Hedda didn’t need to smile to get what she wanted.
And what she wanted, Theo was pretty sure, was him. At least for that night.
He stood, pulled out a chair for her, poured her a glass of bubbles and lit her cigarette. ‘I’m glad you could make it,’ he said.
‘Günter is away for a couple of days. On exercise. A couple of nights.’
She didn’t smile, but there was something in the way she examined him that made him feel taller, stronger, more virile. They had met on the street during an air-raid scare in Berlin in September. They had both ignored the sirens and stared upwards at the searchlights and the flashes of anti-aircraft guns seeking out phantom British bombers. Theo had offered her his umbrella, to protect her from the bombs. She hadn’t laughed at this rather feeble joke as he had hoped she would, but she had coolly looked him up and down and then accepted it. Theo knew she was married, but it was only after their third night together that he had learned her husband was a Sturmbannführer in the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. It made her even more alluring.
‘So where have you been, Lieutenant von Hertenberg?’
‘You know I couldn’t possibly tell you that,’ Theo said.
‘Is it a secret?’
Theo looked straight into her cool blue eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you some kind of spy?’
Theo’s brain tumbled. Was she joking? How the hell did she know that? He had never talked about any of his work. Perhaps that was how she knew; he wasn’t full of the usual soldier’s gripes.
He kept his face frozen. ‘Are you?’
She held his gaze and then blinked. Once. ‘Let’s dance.’
Hedda wasn’t exactly a great dancer. She didn’t have much of a sense of rhythm, but she did know how and when to press her body into her partner’s. Theo delighted in the surreptitious glances of the other men on the dance floor as they looked away from their own partners towards his.
He was horny. She was horny. This was going to be a good night. Theo deserved a good night after what he had been going through.
And then suddenly Theo thought of Millie, of her dress wrapping itself around her legs in the wind on the beach at Scheveningen, of her cheek as it turned away from his lips. The music jarred, Hedda’s legs knocked into his knee, his hand on her back felt the stickiness of sweat. Was it hers or his?
She sensed something. Hedda could always sense something. She had somehow sensed he was a spy. What the hell was he doing with the wife of a Sturmbannführer in a nightclub full of SS officers? He tried to imagine Millie in the Kakadu and he couldn’t.
She stepped back. One long, exquisitely plucked eyebrow arched inquisitively. ‘Theo?’
He pulled himself together. He couldn’t allow sentiment to spoil his evening. ‘I think we need some more champagne, don’t you?’
18
Zossen, Germany, 13 November
It had been a long, hard night with Hedda and Theo was feeling the fatigue. He could barely keep his eyes open as he drove the thirty kilometres south of Berlin to Zossen, which was the wartime command centre for the Wehrmacht. He had passed through the high-wire perimeter, two checkpoints and walked along boards laid over marshland to a large A-framed building, inside which he had taken a lift down to underground concrete corridors. There, in a tiny office, he had found Major Liss.
Major Liss woke him up.
Liss was an officer in the Foreign Armies West Intelligence Directorate. He was an artilleryman from Mecklenburg, so not one of the aristocratic Prussians from whom many of the general-staff officers were drawn, but he was a prize-winning horseman, and in the Wehrmacht that earned you respect. He was also highly intelligent and spoke English, French, Spanish and Italian.
‘Thank you for coming out here, Hertenberg. And for all the intelligence you have been providing us with over the last few weeks. As you will see, it has been very valuable.’
‘I am very glad to hear that, Herr Major.’
Theo had never met Liss before. He had passed on the information Bedaux had been giving him to Colonel Oster, who then passed it to people at Armies West Intelligence to analyse. People like Major Liss.
‘Now, what I am going to tell you, what I am going to show you, is highly confidential,’ Liss said. ‘Colonel Oster has vouched for you. I have something for you to ask your contact. To ask it properly, and to understand the answer, you need to understand the question.’
‘Yes, Herr Major.’
‘Come with me.’
Theo followed Liss through the warren. The tunnels were lined with concrete to protect them from Allied bombs, and telephone and electricity cables ran along the ceiling. They came to a large room in the middle of which was a table with a relief map of northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.
‘We call this “the cowhide”,’ said Liss. ‘As you can see, we have marked the deployment of the French and British Armies, much of it with information given to us by you.’
Theo looked at the map. Liss pointed out the French fortifications on the Maginot Line, then the French 2nd Army along the Meuse around Sedan, then the other French armies lined up along the Belgian border, and finally the British Expeditionary Force at the Channel coast near Calais and Dunkirk.
‘You are familiar with Case Yellow?’ Liss said.
‘Of course,’ said Theo. ‘It’s the plan for an offensive in the west. But I don’t know the current details. I assume it involves invading through Belgium and Holland.’
‘It does. Last week we played a war game in this room, trying out Case Yellow. I played the part of General Gamelin, the French commander-in-chief.’
‘What happened?’
‘You see these two armies here?’ Liss pointed to two concentrations of units on the German border with Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. The northern one, Army Group B, was much larger than the southern one, Army Group A.
‘Yes.’
‘All right. Army Group B thrusts through the flat country of Holland and Belgium, through Brussels and on into Flanders. The idea is to break through around Lille and Amiens and swing south to Paris. Army Group A moves west through the Ardennes forest to the Meuse near Sedan, and pins down the French armies there, protecting Army Group B’s flank.’
‘I see,’ said Theo. ‘And you say you fought this battle last week?’
‘We did,’ said Liss.
‘I have to ask the question,’ said Theo. ‘Who won?’
‘Army Group B broke through the Belgian army’s forward defences along the Albert Canal, and took Brussels. But then the French 7th Army moved north into Belgium, and met our forces here.’ Liss pointed to a gap between the River Dyle and the River Meuse near Namur. ‘As you have pointed out, the 7th Army is France’s strongest. So this is where the key battle is. Their tanks against our tanks.’
‘And we win?’
‘Not necessarily. They have as many tanks as we do. And their SOMUA S35 is as powerful as our Panzer Mark III. Coming up behind the 7th Army is the BEF. We get bogged down. We all get bogged down. It’s 1914 all over again. Or 1915.’
‘Oh,’ said Theo.
‘Yes. Of course there is some disagreement among the general staff as to what will happen. I think it’s fair to say that the Führer is more optimistic than General Halder.’
‘And your view?’ Theo asked.
‘My view is we get bogged down.’
A return to the trench fighting of the last war was every German soldier’s nightmare. Probably every French soldier’s as well. ‘I thought our tanks would avoid that,’ said Theo. ‘A blitzkrieg, like Poland.’