There was no movement.
“Do it,” he growled at Wulfenbach and watched as the remaining wives died, one by one, their faces contorted with agony. The crowd just watched in dreadful silence — even the crying had stopped — and he wanted to hurt them as well. Somehow, he was afraid; their eyes were watching him coldly, furiously. Rommel might have been right, in a way; the British were hardly Russians, but something deeper, maybe even closer to the Aryan ideal.
He forced himself to complete his planned speech. “If there is another insurgent attack, more wives and children will die,” he said, knowing that he was stammering as he spoke, revealing his weakness. “Return to your homes and meditate on the futility of resisting the Reich!”
“God save the King,” someone shouted from within the crowd. Before the SS men could react, others took up the shout, echoing it until it was a chant, ringing out over the entire town. Wulfenbach stepped forward, weapon in hand, and the machine guns swivelled on their tripods, but somehow no one opened fire. The chant rang out, time and time again, chilling Stahl to his very soul.
“Disperse and return to your homes,” he ordered, and then he muttered an order to one of the machine gunners, who fired a long burst over their heads. “Return to your homes now!”
The crowd slowly, very slowly, started to disperse. Stahl watched it go, somehow resisting the temptation to wipe the sweat from his brow, and waited until the crowd had left. The bodies of the wives would have to be buried in one of the mass graves in the countryside where all of the dead British soldiers and civilians had been buried. Maybe that would stop them being used as a rallying call for the British. He knew, somehow, that all hell was about to break loose.
“I want you to double the security patrols through the streets,” he said as Wulfenbach escorted him back into the barracks. Had he seen the moment of weakness? Was he going to denounce Stahl to one of the other senior SS officers? “Make sure that they all know to be careful and treat Felixstowe like Moscow.”
“Jawohl,” Wulfenbach said. Moscow was the most dangerous place in the Reich… or had been until most of the civilian population had been marched out, made to dig their own graves, and shot. His voice darkened suddenly. “Do you have any other orders?”
Stahl shook his head. Back in the barracks, he telephoned a report through to Berlin, recounting what had happened, and then he tried to get some sleep. He felt as if he had been up for hours, despite having woken up at seven in the morning, and somehow he felt too tired to continue. His sleep was wracked with nightmares…
And was broken by an urgent report only two hours later. An SS patrol had been cornered, captured, and hung in Felixstowe itself. Someone hadn’t gotten the message. Stahl could only wish that he were surprised.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Atlantic Ocean
Admiral Fraser stared into the darkening ocean as the sun slipped below the horizon, not even casting a golden glow in the distance, as high above the stars came out. The three battleships, one battle-cruiser and a number of smaller ships that made up the remains of Home Fleet were sailing away from the Clyde, hopefully without the Germans being aware. The Germans probably had a U-boat or two — maybe more — watching the fleet, but even the latest electric-powered boats had problems keeping up with warships moving through the water at high speed. Fraser was confident he could lose them before he rendezvoused with the remainder of the fleet.
They said that Admiral Jellico was the only man who could have lost the Great War in an afternoon, Fraser thought, staring down at the King George V’s massive turrets. They were still now, but he could make out faint signs of where the hasty repairs had been completed, mending the damage the Germans had caused as much as possible. When he met up with the Eastern and Mediterranean Fleets, he would be much stronger, but even so, the odds weren’t necessarily going to be on his side.
The Germans should know that the Royal Navy intended to get into the Channel and sink everything flying a German flag. Their intention would be to stop the Royal Navy before it got too close. There was a vast difference between attacking a fleet at anchor and a fleet in motion, and even though the Germans probably had many more of their guided bombs, they would know that they would be much less effective against his second fleet. They would also be aware that the ten battleships of the fleet had radar-guided anti-aircraft guns, while the carriers were loaded with fighters for the defence of the fleet and torpedo-bombers for attacking the German carriers. The Germans would have to focus everything on destroying the fleet. If they sunk Fraser and his fleet, they would have won the war.
It was something that made him think, grimly, of the days when he had been a young midshipman. They had known that as long as Home Fleet remained in being, it was impossible for Britain to be defeated completely, but now the rules had changed. They had been changing back even then, when the Royal Navy had discovered what air power could do under the right circumstances, but it had taken the Germans to discover how they could use air power to break the back of the British fleet. Fraser couldn’t just remain a lurking fleet-in-being, not when the Germans were rushing supplies from France into Britain. He must cut that supply line, once and for all. He couldn’t lurk out of range, forever poised to lunge forward. He had to move as soon as possible. The Germans knew that, and they would be coming out to do battle.
They would be wiser, perhaps, to husband their own units, but they knew as well as he did that this battle would be for all the marbles. If they lost their fleet completely, as they had come close to doing back in 1940, they would still be immensely strong and continue to dominate Europe; if Fraser lost his fleet, the Germans would be able to reinforce at will and eventually crush Britain by sheer weight of numbers. They might even abandon their self-imposed reluctance to attack ships with an American flag; if they sunk the Royal Navy, the Americans wouldn’t be able to make a real impact on the war until it would be too late for Britain. Rommel would build up, crush the British Army, and force Britain to sue for peace.
He flicked his cigarette into the water, watching the glowing ember fall away into the darkness, and straightened up. The crew of the mighty battleship were carrying out their duties as if they were unaware of the massive dangers they were about to face, but then, they had been though the hell of the Battle of Scapa Flow. They all knew how much their world had changed in the last month and they had prepared as best as they could; Fraser had privately promised himself to bring as many of those boys home as possible. He wasn’t sure if it was a promise he would be able to keep; the Germans were tough, determined, and believed that they had better technology. In far too many areas, they were right.
“We need a victory,” Churchill had said, when Fraser had faced the Prime Minister. He had expected to be relieved for his failure at Scapa Flow; the mood of the country had been such that heads would need to roll, but instead Churchill had put him in command of rebuilding as much as possible of the fleet. Home Fleet would never be the same again, but he’d managed to get most of the surviving craft back into action… as well as preparing his own surprise for the Germans.
Churchill had been sceptical. “Are you sure that this plan will work?”
“Yes,” Fraser had said as he tried to keep his doubts hidden. Churchill probably hadn’t been fooled. “We will present them with a tempting target, one that they cannot fail to notice, and use it to lure them into making a mistake. Once they make that mistake, we will jump on them and wreck their fleet.”