Staverton took a step forward and whisked the paper away.
“This isn’t yours quite yet.” He paused. “You’ve got to do a little job for us first.”
“If it means getting out of here, I’ll do anything.”
“Good.” Staverton folded his arms and looked Herries straight in the eye. “You’re going back into Germany.”
The colour drained from Herries’ face. “Germany? Are you quite mad?”
“We want you to put the skills you have learnt over the last three years to good use by helping us put an end to Archangel. We need to get a pilot into a Luftwaffe base in southern Germany. His German isn’t quite fluent and he’s not too familiar with the terrain. That’s where you come in.” Staverton realized he was starting to enjoy the other’s discomfort. “Your papers are valid and you’re in the SS, which should cut some ice with the guards at the airfield, and at any other obstruction you are likely to meet. So I put this scheme to the authorities here and as you see, after a little persuasion, they decided to give you the job.”
“But a Freikorps officer — particularly a British one — is not accorded the same privileges as the regular SS within Germany. They’d no more let me into that base than they would you.”
Staverton reached into his pocket and threw Herries another envelope. “Then you had better take a look at this.”
Herries found himself staring at his own SS soldbuch. He opened the identity document, dog-eared and stained from years on the Eastern Front. Opposite the photograph of the Führer was his personalausweis: name, rank, number and regiment. But all references to the Freikorps had been carefully removed. He looked back to the cover again and flipped through it till he found the page with his photograph. It was his book, there was no mistaking that, but the forger who had made the deletions was a craftsman. There was no sign that a scalpel or new ink had gone near the document.
“SOE were able to do that in a few hours,” Staverton said. “It’s perfect.”
“Yes, it is,” Herries was forced to agree. He was now merely Obersturmführer Christian Herries, first company, third battalion, 2nd SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, Das Reich Division.
“We’ll supply you with a uniform, obviously. You have to ensure that our man gets new papers in Munich and then into Oberammergau. Do that and you’re free. The rest is up to him.”
“Why Munich? Why can’t the pilot have his papers forged here?” He held up his soldbuch. “They don’t come much better than this.”
“Yours were relatively easy. His will take time. To do it here would mean two more days in London for him and I don’t need to tell you that’s just too long for us. SOE has a specialist in Munich. All he needs is the pilot’s photograph and he can finish the job that we’ve already set in motion.”
Herries said: “You know what you can do with your proposal, don’t you? I made a deal with General Styles.”
Staverton was unmoved. “Yes, they told me that you’d be difficult. But it’s not a proposal, Herries, it’s an ultimatum. The only choice you’ve got is between being tried for war crimes — and I don’t think you would come out of it that well — or doing this and going free. Now, I’m a very busy man, so I’ll leave you to think about it.” Staverton allowed himself a smile. “Germany, Herries, or the gallows?”
“What about the Red Cross?” Herries’ voice cracked. “If I die, you and Styles will be war criminals.”
Staverton shrugged and moved over to the door. “On balance,” he said, “I’d say our record on atrocities is somewhat better than yours.”
Staverton banged on the door and called for the policeman.
“No, wait.” Herries was on his feet. “Look, if it’s just for a few days, I’ll do it.”
“Good,” the AVM said. “In that case, let me run over exactly what it is we want you to do. To start with, you will under no circumstances reveal your identity to the man you’ll be taking in. I don’t think he’s going to be too thrilled by the idea of teaming up with a tuppenny traitor.” He looked at his watch. “Now listen carefully, because you’ll be back inside your precious Reich by this time tomorrow night.”
CHAPTER FIVE
With little traffic on the roads between Farnborough and London, the staff car that Fleming had commissioned to bring Kruze to the Bunker made the journey in under an hour.
The Bunker hadn’t wasted any time, Kruze thought, as he made his way along the maze of corridors in the Ministry that led down to the subterranean nerve centre of the EAEU.
He knocked on the Old Man’s door and went in.
“Sit down,” Staverton said, rolling the two words into one. Fleming was sitting beside the AVM, behind the long desk. His presence made Kruze feel uneasy.
“How are you feeling?” Staverton asked. The Rhodesian looked distracted.
Kruze involuntarily rubbed his arm where it had received a crack as he had rolled onto the runway to get away from the 163.
“I’ve been better.”
“What happened?” Fleming asked.
Kruze said: “Well, you don’t have to worry about the 163C being used to defend any Alpine fortress. It will never fly operationally.”
“How do you know?” Fleming asked.
“When they removed the T-Stoff and C-Stoff tanks from the aircraft, they found that both were seriously flawed. The forward tank had only sprung a minor leak into the cockpit, but the rear one was so badly corroded that it was just about to blow apart. When they looked at the tanks a little closer, they discovered them to be made out of light steel alloy, the wrong metal. It’s a flying acid bath.”
“They?” Staverton asked.
“The Rostock boffins.”
“What are the tanks meant to be made out of?”
“Apparently aluminium is the only thing that will stand up to the T-Stoff. The German industrial belt must have been so badly flattened that the enemy doesn’t have the ability to make high-grade aluminium any more. Messerschmitt must be making 163 tanks out of steel alloy instead, hoping that they’ll stay the distance. And if that’s true, it means that the Nazis are out of new rocket fighters.”
The trace of a smile played across Staverton’s lips. Kruze’s old confidence had not been marred by the accident. He was fit to fly.
Kruze’s expression hardened. “I’ve got to say I’m a little mystified about why you rushed the air-test through so quickly. It should take weeks to set up something like that.”
“We really didn’t have any choice,” the AVM said. “I regretted not being able to tell you the whole story at the time, but believe me, the role you played was vital.”
“Role? You make it sound as if it was a stage performance.”
“In a sense it was, laddie.”
Kruze’s brow creased.
“Your 163 flight was a firework display to convince Churchill’s other Cabinet advisers that using a single German jet aeroplane is the only way to penetrate almost two hundred miles of the densest troop concentrations and air defences seen in mainland Europe since the war began.”
“I don’t believe it,” Kruze whispered. “A circus sideshow. And I risked my neck to bring that death-trap back to your boffins…”
Staverton appeared not to hear the anger in his voice. “And it worked. They’ve agreed to do it my way.”
“Don’t think for a minute that your conclusions on the rocket fighter aren’t useful to us,” Fleming cut in. He wished Staverton would get straight to the point. “The Alpine Redoubt is a very real threat—”
“But it’s as nothing to the problem we face now,” Staverton said. “The real reason you’re here tonight. The reason why I have to find a pilot to fly a German bomber two hundred miles and back through nightmare country — almost all of it Russian-controlled.”