There was silence for several seconds, then Drax said, his voice desperately weary, ‘I don’t know anything. That’s how we do things, on a need-to-know basis only. I haven’t a clue why the Americans want Muncaster, I’ve no idea.’
Gunther nodded. ‘We know more than you think.’ He took a deep breath. Time for his bluff, while Drax was in a weakened, shocked state. He said, ‘You were planning to leave the country. A submarine, we believe, from the Sussex coast. The coasts are being watched, we’ll pick them up.’
Gunther saw from Drax’s surprised expression that his guesswork had been right; this was what they were going to do.
‘How do you know all this?’ Drax looked appalled.
Gunther didn’t answer, just inclined his head. The Englishman was silent for a moment, then lowered his head and began to cry, weeping like a child, his shoulders shaking, all that proud reserve gone. He had broken. Gessler smirked. Gunther closed his eyes.
‘If I tell you the little I know will you let my parents go?’ Drax’s voice was toneless and dead. ‘You seem to know all of it already.’
‘Of course. We’ve no further use for them.’
Drax’s shoulders sagged. ‘I don’t know where we were going to be picked up from, except that the rendezvous is only an hour from here.’
Gunther considered. An hour to the coast. Central Sussex. A lot of cliffs there, which narrowed down the places they could be picked up from. He said, ‘Thank you.’ He gestured at the wall where the screen had been. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that, I really am.’
Drax said, ‘All that you know – who told you?’
‘I’d worked it out; the look on your face confirmed I was right. And now we can narrow the pickup point down further.’
Drax’s head fell hopelessly forward, the way people’s often did after they broke. Gunther nodded to Gessler, who followed him and Syme out of the cell, leaving Kapp on guard. They halted a few feet along the corridor. Up ahead a young SS man was sitting at his desk, filling in forms. The telephone on his desk rang and he picked it up.
Gessler said, ‘Well done, Hoth. That was a masterpiece of interrogation. Admirable. We could turn this round after all.’
‘Thank you. I would ask you, please make sure the guards keep a careful eye on him. He’ll be a suicide risk. Guilt will come now.’
Syme said, ‘You bluffed him. About the submarine.’
‘Yes. We can tell our people on the Isle of Wight to look for an American submarine off the Sussex Coast. He’s not sophisticated. People like him are brave, but they have too narrow a focus. Since being captured he was probably thinking only about how to bear great pain himself. He would have held out a long time.’
Gessler laughed. ‘You had him crying like a child. Like a little girl.’
Gunther said sadly, ‘My brother used to say that for him that was the hardest thing to see. When grown men cried like children, kneeling beside the graves his men had made them dig.’
Gessler frowned at the unexpected remark. He said a little stiffly, ‘Well, keep me closely informed.’ He nodded at Syme and walked away down the corridor, boots clacking on the marble. The young SS man had put the phone down and was standing up. His face was very pale. He saluted Gessler, then said something to him in a low voice.
Gunther turned to Syme. ‘You need to work out the best methods for each individual, you see. I learned that a long time ago.’ He saw that Syme’s face had a film of sweat on it, he was blinking fast. He looked as though he might faint.
‘Are you all right?’ Gunther asked, extending an arm.
‘Yes,’ Syme said brusquely. ‘I was just expecting something a bit rougher, a bit more – basic. The film – I was a bit taken aback.’
‘It was too much for you?’ Odd, Gunther thought, what sensibilities appeared in the unlikeliest people. If they’d beaten Drax up, Syme would probably have been happy to join in.
‘’Course not,’ Syme answered sharply. ‘It’s just it was so bloody hot in there, all those people. And the camera, those things generate a lot of heat. A lot of heat,’ he repeated fiercely.
Sudden footsteps, Gessler was walking quickly towards them, his hands raised, as though he were trying to ward off something terrible. Behind him, at the desk, the boy had put his head in his hands.
‘What?’ Gunther asked.
Gessler’s face was stricken, his lips trembling. ‘It’s the Führer,’ he said. ‘He’s had a heart attack. Our Führer is gone.’
Chapter Forty-Eight
ON SUNDAY, 30 NOVEMBER, Sarah had travelled by train to Brighton. She had been told where she was going the previous evening by Meg, who had returned to Dilys’ with a suitcase of new clothes, some money and new identity papers. Briskly, Meg went through the details of Sarah’s new identity. From now on she would be Mrs Sarah Hardcastle, widow of a London schoolteacher. She would be staying in a Brighton boarding house until David, and some others, were ready to join her. The cover story was that she had wanted to get out of London for a few days following her husband’s death in a car crash earlier that year. Meg didn’t know or wouldn’t say where they would be going after that.
Dilys had dyed her hair – it was dark red now, the colour surprisingly convincing, the style quite short. By the time Meg left it was late evening and Sarah was very tired. She spent the night on a camp bed in the room where she had met Jackson, and where, Dilys told her, her customers waited. I’ve gone from a suburban lounge to a prostitute’s waiting room, all in a day, Sarah thought. She wanted to laugh hysterically.
Next morning Dilys walked with Sarah to Piccadilly Circus tube station, Sarah carrying her suitcase and wearing a pair of tough, sensible shoes. In the crowded foyer Dilys hugged her tightly. ‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. She added, ‘Will you be all right? Where are you going to go?’
‘A new flat. Good luck, love.’ Then Dilys hugged her again and left. Sarah forced herself to move, she shouldn’t just stand there, she would draw stares. A little group of young Blackshirts, the electric flash of the BUF on their armbands, strolled along on their way to some function; she walked rapidly away to the ticket booth. She caught a tube to Victoria and bought a ticket for the Brighton train. Waiting on the platform, her heart jumped at a glimpse of a patrolling policeman. She was glad to get on the train.
After the horrible chaos of the last few days the normality of the train journey felt surreal. Sarah stared blankly at the Southern Railway Company crest embossed on the seat opposite her. Someone had left a newspaper there. It was the Guardian, the old liberal newspaper which her father always took. Beaverbrook had bought it last year and now it was laden with right-wing propaganda like all the other papers. An article said there had been an incident in France: Communist agitators from the Resistance had attacked a lorry taking Jews to the internment camp at Drancy. Some gendarmes had been killed, a couple of Jews too. She wondered how much of it was true; she knew the French Resistance was said to be growing larger and to be even more violent than the British. There was an article too about a senior civil servant, working for the junior health minister, Church, being suspected of having relations with a prostitute, visiting brothels with his cousin, a mental hospital superintendent, Dr Wilson. She was dubious; people said the government often blackened the names of people they wanted rid of by leaking such stories to the press. Either way, he would soon be gone.