The Invasion of 1950 (39 page)

Baldwin laughed as he altered course and fell in with the remainder of his squadron, slipping down into attack formation. The Germans surely knew that wasn't going to work very well. It rarely did; the Germans and the British might have deployed radar-guided guns and proximity fuses, but unless the explosion was very close to the aircraft, it wasn’t often enough to bring it down. Their fighters were in just as much danger as the British fighters. It would be amusing if the Germans lost an aircraft through their own ground fire, which was something of an occupational hazard in any air force.

“Red Squadron, engage,” the Wing Commander said. The wary excitement in his tone made Baldwin smile to himself. “Your target is the carrier.”

Baldwin didn’t say what came to his lips; they had all known what their target was, the only ship that posed a real threat to the land-based aircraft. He saw out of the corner of his eye a German fighter trying to take a bead on him before covering fire from one of the Meteors blew it apart, shaking his aircraft like a leaf. The lead aircraft tilted and dove towards the carrier; a moment later Baldwin followed, feeling the sudden loss of gravity as he plummeted down towards the German carrier, and smiled as he reached for his lever.

The German carrier looked little different from any British carrier; he could see a handful of aircraft on the deck and men scurrying around like mice, all-too-aware of the flight of British aircraft falling on their position. The German guns were still trying to shoot at them, but it no longer mattered; if one of the British aircraft lost control and smashed into the carrier, the result was likely to be the same as if the bombs had hit and the aircraft had escaped. At the last possible moment, he yanked back the stick and pulled the bomb release cord, sending the bombs falling down towards the carrier’s deck. A few seconds after they were released, a rocket ignited on each of the bombs, forcing them down towards the enemy deck. In theory, they would punch right through the deck and detonate inside the ship.

The aircraft fought him as he struggled to pull out of his dive, almost as if it wanted to crash into the ship or take him down into the waters. In the space of a full second he pulled right out of his dive and flew right at one of the German battleships. It was one of their older ships, he saw now, the
Deutschland
or…he couldn’t remember the name of the other ship. He came close enough to the enemy ship to see the bridge crew staring at him, and then he was away, rising up into the air to avoid any fire from the German ships…

A flash of light caught his attention as the German carrier went up. Carriers were uniquely vulnerable, even the armoured British designs, because by their very function, they stored vast quantities of fuel and ammunition, far too close to the deck. If only one bomb had smashed into the carrier’s deck, it might well have been fatal…and each aircraft had intended to release three bombs. The German ship literally disintegrated.

His aircraft hopped now as he rose higher, no longer held down by the weight of the bombs. He fell in with the rest of his squadron, noting the loss of four of his friends with a corner of his mind. There was no way of knowing what had killed them, or even if they had made a mistake rather than been shot down by the Germans, but he knew what he would have preferred to believe. The second flight of Gannets was approaching now, flying low and preparing for torpedo attacks, and he saw the German battleships trying to evade. They knew what the primitive Swordfish aircraft had done to the
Bismarck
and what their countrymen had done to Home Fleet. One by one, the aircraft made their attack runs, concentrating on the largest German battleship, and Baldwin whooped as it slowly heeled over and started to sink.

“All aircraft, return to base,” the Group Commander ordered. Baldwin nodded; without any weapons, but their cannons, there was little point in remaining around and strafing the surviving German ships. They would reload and perhaps head out to engage the survivors again, but if the Germans managed to get back within range of land-based air, the RAF wouldn’t risk massive losses to get the remaining ships. Besides, a few British submarines might be lurking along their path now.  The Germans would have to run the gauntlet to get home.

He checked his instrument panel again before relaxing slightly as the flight returned to base. The handful of surviving German aircraft harried them for a few moments, and then lit off towards the east, hoping to reach a German controlled airfield on Denmark or Norway before their fuel ran out and condemned them to a watery grave. He hoped they would make it, surprisingly; the odds of them getting picked up in the cold sea were very low. Coastal Command did try to pick up RAF pilots who had landed in the drink, and the Germans didn’t shoot at the seaplanes as long as the RAF left their rescue aircraft alone, but the odds were still very much against their survival. Out so far from German bases, or British bases for that matter, they would be lucky to last an hour before succumbing to the cold and fading away.

“All aircraft, be advised that we have a major raid inbound,” the Group Commander said, suddenly. His voice broke into Baldwin’s thoughts as they approached Scapa Flow. The Germans had clearly decided to take a break from pounding at the defences to destroy as many as possible of the FAA’s aircraft. Baldwin checked his fuel gauge and cursed; the Gannet had quite extraordinary endurance, but he had only a few minutes before his fuel gage slipped into the red. The Meteors could top up from the tankers but that wasn’t an option for the Gannets. “Prepare for orders.”

There was a long pause. Someone down on the ground would be working out what to do next. “Red and Blue Squadrons, land at once on your airfields and taxi immediately into the hardened shelters,” the Group Commander ordered finally. Baldwin couldn’t argue with the logic, or with the determination to preserve as many aircraft as possible. “Fall into emergency landing pattern and land at will.”

He watched as Red One dove towards the airfield, followed by Red Two, and then Baldwin slipped into his own position. Emergency landing routines were rarely required outside a few drills each year; they involved each aircraft landing within seconds of each other, carrying the risk of a collision and damage to the runway in the explosion. Red One descended down…down…and touched the runway; Red Two followed a moment later, flying through where Red One had been, just as the leader moved towards the revetment. The revetments had been built during the first blitz on Britain, back in 1940, and should withstand anything short of a direct hit. Baldwin caught his breath as he landed, bounced down the runway, and finally came to a halt. There was no time to waste. He gunned the engine gently, moving along the taxiway as Red Four landed behind him, and he steered directly for the revetment.

A flash of light caught his eye as the Germans raged over the harbour. The RAF, in an attempt to lock the barn door after the horse had bolted, had moved several more fighter squadrons into Scapa Flow, but they didn’t present the Germans with enough problems to prevent them from strafing the runways as the FAA aircraft tried to land. Baldwin found himself gasping out a prayer as he concentrated on driving right into the hanger and getting under cover away from German cannon fire. The Germans behind him were intent on completing the destruction of the airfield and the remaining facilities in the harbour. Too drained, too emotionally spent to go on, Baldwin sat back in his aircraft and waited patiently for the bombardment to end.

He smiled, suddenly, as he realised what they’d done. They’d sunken a German aircraft carrier and a battleship, all done at the cost of only a few lives. However they looked at it, it was a victory by anyone’s standards and one that would resound with the best traditions of the Royal Navy. In these darkest days, he felt, it was a symbol of hope.

They needed all the hope they could get.

Felixstowe, England

The sun beat down upon Gregory Davall
’s back as he took the box from the person in front of him and passed it to the person behind him, and then the next, and then the next, passing the boxes in what felt like an endless stream. He hadn’t been into the dockyards proper for years – even when visiting Janine, he hadn’t been allowed into the dockyards themselves – now, standing on the docks, he silently cursed the Germans under his breath. Hot sweat poured down his back and he wished, silently, for the drink of water, but their hour wasn’t over yet. The boxes were passed on to the rear, where German quartermasters loaded them onto lorries that drove off into the distance and then went off, he supposed, to the front lines.

The Germans had bagged him yesterday, sending one of the policemen around to people on a list who didn’t have anything to do on a day-to-day basis, rounding them all up and ordering them to help with the unloading. They had been very polite, but very firm, in a manner that had given Kate chills. They had told him that he had a choice between working for them or being shipped off to Germany to a work camp, where he would be punished for failing to uphold his responsibilities as a German citizen. Davall had seen no choice but to comply, and joined nearly two hundred other men working to unload the boxes from the pallets, all the while trying to see how the experience could best be used to hurt the Germans.

If he could have destroyed the port and its facilities, he would have done so in a second, but there was nothing like enough high explosive in the cache to inflict more than a little damage. The docks were meant to have been sabotaged by the Home Guard and everything important removed or destroyed, but he’d heard enough chatter from the Germans to be certain that they had taken the docks almost completely intact. It irked him that it had been so easy for the invaders – the guards seemed to think that the English had been asking for it or that the defenders had been betrayed – but there was little that he could do about it until nightfall.

The whistle finally blew, and the workers gathered around the German sergeant. He passed out payment in German occupation script. They had been promised it was only temporary until Britain was completely conquered and brought into the
Reich
. Davall didn’t like the printed notes, with a neat image of Hitler himself on the back. The Germans had made it clear that it was occupation script or nothing. They’d informed the shopkeepers and farmers that the script was legitimate currency in the occupied zone and pasted up exchange rates, setting the script at a slightly higher value than British money. Davall suspected that the Germans were trying to bring them all into their monetary system, but there was no choice. Without it, how could he feed Kate and James?

“You will report back here tomorrow,” the German sergeant finally said and dismissed them. The Germans had more warm bodies than they really knew what to do with, although Davall suspected that it wouldn’t be that long until they had the entire population working for them full time. Now, however, they had the working hours divided up into sections and distributed them fairly evenly among the non-working population. “No work, no pay.”

“Thank you,” Davall murmured with the rest of them, as unenthusiastically as possible, and slowly followed the others out of the secure compound and into the outer dockyards. He knew who he needed to see but he wasn't sure if he wanted to see her. His body was aching and in very real pain. He hadn’t been pushed like that since he had gone though the Grey Wolves training program and the Germans had pushed him right to the limits.

He passed a group of Germans and turned right into the entertainment street. The usual cluster of bars greeted him, along with a babble of happy conversation, most of it in German. The Germans had flooded into the area, and most of them were trying to have as much fun as possible during their leave periods. They danced, enjoyed some feminine company, and went back to their units feeling much happier with the world. Davall would have liked to have shorn some of the younger girls of their hair – some of them had husbands or relatives in the army or Home Guard – but he could think of nothing more likely to provoke a German reaction.

The brothel looked to be doing a roaring business as usual. He wasn't surprised to see some of his fellow workers in the lines, waiting for their chance at a girl. Some of the men were married, and it was on the tip of his tongue to rebuke them before remembering that he was going to see a girl himself, and to all eyes, he was doing the same as them.

“She should be free in a moment, ducks,” the madam said, as she expertly relieved a bunch of Germans of their money and pointed them all into one room. Davall caught sight of a naked girl on her knees before the door closed and shuddered inwardly. The pleasures of the flesh, his father had told him, were a snare for the soul; that was doubly true when the slightest mistake could cost him his life. The door opened and a German, buckling up his trousers, exited in the direction of the showers.

“She’s all yours, my dear,” the madam said, and winked at him.

Davall kept his face carefully blank as he opened the door and stepped inside, careful to close the door behind him. Janine was sitting on the bed, as she had before, but this time there was a nasty bruise on the side of her face. Davall was over to her side before he was aware he had moved, examining the bruise and shaking his head. It looked as if someone had punched her.

“Janine,” he said, barely above a whisper. The noise of male shouts and catcalls rose up from the next room, and he flinched, despite himself. “What happened to you?”

“That one wanted it rough,” Janine said, as she pushed him away and fingered her wound. He was suddenly, devastatingly, aware of her – not of her nakedness, but of her vulnerability. She was nothing to him, or certainly she was supposed to be nothing to him, but he cared about her. He would have extracted her from the brothel if he could have done so, but where could he take her where she would be safe? Her hands touched her breasts and he saw more bruises against her pale flesh. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

The pain in her voice betrayed her words, but there was nothing that Davall could do. “You wanted to see me?” he asked softly. He didn’t want to talk business, but maybe she would take comfort in finding a way to hurt the Germans. “Did you find out a date for the attack?”

“I found someone who might know, as you requested,” Janine said. Davall felt his blood run cold; he had proposed it, when he had had the idea, half in jest. “There’s an SS officer, one of a group assigned to oversee this port, charged with providing security to the convoys that transport supplies from here to the port. He came here a week ago, chose me and…”

She smirked. “Very unimaginative man, for which I should be grateful,” she admitted. “He didn’t want much more than for me to lean back and think of Germany at first, but then…well, let’s just say I didn’t know SS men were allowed to be lazy.”

Davall felt his face blush red and half-covered his face with his hand. “I see,” he said, drawing his own conclusions. “How does this allow us to get him alone?”

Janine flashed a grin that would have done credit to a tiger. “The bastard likes his times with me so much that he’s actually hired me for the coming weekend,” she said. “He’s taken over a cottage just outside of town and has staffed it with a cook, but no one else as far as I could determine; he wants me there for a private party.”

Her breasts shook as she giggled. “I don’t know why he bothers,” she said, through quiet chuckles. “He never wants anything he couldn’t get right here.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like the thought of sloppy seconds,” Davall said, shook at the thought. It, more than the fading memory of Kate, reminded him that he didn’t really want Janine as anything more than an ally and a fellow Grey Wolf. “Did he ask you to bring anything with you?”

“No,” Janine said. She leaned closer. “You’re going to have to act like you’re not with me, so remember; you’re going to have to treat me as a possible enemy, understand?”

“Yes,” Davall said slowly. He leaned forwards and gave Janine a hug. “I understand.”

“Good,” Janine said, her hands gently touching his crotch, “Could I tempt you…?”

Davall understood the underlying message – she didn’t want to be alone or go back to customers who didn’t really think that whores had feelings – but he couldn’t stay with her much longer. If a German soldier decided that he had taken long enough and burst in on them, how could they explain him being fully clothed? The risk was just too great.

He kissed her on the forehead, but shook his head. “No,” he said, softly. “I’ll see you afterwards, when all this is over.”

The outside felt hotter than ever when he left the brothel and walked back towards his house. Life was returning to something like normality now that someone had cut down the bodies of the two hung men and buried them in the graveyard, but the permanent presence of the Germans was a constant niggling reminder of their position in the
Reich
. Davall was stopped and asked for his papers twice on his way home. The sight of five men and three women who had forgotten their papers, clearing rubble under German supervision, reminded him of the fate of anyone who showed the slightest hint of defiance. They were the lucky ones; they, at least, were still in Britain. He’d heard from other Grey Wolves that a line of British prisoners, taken in the war, had been driven in from the front lines one night, loaded on-board a German ship, and sent over to the continent. God alone knew what was happening to them there.

His real place of employment had been closed down for the moment. The Germans had visited with an SS squad, interrogated the owner – they’d found something really suspicious about the fact that it was a communal ownership – and ordered it closed down, along with the local newspaper and several other businesses. It had puzzled Davall at first, and in fact it had been Kate who pointed out that the supply shop for electronics could be quite useful if someone wanted to build a radio or a bomb.

He guessed that they were lucky that the Germans hadn’t rounded up everyone who worked there on suspicion, but for the moment they had inadvertently given him an excuse to go walking in the daytime. If he had no place of work, he’d argued, when the Germans had asked pointed questions, his wife wouldn’t want him around the house all day, would she? So far, it was working, provided he didn’t try to go out into the countryside. That was still off-limits.

The Bramble Cottages were right on the edge of town, a set of five cottages that had been built by a developer keen on hiring them out to families for a week, each one the very model of what a countryside house should be like. As far as Davall knew, they had all been empty when the invasion began, and therefore they had all been marked down as commandeered by the Germans. They hadn’t even won the war yet, he saw, and they had already begun to distribute the spoils of victory, including giving each of the cottages to a particular SS officer.
Standartenfuhrer
Ludwig Stahl didn’t seem to merit a cottage, or maybe he hadn’t bothered to try to claim one for himself, but
Brigadefuhrer
Franz Deininger, logistics officer, certainly had. It was convenient, perhaps too convenient, and Davall was seriously tempted just to pass up on the chance to interrogate the SS officer.

He grimaced to himself. The Germans had relaxed slightly after they'd shot the Davidson family and a handful of others, but unless they were fools, they probably knew that the Davidson family hadn’t really been involved with the Grey Wolves. They had shot the wrong people and heads would roll in Berlin – if Berlin cared – and the Grey Wolves remained intact…and the Germans would know that. Had they decided to create a fake
Brigadefuhrer
– a Brigadier General – and dangle him in front of their noses, in hopes of taking a Grey Wolf prisoner? That would mean that…

His mind ticked over the possibilities as he walked away from the cottages. The behaviours of people under occupation, he’d been warned, could be unpredictable; some of them might even betray their fellows just for a crust of bread, or some favour from their occupiers, or maybe even for revenge. The British Intelligence Service had studied, carefully, the behaviour of Frenchmen and Danes under German rule and had noticed some strange trends. Those who the Germans considered to be Aryan and treated better than the non-Aryans tended to respond well to their treatment, sometimes even falling completely into the German orbit. That was unsurprising…

But it didn’t stop there. Ordinary Frenchmen, people with little to look forward to but permanent subordination to the New Order, collaborated at will. Not just at gunpoint, which would have been understandable, but seemingly without any compulsion at all. Their world-view had been altered to the point where German supremacy seemed to be permanent. Those Frenchmen who disagreed either spent their lives in futile acts of rebellion or left for Algeria. Davall wondered, as he passed yet another German patrol, if that would be Grey Wolves' fate as well. Would James, one day, betray his own father? Had one of the Grey Wolves already broken and betrayed them?