Brigadier Dougal Munro’s flat in Haston Place was only ten minutes’ walk from the London headquarters of SOE in Baker Street. As head of Section D, he needed to be on call twenty-four hours a day and besides the normal phone had a secure line routed directly to his office. It was that particular phone he answered on that late November evening as he sat by the fire working on some files.
‘Carter here, Brigadier. Just back from Norfolk.’
‘Good,’ Munro told him. ‘Call in on your way home and tell me about it.’
He put the phone down and went and got himself a malt whisky, a squat, powerful-looking man with white hair who wore steel-rimmed spectacles. Strictly a non-professional, his rank of brigadier was simply for purposes of authority in certain quarters and at sixty-five, an age when most men faced retirement, even at Oxford, the war had been the saving of him, that was the blunt truth. He was thinking about that when the doorbell rang and he admitted Captain Jack Carter.
‘You look frozen, Jack. Help yourself to a drink.’
Jack Carter leaned his walking stick against a chair and shrugged off his greatcoat. He was in the uniform of a captain in the Green Howards, the ribbon of the Military Cross on his battledress. His false leg was a legacy of Dunkirk and he limped noticeably as he went to the drinks cupboard and poured a whisky.
‘So, what’s the situation at Studley Constable?’ Munro asked.
‘Back to normal, sir. All the German paratroopers buried in a common grave in the churchyard.’
‘No marker of course?’
‘Not at the moment, but they’re a funny lot, those villagers. They actually seem to think quite highly of Steiner.’
‘Yes, well, one of his sergeants was killed saving the lives of two village children who fell into the mill race, remember. In fact, that single action was the one thing that blew their cover, caused the failure of the entire operation.’
‘And he did let the villagers go before the worst of the fighting started,’ Carter said.
‘Exactly. Have you got the file on him?’
Carter got his briefcase and extracted a couple of sheets stapled together. Munro examined it. ‘Oberstleutnant Kurt Steiner, age twenty-seven. Remarkable record. Crete, North Africa, Stalingrad. Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves.’
‘I’m always intrigued by his mother, sir. Boston socialite. What they call “Boston Brahmin”.’
‘All very fine, Jack, but don’t forget his father was a German general and a damn good one. Now, what about Steiner? How is he?’
‘There seems no reason to doubt a complete recovery. There’s an RAF hospital for bomber crews with burns problems just outside Norwich. Rather small. Used to be a nursing home. We have Steiner there under secure guard. The cover story is that he’s a downed Luftwaffe pilot. Rather convenient that German paratroopers and Luftwaffe aircrews wear roughly the same uniform.’
‘And his wounds?’
‘He was damn lucky there, sir. One round hit him in the right shoulder, at the rear. The second was a heart shot, but it turned on the breastbone. The surgeon doesn’t think it will take long, especially as he’s in remarkable physical shape.’
Munro went and got another small whisky. ‘Let’s go over what we know, Jack. The whole business, the plot to kidnap Churchill, the planning. Everything was done without Admiral Canaris’s knowledge?’
‘Apparently so, sir, all Himmler’s doing. He pressured Max Radl at Abwehr headquarters to plan it all behind the Admiral’s back. At least that’s what our sources in Berlin tell us.’
‘He knows all about it now, though?’ Munro said. ‘The Admiral I mean?’
‘Apparently, sir, and not best pleased, not that there’s anything he can do about it. Can’t exactly go running to the Führer.’
‘And neither can Himmler,’ Munro said. ‘Not when the whole project was mounted without the Führer’s knowledge.’
‘Of course Himmler did give Max Radl a letter of authorization signed by Hitler himself,’ Carter said.
‘Purporting to be signed by Hitler, Jack. I bet that was the first thing to go into the fire. No, Himmler won’t want to advertise this one.’
‘And we don’t exactly want it on the front of the Daily Express, sir. German paratroopers trying to grab the Prime Minister, battling it out with American Rangers in an English country village?’
‘Yes, it wouldn’t exactly help the war effort.’ Munro looked at the file again. ‘This IRA chap, Devlin. Quite a character. You say that your information is that he was wounded?’
‘That’s right, sir. He was in hospital in Holland and simply took off one night. We understand he’s in Lisbon.’
‘Probably hoping to make it to the States in some way. Are we keeping an eye on him? Who’s the SOE’s man in Lisbon?’
‘Major Arthur Frear, sir. Military attaché at the Embassy. He’s been notified,’ Carter told him.
‘Good.’ Munro nodded.
‘So what do we do about Steiner, sir?’
Munro frowned, thinking about it. ‘The moment he’s fit enough, bring him up to London. Do we still house German prisoners of war in the Tower?’
‘Only occasionally, sir, transients passing through the small hospital. Not like the early days of the war when most of the captured U-boat people were housed there.’
‘And Hess.’
‘A special case, sir?’
‘All right. We’ll have Steiner at the Tower. He can stay in the hospital till we decide on a safe house. Anything else?’
‘One development, sir. Steiner’s father was involved, as you know, in a series of army plots aimed at assassinating Hitler. The punishment is statutory. Hanging by piano wire and by the Führer’s orders the whole thing is recorded on film.’
‘How unpleasant,’ Munro said.
‘The thing is, sir, we’ve received a film of General Steiner’s death. One of our Berlin sources got it out via Sweden. I don’t know if you’ll want to see it. It’s not very nice.’
Munro was angry, got up and paced the room. He paused suddenly, a slight smile on his mouth. ‘Tell me, Jack, is that little toad Vargas still at the Spanish Embassy?’
‘José Vargas, sir, trade attaché. We haven’t used him in a while.’
‘But German Intelligence are convinced he’s on their side?’
‘The only side Vargas is on is the one with the biggest bank book, sir. Works through his cousin at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin.’
‘Excellent.’ Munro was smiling now. ‘Tell him to pass the word to Berlin that we have Kurt Steiner. Tell him to say in the Tower of London. Sounds very dramatic. Most important, he makes sure that both Canaris and Himmler get the information. That should get them stirred up.’
‘What on earth are you playing at, sir?’ Carter asked.
‘War, Jack, war. Now have another drink, then get yourself off home to bed. You’re going to have a full day tomorrow.’
Near Paderborn in Westphalia in the small town of Wewelsburg was the castle of that name which Heinrich Himmler had taken over from the local council in 1934. His original intention