He stepped into his apartment and came face to face with Skorzeny. The SS commando looked terrifyingly big and powerful, or maybe that was just his reputation; even so, he filled the room with his presence. He wore a set of clothes that Philby had brought him, common workman’s clothes, and yet… somehow, he made them seem like a uniform. There could be no doubting what he was and somehow, regardless, he had walked through the streets of London without fear.
“Welcome home,” Skorzeny said without irony. Philby kept his face carefully blank, wishing that he didn’t feel so imperilled in Skorzeny’s presence; he had the sense that each time he turned his back, it might be the last. Skorzeny was intimidation personified; every time he smiled, Philby had the urge to cover his groin and run. “Did you get the information and the orders?”
“Yes, I did,” Philby said. Skorzeny had listened in disbelief as the advancing panzers, far from punching through the British defences, had been balked and then turned back by the British armour. Philby had been both pleased and worried. Pleased because of the expression on Skorzeny’s face, worried because without the panzers coming to rescue them, Skorzeny might try something stupid to escape London, dragging Philby down with him. “Have you made the tea?”
Skorzeny merely held out a hand. Philby passed him the note and went into the kitchen, somehow unsurprised to discover that the commandos, while very neat, hadn’t bothered to make any food. They hadn’t even set about preparing a small meal for them. The seven of them ate a great deal of food between them, he had realised, and as his rations were designed for only one person, he was having to use a great deal of ingenuity to gather enough food to feed them all. He had contacts and friends in high places, but with a witch hunt going on for German spies, he didn’t dare do anything that would cause anyone to realise what he was doing.
“Interesting,” Skorzeny said as he came into the kitchen. The team leader showed no sign of recognising Philby’s irritation. “Do you know what they want us to do?”
“No,” Philby said crossly. It had occurred to him that he could have forged information or orders for the commandos, but cracking the code for their communications had proven beyond his abilities. “I cannot read your codes.”
“No,” Skorzeny agreed dryly. His face twisted into a sneer. “I guess they didn’t trust you. Once a traitor, always a traitor.”
Philby had a rare moment of deep insight. Skorzeny acted like a small boy half the time. A small boy with utterly lethal combat skills and a small arsenal of weaponry. He had complete faith in his own abilities and absolutely no conception of what might happen to him if he were caught, or even of his own death in combat. He went to war gladly, with a smile on his face, completely unable to grasp the fact that he might die. His faith in his own invincibility was a powerful asset, the one that had kept him going through his career… and allowed him to become one of the legends of the SS.
“I thought that the idea was security,” he said, refusing to show any offence. They had had some details drummed into their heads a long time before Hitler’s forces had taken Moscow and killed Stalin. “If I am caught, the less I know, the better. What do you have to do, and how does it involve me?”
“It seems that someone in Berlin has decided to toss Winston Churchill down the WC,” Skorzeny said, laughing at his own joke. It wasn’t that funny, but Philby risked a laugh anyway, not daring to antagonise the bully too much. “They want us to remove him permanently from office with a shot through the head.”
Philby stared at him. “They want you to kill Churchill?”
“Apparently so,” Skorzeny said, buffing his nails with a toothpick. “I dare say that our esteemed Fuhrer has decided that Mr Churchill is no longer required for the war effort and has ordered him removed. As the best people in the Reich for such missions — I have killed several Russian generals personally — we have been ordered to dispose of him.”
He leered, picking his teeth with one hand. “Or don’t you think that’s a good idea?” He asked, his voice becoming mocking and very cold. “Are you feeling some tiny trace of loyalty still left in your system?”
Philby frowned at him, thoroughly disgusted.
“Not really,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I just suspect that if we actually kill Churchill, it’s going to be extremely difficult to remain in place and avoid detection.”
Skorzeny quirked an eyebrow. “In the middle of a power struggle over who would succeed Churchill as Prime Minister?”
“We’re not going to fight a civil war over it,” Philby proclaimed. “The handful of possible candidates will either form a compromise government between themselves or one of them will gain enough votes in Parliament to go to the King and receive his blessing to form a new government. Regardless, they’re not going to stop looking for you, and they’ll go through everything — and everyone — with a fine-toothed comb.”
“And maybe they’ll see through your cover at last,” Skorzeny said, a smile forming around his lips. His teeth showed once; they were perfect, of course. “What are you going to do then?”
“I have no idea,” Philby said wilting. He had some plans for escape, but he suspected that the press of events would ensure that they were no longer usable They had partly depended on Hollis, and he was now dead. “What do you want me to do?”
“They want us to get out of the city afterwards,” Skorzeny said calmly. Philby tried to paste a relieved-looking expression on his face. Skorzeny probably thought he was a coward, but that hardly mattered, not now. There might just be a chance to escape completely. “How do you advise that we do that?”
Philby had looked into the matter before the Germans launched their attack against the defence lines to the north.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he said, after a moment to collect his thoughts. He’d have to check everything again, and that would risk detection. “I don’t think I can get us papers to get very far out of the city, and if we were to pose as a military unit, we would be unlikely to get away with it for long.”
“Why not?” Skorzeny smiled and asked. His eyes lit up as he contemplated an important point. “You could be an important minister and we could be your bodyguards.”
Philby shook his head.
“The British Army senior ranks are very entwined with the political and aristocratic framework of the country,” he said. How much did Skorzeny actually know? “It’s quite likely that if we posed as a government personage and his escort, whoever we met would know all of them by sight and would smell a rat at once. If we tried to make it to German lines in the north, we would very likely be caught and then thrown into jail.”
“Executed,” Skorzeny said flatly. He laughed aloud as Philby flinched at the blunt word. “Where else is there? Ireland?”
“That’s where they would expect us to go,” Philby said. “There are dozens of possible ways to get to Ireland, but all of them would be watched under any circumstances, and of course that would be doubled after Churchill’s death. The only other way out would be to head to France.”
Skorzeny gave him a sharp look. Did he see the deceit that Philby was planning deep inside his heart?
“France happens to be on the opposite side of a rather large sea,” he said coldly. “They may claim that I can walk on water, but I would sink if I tried to swim that far, so what do you have in mind?”