This is futile, DeRiemer thought after a long period of reading the reports. The known pro-Nazis were all cooling their heels in an internment camp in Scotland where they were hardly likely to be able to give any help to Skorzeny. He’d run a handful of agents himself in Germany where security levels were much tighter, and he knew some of the problems involved from the operating end. It was easy, even in Germany, to establish an agent, but getting that agent closer to the centre of power was much harder. The Germans had a reputation for bureaucratic thoroughness and carefully investigated the past of everyone who tried to get into the higher ranks just in case there was a discrepancy. One British spy had been lost due to a simple oversight. His fictional biography had included a Jew in his ancestral line. Britain was much easier to penetrate…
He considered it carefully, placing himself in Himmler’s shoes, and tried to work out what he would have done. Himmler knew that it would be easy to get an agent into Britain, but, again, it was much harder to get someone into the corridors of power. Someone who was too pro-German wouldn’t have been permitted into any position of such responsibility. The risk would have been too great. That suggested that there were actually two German agents within the capital, and one of them was someone who didn’t sound any alarms. Not pro-German, not pro-Soviet, not pro-American… someone who kept his head down and remained unnoticed. Who?
The files were open in front of him, and he went through them again. The agent couldn’t be someone who was directly part of the government; there was no way that Himmler would risk a prize like that on protecting anyone, even Skorzeny, but he would be someone with a high level of access. Who had known what the spy had passed on to Berlin which had in turn been passed on to London? The list grew longer, with nearly two hundred names, all of which would have to be checked carefully. It would also have to be discreet; the names included some of the most important analysts in Britain, and some very well-connected people. If they got wind of what was going on…
Or maybe that’s what we want, DeRiemer thought. We want them to know we’re after them…
There was a knock on the door. DeRiemer made sure that all the papers were covered and shouted for the knocker to come in. A young MI5 officer stuck his head in and frowned.
“Mr DeRiemer, the boss wants to see you at once,” he said. The surprised excitement in his voice made DeRiemer smile; had he ever been that young? “Roger Hollis has been found dead; he killed himself!”
Chapter Forty-Four
Felixstowe, England
“Interesting,” Standartenfuhrer Ludwig Stahl said as the SS investigative team went though the cottage carefully. “Very interesting indeed.”
“Really,” Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger drawled. Technically, he outranked Stahl, but in occupied Felixstowe, Stahl was very definitely in command. The logistics and civil service sections of the SS took a back-seat to the security forces in wartime, particularly in occupied territory. “They broke three of my fingers and tried to force me to tell them information!”
“Yes, interesting,” Stahl agreed. He wasn’t entirely convinced by Deininger’s story; the man had already shown a dubious amount of moral courage — if not common sense — by coming up to the cottage with a prostitute on the eve of the offensive. The French bitch might be pretty, but Deininger was clearly more than just a little infatuated with her, something that Stahl found disgusting. Who knew where she’d been? “What did they want you to tell them?”
“They wanted to know about the offensive and when it was going to be launched,” Deininger said. “I held out until I heard the noise of guns and then laughed at them. They tried asking a few other questions, before they fled and left us tied up…”
“And they didn’t kill you,” Stahl said. That point was odd. “Do you know why they didn’t kill you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Deininger thundered. “I want them hunted down and eradicated!”
Stahl took a long breath. “It has been my experience that when most insurgents take prisoners, they very rarely keep them for long,” he said. He carefully kept his voice calm and free of accusation. “You should have had your throat cut, and your bitch should have either been killed or had her hair cut off. Why were you not killed?”
“I have no idea,” Deininger snapped. The fury in his voice was unmistakable. “What are you going to do about finding them?”
“I am going to carry out a proper examination of this place first, and then I will decide,” Stahl said pleasantly. “My men will escort you back to our compound where the medics will see to repairing your hand and hopefully returning you to duty as soon as possible. The fighting is being touted as a great success, but between you and me, I don’t think that it was as successful as the official broadcasts indicate.”
He smiled at Hauptsturmfuehrer Grauer Wulfenbach as Deininger was escorted out of the cottage and back to Felixstowe. He wasn’t convinced that Deininger was an innocent in the affair or that he was being completely honest about why he was up at the cottage. There was something buried there that Stahl didn’t understand. A man like Deininger, with his rank and status, could have had practically any unattached woman he wanted, or he could indulge the darkest of tastes at an SS-run brothel, but he had chosen a French whore. Why?
Wulfenbach snapped a salute as soon as they were alone. “I interrogated her and she knows nothing,” he said briskly. Stahl had given orders that the questioning was to be gentle, but ‘gentle’ was relative when it came to the SS. The whore would have been scared out of her life. “All she knows is that the attackers came in, tied her up, and dumped her on the bed. A few hours later, the Brigadefuhrer freed her and had her call for help.”
“And yet, she wasn’t molested in any way,” Stahl said. He scowled as he thought about it. “Did they try to take her or anything?”
“No,” Wulfenbach said. “They just tied her up and left her out of the way.”
“As if she was nothing to them, not even a woman,” Stahl said.
Wulfenbach shrugged. “I can question her more thoroughly if you want…?”
Stahl stroked his chin as he thought. There were generally two types of insurgents; the trained and experienced remains of various armies and, then, civilian insurgents who were often little better than bandits. The first type could be very dangerous but tended to be professionals, while the second type could often be more dangerous to their own people than they were to the Germans. They’d left Janine alone, and that was curious. Several girls who had slept with Germans had had their head shaved under cover of darkness. The entire action had been professional… and yet, there had been a certain kind of amateurish behaviour about the attackers. They should have killed Deininger and had, instead, left him alive.
“Not yet, he said, finally. He looked over at the head of the forensic team. “Have you found anything?”
“No, Herr Standartenfuhrer,” the man said. He pulled off a pair of gloves as he spoke. “We found a great many prints, but the only fresh ones correspond to the prints of Brigadefuhrer Deininger and his female companion. The insurgents wore gloves and didn’t leave any traces of their identities.”
He smiled. He’d given orders, as soon as the attack began, for the British civilians to remain firmly in their homes, sheltering from any British attack and remaining out of the way of troop transports as they moved through Felixstowe and up towards the front-line Their mystery insurgents were probably still in the town, unless they had a hiding place out in the country, and that meant that they were vulnerable. He could find them, and if he found them, he could crush them like bugs… but doing so wasn’t going to be easy.
“Seal this cottage and have a guard remain here,” he ordered the forensic team and headed back out into the sunlight. His official car was waiting for them, and they climbed in and ordered the driver to take them back to the barracks. They passed through the empty streets of Felixstowe, the houses still blacked-out but with the occasional open curtain, and he felt his insides shake. He hated the town at that moment, hated it for interfering with his work and leaving a black mark on his record. They would all pay for daring to interfere with the triumph of the Reich.
“Carola,” he barked as soon as he marched into his office. “Where are all the British men with military experience from this town?”
Carola took one look at his face and wisely didn’t argue. “Half of them are in Detention Camp Seven,” she said. Stahl nodded; the Germans had set up ten detention camps, mainly for captured soldiers. They were packed as a result of the fighting. Several hundred prisoners had already been shipped over to France in order to prevent the British from recovering them. “The others are part of the dockworker force.”
“I want those men permanently isolated and supervised at all times,” Stahl ordered curtly. He frowned as he ran through the logic. They couldn’t simply be added to one of the detention camps as it would slow down the unloading process. The Army would have a number of sharp things to say about it, and Himmler would be furious. It would rapidly result in his recall and transfer to Russia. “They’re to be restricted to one of the barracks when they’re not working.”
“I need something that will bring them out before something worse happens,” he said, thinking hard. He considered a major search of Felixstowe, but there was little point. The insurgents wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving weapons around, not after what had happened to Davidson and his family. That brought a smile to his face, and he made a decision. “I want hostages.”
Carola stared at him. “Herr Standartenfuhrer…”
Stahl ignored her. “I want to round up twenty wives,” he said, remembering how this tactic had been applied in Norway and Denmark. The Russians hadn’t been quite so easy to affect with the tactic; they didn’t seem to care that much about their women. “I want them held here and it to be announced that they will be executed for the crimes of the insurgents unless the insurgents come forward and surrender to us.”
Carola made a second attempt. “Herr Standartenfuhrer, the Reichsfuhrer forbade the use of heavy tactics against the British,” she said. Her advancement was dependent upon his; it gave her a motive to offer him good advice at all times. “Should you not clear it with him first?”
“The British have managed to humiliate us,” Stahl snarled. He had seen it happen in Norway. Someone humiliated the Reich, and it encouraged dozens of others to try to follow suit. It usually ended with a particular settlement being razed to the ground and was therefore wasteful of resources. “If we don’t hit back at them now, we will have to use heavier tactics later, understand?”
Carola bowed her head and replied. “Of course, Herr Standartenfuhrer.”
“Draw up a list,” Stahl ordered her. “Use the standard criteria, but leave out any wife who is married to someone who was working at the docks when we arrived and wives of the police and local government people; anyone else is fair game. Send that list to Wulfenbach, and he can organise the arrest teams. Once they’re all rounded up, we can make the proclamation about what will happen to them unless the insurgents surrender.”