“Of course,” Somerville echoed. Once the German carriers were sunk, the British battleships or aircraft would finish off the German battleships. Fraser found himself, against all logic and reason, hoping for a chance to fight it out with the seven German battleships and their escorts on the surface. He would have the advantage for once. Fraser spoke for twenty minutes, outlining the plan and answering the questions they put to him.
“I like it,” he said finally. “How far advanced are the preparations for it?”
Fraser nodded.
“I have the modified carriers ready at Scapa Flow,” he said. He hadn’t risked taking those ships to the Clyde. The German submarine that that been trailing them might have risked putting a torpedo into one of the modified carriers, suspecting that it was one of the fleet carriers. “Once we reach Point Alpha, those carriers will move into action.”
Somerville smiled. He was more of a battleship admiral than a carrier admiral, like Fraser himself and unlike Vian, who loved new technology, but he understood the plan. The Germans would have to act in a certain way, but the beauty of the plan was simple. If the Germans didn’t react as expected, the British could simply break off the engagement and withdraw back to Scapa Flow, now heavily fortified against all possible German attacks.
“Clever,” he said. “When do we move?”
Vian produced a bottle of scotch and three glasses.
“Once we’ve had a drink,” he said and poured them all a generous measure. “Admiral, what’s the toast?”
Fraser lifted his glass.
“A willing foe and sea room,” he said. They clinked their glasses together and drank. “One way or another, whatever happens, Great Britain will never forget this coming battle.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
London, England
Why had Roger Hollis committed suicide?
The question nagged at Alex DeRiemer as he sat in his office, trying to think; his instincts, which he had learned to trust, told him that it was important. Hollis had been one of MI5’s most promising young officers, someone who might have risen right to the top, and yet he had killed himself. DeRiemer wondered, reading the official report, if it had really been a murder, perhaps even the work of Skorzeny himself, but he could find no flaws in the report. Hollis had taken a pistol, one of the ones signed out to MI5 personnel in fears that the Germans would try to storm the building, and blown off his own head.
Why?
The files were in front of him, but there was little to suggest any reason for despair. Hollis hadn’t been married, nor did he have any relationships that might have caused him to be despondent, and while there were a handful of negative comments in his file, there were no real black marks. He’d been accused of showing a lack of enthusiasm for chasing a particular report of a German spy at one point, but it turned out that the man had been innocent all along, clearing Hollis of any real charges that might have been brought against him… and his future had looked rosy. It had also come to a sharp end when he’d placed the gun against the side of his head and fired.
“It makes no sense,” DeRiemer said to himself. He’d spoken to a few of Hollis’s colleges — he hadn’t had any real friends — and they said that he’d been more subdued than usual, but Hollis had hardly been Churchill or Monty when it came to flashy behaviour. If there had been something wrong with him, it remained impossible to see, but Alex was sure that he was right on the brink of understanding…
He looked back at the dates and froze. Hollis had killed himself the day that his department had been asked to look for a possible German spy within the establishment. His department hadn’t been directly involved in the first investigation and hadn’t been officially informed — and, in theory, he should have known nothing about it — until the investigation had cleared Hollis and he’d been brought into the matter. As the man responsible for securing British seaports and trade from German or Russian infiltration, Hollis’s help would have been invaluable… but he’d killed himself instead.
He killed himself when he learnt that there was a German spy somewhere in the establishment, DeRiemer thought, then experienced a blinding flash of inspiration. What if… Hollis himself had been the spy? Had he killed himself when he thought the investigation was getting too close to him? Was that even possible? Hollis’s records showed that he had been an ardent anti-German and anti-Communist. Had that been a cover? The theory slipped slightly the more he thought about it. Hollis, in such a position, would have been far too valuable to be risked on basic spying. He might have been the Director of MI5 within a few years.
He tested the theory time and time again in his mind. Hollis had been working for the Germans, doing… what? Logically, he would have been employed to ensure that other German spies were covered or passed over by MI5’s investigators, something that he would have been ideally placed to organise. In his position, he could also have made sure the Germans knew exactly what they would face at Felixstowe; he might even have designed the procedures that had allowed the Germans to sail the Hans Bader into the harbour without anything more than a cursory investigation. That would have been enough to cause anyone to be suicidal, but even so, was it enough to cause Hollis to kill himself? He must have known what he was doing… hadn’t he? Even if he hadn’t known, how had he missed it when the Germans actually landed?
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” he called. His assistant stepped in. “Yes, Sarah, what is it?”
Sarah smiled. “The Prime Minister is requesting your presence ten minutes ago,” she said wryly.
“I’m on my way,” he said. Churchill was scheduled to address a gathering of Londoners and Civil Dignitaries in the heart of London, one of the most secure gatherings in the world… which wasn’t that secure. Churchill’s bodyguards, some of David Stirling’s men, had tried to talk Churchill out of going, knowing that in a crowd, it would be very difficult to prevent anyone from getting close enough to take a pot-shot at Churchill. “Why does he want me there?”
Sarah’s grin grew wider.
“Because he has a habit of gathering the best and the brightest around him,” she said, knowing that DeRiemer’s rise meant that her position would rise as well. “You’re the one who predicted trouble, so you’re the one who gets the credit and… well, he’ll treat you as a good luck charm.”
“You’ve been listening to the other secretaries again,” he said. He knew little about the world of the personal assistants. “As long as he wants me…”
Skorzeny’s lips twitched as he examined the British lorry. There was nothing much to be said for it, not compared to a panzer or even a standard Speer Lorry that the Speer machine had been grinding out for the German Army. It was nicely anonymous, impossible to tell apart from the hundreds of others that were running through London, and easy to drive. The British had some strange habits when it came to driving, but with Canadians and Australians — and even a handful of Americans — in London, no one would notice the group of British servicemen driving one lorry and looking very urgent. They would get in, carry out their mission, and escape in all the confusion.