‘And without Churchill the British would make peace. Is that what you are trying to say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you are probably right,’ said Hitler, nodding. ‘This war makes no sense for them and none for us. It’s like I have always said — I am England’s friend. There is room for them in the world and room for us too. We are all Aryans. But Churchill will not listen. He is the Bolsheviks’ greatest ally. I am sure Stalin has a picture of fat Winston in his bedroom in Moscow and that he kisses it with his filthy icons at night.’ Hitler’s sudden harsh laughter cut the air before he abruptly resumed the quiet, serious voice with which he had been speaking before. ‘What is it you are trying to tell me, Reinhard?’ he asked. ‘Don’t talk in riddles.’
Heydrich took a deep breath of the cold mountain air. He felt his heart beating hard under his uniform and a sense of vertigo rising through his body that didn’t come from their elevated position. He knew instinctively that this was his opportunity. With the credit for Churchill’s assassination, he could be Hitler’s deputy. With England out of the war, he would have succeeded where Goering and the generals and admirals had failed.
‘I think I can solve the problem,’ he said quietly. ‘I think I can remove Churchill from the equation.’
‘Kill him, you mean? How are you going to do that?’
‘As you know, I received a radio message from our agent yesterday. What I didn’t mention in my report is that he saw Churchill in person, and he seems to think that if he’s summoned to see Churchill again, then there might be an opportunity. I don’t know the details, obviously — it was a very short message.’
‘Well, get the details.’ Hitler snapped out the order. He got up from the bench, smoothing the crease of his black trousers into place, and walked over to the railings, standing with his back to Heydrich and looking out towards the mountains, drumming his fingers on the wood.
After a moment, he turned around. ‘We must not get ahead of ourselves,’ he said slowly. ‘I need to know whether this is a harebrained scheme or a real chance to eliminate Churchill once and for all. We don’t want to throw away our best intelligence asset on a thousand-to-one bet. But if it can be done, then let it be done.’ Hitler rubbed his hands together, a characteristic gesture when he was excited. He smiled, exposing his teeth, and his blue eyes glowed. ‘This is the best idea I have heard in a long time. The worms will have a feast when Churchill’s fat body goes underground. But you must be quick in finding out what is possible, you understand? East is where we must go. And before next year is too far advanced; before Stalin is ready for us. We must give our troops enough time — I have no intention to be another Napoleon, freezing to death in the Moscow cold.’
‘You can count on me,’ said Heydrich, getting up from his seat and standing to attention opposite Hitler, the image of a loyal soldier.
‘I hope so,’ said Hitler, looking searchingly at his subordinate. ‘We are playing for high stakes. Do not let me down, Reinhard.’
Hitler whistled and the dog came running up through the trees. ‘We will go back now,’ he said, turning towards the Berghof. ‘You have work to do. But next time you come, we will walk all the way to my teahouse. The view from the Mooslahnerkopf is excellent, even better than from here. And you can tell me more about this opportunity.’ Hitler smiled as he repeated Heydrich’s word. ‘I shall look forward to it.’
There was a spring in Hitler’s step now as he walked, and he hummed a tune under his breath. They rounded a corner and, looking up, Heydrich caught sight of the Eagle’s Nest, the retreat built for the Fuhrer by the party faithful on a ridge at the top of the Kehlstein Mountain, three thousand feet above the Berghof. Thirty million Reichsmarks, five tunnels, and an elevator — an engineering miracle — yet Hitler hardly ever went there, preferring his small teahouse on the Mooslahnerkopf Hill. Heydrich smiled, thinking of the wasted effort. Results were what mattered; they were what led to advancement up the ladder of power. And now finally he believed he held the keys to the citadel dangling in his hand.
They parted in the hall. The map had been cleared away and the oak table moved back against the wall. It was as if the conference had never happened. Heydrich raised his arm in salute and felt Hitler’s pale blue eyes fixed upon him again, boring into his soul, before the Fuhrer turned and walked away, releasing him back into the world.
IV
They sat restlessly around the long table arranged in a kind of hierarchical order, with the least powerful among them exposed to the wintry draught by the door and the most important positioned closest to C’s empty chair and the fire behind it, which had died down to a black, smoky residue of itself in the last half-hour. There was no coal left in the scuttle, and nobody had volunteered to descend the seven flights of stairs to fetch more from the store in the basement.
It was ten in the morning outside, but inside it might as well have been the dead of night. The thick blackout curtains were kept permanently in place in Con 1, as this room was known — God knows why, as there were no other conference rooms in the building — and the only illumination came from two milky-white electric globes hanging by rusty metal chains from the ceiling overhead. Up until yesterday there had been three of these lights, but the one nearest the door had given up the ghost during the previous night’s air raid and Jarvis, the caretaker, had not yet got round to replacing it.
Far too busy ministering to C’s ceaseless stream of demands, thought Seaforth with wry amusement. By long-hallowed custom, the head of MI6 was always known by the single letter C — short for chief, Seaforth supposed. And even though he hadn’t been in the job that long, this C was already notorious for his enjoyment of life’s luxuries: the best Havana cigars; malt whisky brewed in freezing conditions on faraway Hebridean atolls; pretty girls in the bar at the Savoy. Not that Jarvis was likely to be providing them, thought Seaforth, glancing across at the bent, skeletal figure of the caretaker standing over by the half-open door.
Jarvis was clad as always in the same grey overall that reached down to just below his arthritic knees. Seaforth had never seen him wearing anything else — the old man would have seemed naked in a suit and tie. Service rumour had it that Jarvis had fought as a non-commissioned officer in the Boer War and killed five of the enemy with his bare hands during the relief of Mafeking, but Seaforth had no way of knowing if this was true, as Jarvis made a point of never discussing his personal history. He’d been at HQ longer than any of the current occupants or indeed most of their predecessors and had over the years become a fixture of the place, like the soot-stained walls and the ubiquitous smell of cheap disinfectant.
Seaforth had only recently been permitted to join these meetings of the top brass, and he knew that if Thorn had had his way, he would still be sitting marooned in his tiny windowless office at the back of the building. But C had overruled Seaforth’s boss in this as in numerous other matters, and now Seaforth sat two chairs up from the door, three chairs away from Thorn, and four away from C’s empty seat, savouring his position as an up-and-coming man.
With a sigh of contentment, he ran his hands slowly through the mane of his thick, dark hair and stretched out his long, athletic legs under the table, rocking slowly back on his straight-backed chair, expertly keeping his balance. Like everyone else in the room, he was working harder than ever, existing on small amounts of sleep snatched between air raids; but unlike them, he managed somehow to look healthy and rested, his good looks enhanced if anything by the faint thin lines that had recently begun to crease his brow.
The only blemish on his day so far was the cigarette smoke. It hung in a thick, blue-grey cloud in the unventilated room, blending with the fumes from the dying fire, and clung to Seaforth’s suit, making his eyes water. He hated cigarettes — the poor man’s narcotic. They reminded him of home, of labourers coughing in the gloomy public houses after work, drowning their sorrows in watered-down beer. He looked round the room at his fellow spies sucking greedily on their John Player’s Navy Cut and Senior Service and did his best to conceal his disgust. C’s cigars were different — a symbol of his power, like the thick Turkish carpet that began at the threshold of his office in the next-door building or the slow, careful way in which he spoke, the perfectly rounded vowels enunciated in his aristocratic, Eton-educated voice. C was old school, but old school with a new broom, ready to give the young generation its head. Not like Thorn with his Oxford University tie and his visceral suspicion of anyone who hadn’t been to a public school. As far as Seaforth was concerned, the last war had been about sweeping away men like Thorn, but so far, at least, Thorn didn’t seem to have got the message.