World War Two Will Not Take Place (25 page)

‘Yes, you do now,' Paterin said.

‘This is what I meant by “tested” – information must always be tested, where, of course, it is possible to test it,' Fallows replied. ‘Knowing your habits, we could quite easily arrange this test. But, if we can so easily arrange this test, it is as well to recognize that others might be aware of your habits, also. This is why I referred earlier to precautions.'

‘Yes,' Baillie said, ‘we know about them definitely now.'

‘But we can assure you that whatever happens to them it will not take place here, in this wood, or anywhere near the stables,' Fallows said. ‘This area is special to you. Others may have observed that. I don't mean Nicholas and myself, or Mair and Schiff. Stable staff. Ramblers. Poachers. Gamekeepers. If something happened to them in this vicinity, inquiries might be directed towards you, Mrs Gane-Torr and Mr Paterin, as regulars to this ground. This we don't want, do we?'

‘What do you mean, “if something happened”?' she said.

‘Yes, if something happened – now we have the confirmation from both of you,' Fallows said. ‘We would stress, though, that it would be better to vary time and place for your outings and so on.'

Mrs Gane-Torr and Paterin remounted and rode away.

Fallows called out: ‘Don't worry about us. No, really. We'll find our own way back, thanks. We're trained in outdoor survival. Many's the hedgehog I've cooked in clay for supper in the forest over a fire of twigs.'

ELEVEN

E
ven before he'd arrived in London, a week or so ago, Andreas Valk had known that two middle- or low-rank officers from British Intelligence had been deputed to look after him and ultimately drive him over the processional route proposed for the start of the state visit. Valk was pretty familiar with the route already, from marked street-maps sent by the British to Berlin for examination and comment; perhaps for amendment. But that was on paper only. He needed physically to see and slowly travel the few kilometres, noting the type of buildings, road widths, spots where the cavalcade might have to cut its already low pace – say a roundabout or sharp bend – this drop in speed certain to make targeting easier. According to the maps submitted by London, the route at no time passed beneath a bridge or through a tunnel, and he would like to confirm this now with these two British attendants in the Daimler.

Valk had sent Mair and Schiff off on their special inquiries. He'd kept the first week or so of his own London stay fairly blank, in case he was invited to private meetings with Stephen Bilson, head of the Section dealing with state visit security, or even with the overall head of the British Secret Intelligence Service himself. After all, Valk had come to London on a very significant and sensitive duty, involving not only the life and safety of Adolf Hitler, but quite possibly of the British king, also, who would be in the same vehicle, perhaps with his consort. However, the British adored secrecy – everyone knew this – though they would probably call it discretion or unobtrusiveness. Valk didn't hear from Bilson or the SIS overlord. Britain's top spies liked to believe their identities, their faces, were not known outside a privileged clique, and a run-of-the-mill German major could not expect to be invited into such company. They'd probably be shocked to see the fatness and graphicness of their personal dossiers in the Confidential Records and Profiles room in Berlin.

Valk thought it would have been interesting to meet Stephen Bilson, “SB” as he was called by the underlings he eventually sent with the Daimler. Strange: Valk and Bilson, two enemy veterans of the war, and actually at the Somme simultaneously, according to Bilson's dossier, but now jointly helping manage this wonderful, positive, radiantly friendly project. Valk greatly wished to believe that this proved optimism about the world might be possible, and even intelligent. Was the natural, irresistible evolution from evil towards good, and not the miserable reverse? The dossier pictures of Bilson covered a long period. Official British army portraits and groups showed him from his time as a private soldier, then through various ranks, non-commissioned and commissioned, until he finished as a lieutenant-colonel.

In the earliest photographs he usually displayed a small, slightly deferential, stupid smile. He looked the kind of soldier who would believe the words of a demented song of the time that Valk had often heard British prisoners chant, and even soldiers across no-man's-land in the enemy trenches. It said troops ought to pack up their troubles in their old kitbags and smile – ‘old', Valk thought, meaning not so much old as familiar and consoling. This ditty declared the whole secret of winning the war was smiles. ‘What's the use of worrying?' the song asked. ‘It never was worthwhile.' As long as you had a Lucifer – that is, a match – to light your fag – a cigarette – you should smoke and smile, smile, smile. That slang use of Lucifer aimed to reduce the vileness of Satan and hell by turning them into a simple, brief bit of flame to get a smoke going. But at the Somme, British troops – German troops, too – wondered a bit whether there really was much to smile about, even if they had a dry match for their cigarettes. It was hard to think then that devilishness and evil could be made of no account by singing and smiling. Occasionally, though, Valk would think: they won the war, so perhaps smiling
was
a secret weapon. More likely, the Americans helped them do it. Maybe the Americans believed in smiles, too.

It was hard to credit that the rather baffled looking SB in the early photographs could be an expert head-smashing, chest-smashing sniper. Of course, this word, ‘sniper', and the talent it described, worried Valk now, and sometimes worrying could be very worthwhile and extremely necessary, regardless of the song. You couldn't pack up your troubles in your old kitbag and forget them if one of the troubles – possible troubles – was an accomplished sniper like SB, who might still have the skills. Some of the buildings on the route were made for such skills, and for the cold, predatory ruthlessness SB must have had just over twenty years ago.

Strong information came that the Prime Minister and SB met confidentially quite often since Munich. What did that indicate? Although it might be routine for Chamberlain to see the overall chief of the Intelligence Service now and then, SB was head only of a Section, though admittedly a Section that took in a lot of functions, at home and overseas. Occasionally, as Valk understood it, Lionel Paterin, member of the Defence Cabinet, would be included in these meetings. His obvious closeness to the Prime Minister might be what interested those above Knecht in the affair with businessman's wife, Elizabeth Gane-Torr.

Maybe it was odd that Paterin and the Prime Minister should be close now. Paterin, after all, more or less called for an immediate war; Chamberlain had travelled and worked unflaggingly for peace. Perhaps, though, Chamberlain had been forced to change. How would it be if he had come to believe what many in Britain seemed to believe – Winston Churchill, for instance, and Eden and Vansittart and Paterin – that Munich added up to nothing at all, really? Did the British Prime Minister want to get corrected on what he saw now as a pathetic error? Bilson possibly looked to him like someone who could do that job by destruction of the man who, in Chamberlain's revised view, had fooled him. Had he decided Munich was null, but that, nevertheless, if the violent removal of the Führer could be arranged, it might mean the second world war would not take place?

Possibly Bilson had advised the Prime Minister to go to Munich and accept whatever deal he could, so as to get time to rearm. Did Bilson think now that he owed Chamberlain a show of regret for counselling so badly, and that to put a pair of bullets into the Führer could be the way to do it? Snipers, he knew, were taught always to get off a couple of rounds, and not, out of vanity, to rely on one. Conceivably, without any explicit prompting or pleading from Chamberlain, Bilson could secretly conclude he had a duty to kill Adolf Hitler in a style Bilson had been outstanding at.

To Valk, this appeared a disgusting notion, of course. To Stephen Bilson, though, it might seem natural, inescapable, a duty touched with what the French called
gloire
. And who could have a better chance of carrying out that duty? Evidently, Bilson had been given responsibility for security during the visit, although theoretically his Section's sphere was in foreign assignments only. He had the power to arrange matters to suit his purpose perfectly on the procession day. And, most likely, he'd have his own covert method for drawing a weapon and ammunition. Or the armourer might connive. Well, naturally the armourer would. Bilson gave the orders, and this, after all, was a secret intelligence Service, its customary and approved business clandestine and autonomous. It would be a very unusual intelligence outfit if one of the bosses couldn't pick up a gun and ammunition on the quiet when the urge took him.

Today, the two expected members of Bilson's Section came to the embassy in central London to pick Valk up in the big car. Valk, Mair and Schiff had been given rooms at number seven Carlton House Terrace, over the Mall from St. James's park, a very select area of the capital. The embassy now took in the spacious properties, numbers seven, eight and nine of the Terrace, number seven mainly for military attachés. When Valk last came to London he'd stayed at a nearby hotel, but number seven had since been incorporated into the embassy complex and also accommodated special visitors. Could there be any mission more special than preservation of the Führer? As Valk would have expected in an embassy, protocol was excellent and his rooms could be described as virtually a suite, whereas the others occupied boxy little hutches in a different wing. These arrangements seemed to Valk brilliantly suitable.

The embassy had a fine history. It used to be called the Prussia House. Valk liked that. The name brought solidity and renown. In a front garden was the headstone of the grave of a previous ambassador's Alsatian dog, Giro. An inscription read: ‘Giro, a true companion.' Inside the main building framed photographs on a wall gave scenes from the funeral of that ambassador, Leopold von Hoesch. He'd died while still ambassador a few years ago, and the pictures showed Grenadier Guardsmen carrying the coffin, while embassy staff thrust out their right arms in salute.

Valk found these photographs excellent. They showed respect. Valk understood that a full nineteen-gun artillery salute had accompanied the funeral. He discounted absolutely tales alleging that, as well as his regard for Giro, von Hoesch had been fond of Guardsmen, findable off-duty and short of money in pubs, and that their funeral role was an affectionate farewell. A cruel and idiotic slander: the coffin party must have been arranged by highly placed officials, and in such gestures Britain had wisely and honourably recognized emergence of the new Germany. That dignified ceremony, the corpse borne by soldiers from one of Britain's elite regiments, surely looked forward to another, even greater, ceremony: the state visit procession, though not to do with death, but with a magnificent, positive, promising future. No, not to do with death, not death. His task? To ensure the procession told the world of that magnificent, positive, promising future, not of a death by clever sniper-fire smashing the Führer's face.

Or would bad injury be worse? What if the sniper's accuracy had faded with time, and the Führer were hit, but not killed – became a permanent cripple, or mentally a cabbage? That cabbage was only a figure of speech, but, momentarily, to his embarrassment and shame, Valk had a vision of a pale-green, actual cabbage with a small black moustache fixed to its leaves. True, America's Roosevelt functioned from a wheelchair after polio. But Valk found it terrible to think of Hitler as flagrantly infirm in any way: the well-known uncontrollable farting need not be apparent to any but those close. Impossible to imagine a Führer who drooled, or whose features had been reconstructed, after a fashion, on the operating theatre, though with the best will in the world; and the best will in the world could be more or less guaranteed in these circumstances.

Valk had been told in advance who would accompany him in the Daimler over the proposed processional route. He had their names as Oliver Fallows and Nicholas Baillie. According to Claus Weigel, the names were authentic. He had good dossiers on both. Weigel ran Passport Control in the embassy, and Valk naturally expected him to be up to scratch on the British intelligence Service.