‘And then there were the Lebensunwertes Leben – the “life unworthy of life” – the disabled and the mentally ill. Under Aktion T4, the Nazis began to kill them, too. Imagine it! The disabled. Killing off the most vulnerable in society. And you know the means they employed to do so – they collected the Lebensunwertes Leben in a special bus upon some excuse or other, and drove them around the city pumping in exhaust fumes as they gazed out of the windows.’
The old man glanced at Jaeger, a haunted look etched across his features. ‘Your grandfather and I, we saw so very much of it with our own eyes.’
He took a sip of his water. Made a visible effort to collect himself. ‘But it wasn’t just about extermination. Above the gates of the concentration camps they displayed a slogan: Arbeit macht frei – work makes you free. Well, of course, nothing could have been further from the truth. Hitler’s Reich was a Zwangswirtschaft – a forced-labour economy. In the Untermensch he had a vast army of slave labourers, and they were worked to death in their millions.
‘And you know the worst of it?’ he whispered. ‘It worked. In Hitler’s terms at least, the plan worked. The results spoke for themselves. Extraordinary rocketry; cutting-edge guided missiles; cruise missiles; super-advanced aeronautics; jet-powered flying wings; stealth submarines; unheard-of chemical and biological weapons; night-vision equipment – in almost every field the Germans scored a string of firsts. They were light years ahead of us.
‘Hitler had an absolutely fanatical belief in technology,’ he continued. ‘Remember – with the V-2 they were the first to put a rocket into space; not the Russians, as is commonly believed today. Hitler truly thought that technology would win them the war. And trust me – bar the nuclear race, which we won more by dint of luck than design – by 1945 it almost had done.
‘Take the XXI stealth submarine. It was decades ahead of its time. By as late as the seventies we were still trying to copy and equal its design. With three hundred XXI U-boats, they could have thrown a stranglehold around Britain and forced us into surrender. By the end of the war, Hitler had a fleet of a hundred and sixty ready to prowl the seas.
‘Or take the V-7 rocket. It made the V-2 look like a child’s toy. It had a range of three thousand miles, and weaponised with one of their secret nerve agents – sarin or tabun – it could drop death from the skies on all our major cities.
‘Trust me, William, they came that close – if not to winning the war, to achieving their Tausendjahriges Reich, then at least to forcing the Allies to sue for peace. And if we had done, it would have meant that Hitler – Nazism; this ultimate evil – would have survived. For that was all he and his core group of fanatics cared about – safeguarding their Drittes Reich, to rule for a thousand years. They came that close…’
The old man sighed wearily. ‘And in so many ways it was our job – your grandfather’s and mine – to try to put a stop to them.’
14
Great Uncle Joe reached into his desk drawer and rummaged around. He pulled something out, unwrapped the tissue paper and handed it to Jaeger. ‘The original badge of the SAS. A white dagger; WHO DARES WINS beneath it. It was worn with our parachutist’s wings, which together became the famous winged dagger of today’s unit.
‘As you’ve no doubt surmised, your grandfather and I served in the SAS. We soldiered in North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and finally in southern Europe. There’s nothing so revelatory about that. But understand, my boy, that our generation just didn’t speak about such things. That’s why we kept our unit insignias – and our war stories – tucked away and hidden.
‘It was in the autumn of 1944, in northern Italy, that we were both injured,’ he continued. ‘A behind-enemy-lines operation; an ambush, a bloody firefight. We were evacuated to hospital, first in Egypt and then to London. You can imagine – neither of us was much inclined to take it easy recuperating. When the opportunity arose to volunteer for a top-secret unit – well, we jumped at the chance.’
Great Uncle Joe glanced at Jaeger, uncertainty clouding his eyes. ‘Your grandfather and I were sworn to secrecy. But… well, in light of all this…’ He waved a hand at Jaeger, the phone. ‘Your grandfather was more senior in rank; by then he’d been promoted to colonel. In January 1945 he was appointed Commanding Officer, Target Force. I became one of his staff officers.
‘Make no mistake, my boy, I’ve never spoken about this before. Not even to Ethel.’ The old man took a moment to collect himself. ‘Target Force was one of the most secretive units ever formed. That’s why you’ve doubtless never heard of us. We had a very specific mission. We were charged to hunt down the Nazis’ foremost secrets: their war technology; their Wunderwaffe – their extraordinarily advanced war machines; plus their top scientists.’
Now that the old man had started, he didn’t seem to want to stop. The words tumbled from his lips, as if he was desperate to unburden himself of the memories; the secrets.
‘We were to find the Wunderwaffe ahead of the Russians, who were – even then – seen as the new enemy. We were given a “black list” of key sites: factories, laboratories, testing grounds, wind tunnels, plus the scientists and foremost experts, that were not at any cost to fall into Russian hands. The Russians were advancing from the east; it was a race against time. One that we largely won.’
‘That’s how he came upon the document?’ Jaeger queried. He hadn’t been able to resist posing the question. ‘The Operation Werewolf report?’
‘It’s not a report,’ Great Uncle Joe murmured. ‘It’s an operational plan. And no, actually. A document of that level of secrecy – deniable; emanating from the deep black – that was way beyond even our remit; beyond even Target Force.’
‘So where—’ Jaeger began.
The old man waved him into silence again. ‘Your grandfather was a fine soldier: fearless, intelligent, morally incorruptible. During his time with T Force he realised something so shocking, so utterly dark, that he rarely spoke of it. There was an operation beyond T Force: one formed in the deniable, black world. Its mission was to spirit away the most high-profile and undesirable Nazis – the absolute untouchables – to places where we could still profit from them.
‘Needless to say, your grandfather was appalled when he learned of it. Horrified.’ Great Uncle Joe paused. ‘Most of all, he knew how wrong it was. How it would corrupt us all if we brought the worst of the evil into our living rooms. He believed all the Nazi war criminals should stand trial at Nuremberg… But now we move into realms wherein he swore me to absolute secrecy.’ He cast a momentary glance at Jaeger. ‘Am I to break my word?’
Jaeger placed a comforting hand on the old man’s arm. ‘Uncle Joe, what you’ve told me already – it’s far more than I ever knew, or hoped to know.’
Great Uncle Joe patted his hand in return. ‘My boy, I appreciate your patience, your understanding. This… this is far from easy… At war’s end your grandfather re-joined the SAS. Or rather, there was no SAS by then. Officially it was disbanded immediately after the war. Unofficially, Winston Churchill – the greatest leader a country could ever have wished for – kept the unit alive, and thank God that he did.
‘The SAS had always been Churchill’s baby,’ he continued. ‘After the war he ran the unit secretly, completely off the books and from a hotel in central London. They set up clandestine bases all across Europe. Their aim was to wipe out those Nazis who had escaped the dragnet; to hunt them down, especially those who were responsible for such terrible abuses during the war.