy—thoroughly—we’ll find out.”

The final part of the sentence hung in the air.

Windsor finally closed the file on the desk.

“John?” he continued as he stood from the table, his voice louder now, more certain. “Make no mistake, you are going to die here, in this place. It can either be a good death—you’ll be remembered as a patriot, I’ll see to that—or it can be a bad death, a difficult death, a long death. Do you understand?”

Rossett looked at Leigh, who folded his arms grimly as Windsor spoke.

“Don’t make this difficult, John. We will find what we are looking for whether you tell us or not. There is an easy way and a hard way. Please . . . I implore you, choose the easy way.”

Windsor crossed to the door, which Leigh opened for him. He left the room without a backward glance.

Leigh paused, then smiled at Rossett.

“I’ll not be long. Don’t go anywhere, will you?” Leigh left the room and closed the door behind him. Rossett looked at the guard and then lowered his head onto the tabletop to think. His forehead rested on the wood that had been warmed by his arms and he closed his eyes to shut out the world, but thoughts bounced around like wasps in a nest and he couldn’t focus.

It was going to be a long night.

Chapter 27

J
ACOB WAS COLD.
The smelly old blanket the man had given him was too thin, and, when he pulled it to cover his shoulders, his feet popped out the other end and his bare legs got goose bumps. He opened one eye and looked at the men playing cards across the room. They looked rough and he didn’t like them.

One of them glanced over, and Jacob shut his eyes quickly and pretended to be asleep. He lay still before he slowly opened his eyes again, so slowly at first that he was looking through his long eyelashes like a tiger through the long grass in Africa, like the one his mother had shown him in a book.

He thought about his mother, and about how she had once gently stroked her fingertip across his eyelashes and teased him.

“My beautiful man has the eyelashes of a beautiful woman!” she had said before suddenly tickling his belly.

He missed his mother.

The men across the room started to laugh, but not in the same way as his mother had. When they laughed loudly they sounded angry, so he closed his eyes again and wished they would go away.

Jacob
really
didn’t like the men.

He rolled over to face the wall. Maybe he’d see grandfather tomorrow.

He hoped Grandfather was all right. He’d done and said everything the old man had told him.

He remembered the words exactly.
“When somebody asks, you tell them what?”
The old man had sat on the end of his bed and made Jacob stand with his back to the fireplace, repeating the words.

“I tell them there is more treasure, but I don’t have it.”

“And then what do you say?”

“I tell them the name.”

“And what is the name?”

“Rossett.”

“And then what do you say?”

“I tell them it is a puzzle and that I must go with them.”

“And then what?”

“I never tell them the rest until it is time.”

Jacob smiled as he remembered his grandfather’s face. The old man had wrinkled his nose, smiled, and then thrown his arms wide as Jacob ran toward him.

“Good boy. You must never forget this, you must always remember and practice the puzzle in your mind so you will remember . . . yes?”

Jacob had nodded as he had buried his head in his grandfather’s shoulder, smelling the worn warm cardigan.

Lying on the bed right now, he imagined he could smell his grandfather again, pretended his grandfather was still with him, keeping him safe.

“My treasure,”
his grandfather had said as he held him close.
“My beautiful, beautiful treasure.”