Abruptly the Prime Minister got to his feet. Thorn nodded his approval of Churchill’s policy, but Seaforth looked as though he had more to say. He opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind.
‘Thank you, gentlemen. Reports like this one are invaluable,’ said Churchill, tapping the document on his desk. ‘If you get more intelligence like this, I shall want to see you again straight away. Both of you, mind you — I like to hear both points of view. And you can call my private secretary to set up the appointment so we don’t have delays going through the Joint Intelligence Committee — he’ll give you the number outside. My predecessors made a serious mistake in my opinion keeping the Secret Service at arm’s length. It takes a war, I suppose, to inject some sense into government.
‘Goodbye, Alec. Goodbye, Mr Seaforth,’ he said affably, shaking their hands across the desk. ‘Seaforth — an interesting name and not one I’ve heard before,’ he said pensively. ‘Sounds a bit like Steerforth — the seducer of that poor girl in David Copperfield. Came to a bad end, as I recall. A great writer, Dickens, but inclined to be sentimental, which is something we can’t afford to be at present. The stakes are too high; much too high for that.’
III
Exactly the same people were present in the great hall of the Berghof as the week before; the same map of Europe was spread out across the table; and Reichsmarschall Goering was wearing the same brighter-than-white uniform with gold epaulettes and buttons and black Iron Cross medals dangling at his throat. He jabbed exultantly at the towns of south-east England with his fat forefinger and listed the damage that the Luftwaffe had inflicted upon them since the last conference. He seemed oblivious to the tight-lipped frigidity of the Fuhrer, standing beside him.
Head of an air force and he can’t even fit inside an aeroplane. Heydrich smiled for a moment, his thin, pale lips wrinkling in contemptuous amusement at the thought of Goering trying to fit his great bulk inside the narrow cockpit of a Heinkel twin-engined bomber. Once upon a time, Goering had flown, of course — in the last war he had been a fighter ace, the last commander of von Richthofen’s Flying Circus after the Red Baron was killed in action in 1918. But now he was past it, over the hill; unfit for anything useful except to go back home to Carinhall, the ugly, tasteless mansion he’d built for himself in the Schorfheide forest north-east of Berlin and fill his belly full of rich French food while he feasted his bulbous eyes on the old master paintings he’d looted out of Paris when it fell.
Heydrich could fly. He hadn’t needed to. He could have stayed behind his desk in Berlin when the war broke out, issuing orders and decrees like other ministers. But instead he’d overcome his fears and learnt because he knew that flying would make him a god, turning in silver arcs through the clouds; insulated by silk and fur against the bitter, outlandish cold; pitting his wits and nerves against an unknown enemy until death took one or the other of them, plucking them from the skies forever. Earlier in the year, he’d flown sixty missions over Norway and France, watching as the panzer divisions below had thrust their shining black armour deep into the heartlands of the enemy, accomplishing in a few short weeks what the German army had failed to do in five years of fighting during the last war. And why? What had changed to make this possible? The answer was simple. It was the leadership of Adolf Hitler — his energy and power; his extraordinary intelligence and understanding; and yes, his will. He was the one who had made the difference. He had made the soldiers believe in themselves; he had carried them forward to victory.
And today the aura of power around the Fuhrer was even more striking than usual. Everyone in the room was in uniform except Hitler, who was wearing a black double-breasted suit and a white shirt and tie, as if he were attending a funeral and not a military conference. The Fuhrer was always meticulous in his dress, and Heydrich was sure that the suit had been a deliberate decision, meant to emphasize his displeasure at the current progress of the war. Heydrich’s report of Agent D’s short radio message concerning Churchill’s intransigence, which he’d sent to Hitler the previous day, had only increased the Fuhrer’s angry gloom.
‘What does it gain us if we bomb all these towns? What does it matter if the population of London goes stark raving mad?’ Hitler broke out in a nervous, angry voice, gesturing with a dismissive wave at the map. ‘That fool Churchill will not give in. He doesn’t care if the bodies are piled ten high in the London streets. You’ve heard him speak. He wants this war. It’s what he always dreamed about. What does it matter that there’s no sense to it; that there’s no justice to it? England can have its empire, but Germany can have nothing. That is what he says. You can’t reason with a man like that. The only thing that would have made a difference is if you had given me air supremacy. And isn’t that what you promised me a week ago, Herr Reichsmarschall? Isn’t it?’
It was a rhetorical question thrown out while Hitler was pausing for breath, and Goering knew better than to respond. Heydrich was secretly impressed by the way Goering stood almost at attention and silently took all that the Fuhrer had to throw at him. Hitler was giving full rein to his fury now. He was shouting and beads of sweat stood out on his pale forehead. In a characteristic gesture, he kept brushing the fringe of his falling brown hair back from off his face.
‘If we can’t control the skies, we can’t control the sea. An invasion is a waste of time. Any fool knows that. And so I’m to wait here doing nothing, listening to you telling me about incendiary bombs while Stalin builds more tanks. The Bolsheviks are the enemy, not the British. That is where the panzers must go, that is our destiny,’ Hitler shouted, jamming his finger down on the right side of the map, into the huge red mass of the Soviet Union. ‘I always knew this. I wrote it in my book fifteen years ago. Perhaps you should read it again, Herr Reichsmarschall — refresh your memory. My Struggle, I called it; Mein Kampf. I should have called it My Struggle to Be Heard.’
‘We will win,’ said Goering, injecting a note of certainty into his voice that Heydrich was sure he didn’t feel. ‘Just a little more time is all we need. And the RAF will be finished. They cannot withstand us; they are on their last legs.’
‘They are bombing Germany!’ Hitler screamed. ‘That is what they are doing. And you talk like it isn’t happening.’
Hitler took out his handkerchief and mopped his sweating brow. He held hard on to the side of the table, trying to control his breathing.
‘The invasion of England is cancelled, indefinitely postponed — call it what you like. You have all failed,’ he said, looking slowly around at his generals as if he were registering each face for subsequent review. ‘All of you,’ he repeated. His voice was soft but venomous, and the men closest to him instinctively took a step back. ‘Let it be the last time.’