Ernst glimpsed an officer and an enlisted man, both in SS black, with a dog on a rope leash. When it smelled the roast pork the dog went crazy. Claudine spoke softly to the SS men in what sounded like English, not German, and showed them a bit of paper that to Ernst looked oddly like a British identity card. The officer inspected the paper. 'Good. Come.' He grabbed her arm and pulled her away, so roughly she stumbled.
Fred stood, unmoving. 'Is it over?'
Irma was patting at her apron. 'My identity card is gone. She must have- I thought what she showed them looked a bit familiar. How did she do that?'
In an instant Ernst saw what Claudine had done, that she had taken Irma's place. 'Claudine!' He lunged forward.
But Fred stood in his way and grabbed his arms. 'Let her go,' he said. 'She did it to spare us. For God's sake-'
Through the open door Ernst saw they were dragging her to a truck, in which a dozen people already stood passively, their heads bowed. He struggled. 'Get your hands off me!'
'Please. I'm begging you.' The man was crying, Ernst saw. Fred wrapped his big farmer's arms around him, as if he was hugging him rather than restraining him. 'Let her go! Oh, God, let her go.'
XXIV
It was an hour before Fred would let Ernst out of the house.
They all sat in the kitchen, as if stunned. Irma cut Alfie some of the pork. None of the others could eat.
When the hour was up Ernst pulled on his greatcoat and boots and ran out of the door. It had stopped snowing. The sky was full of cloud, but the air was cold, clear.
Ernst went to find Alfie's bike, the one the boy rode every day to school, the only transport available. The bike was a bit small for him, but Alfie's legs were long, and Ernst was able to make it work. There was a little dynamo that powered flickering lamps front and back.
The bike was hard work, the slush and the mud dragging at the wheels. It was pitch dark aside from the light of his lamps, but he was able to follow the tracks of the truck easily enough. As he passed more farmhouses he saw where the footprints of the men and dogs diverged from the main track.
As he rode on he began to hear the shooting, rough volleys clattering through the still air.
The killing site was at a place called Netherfield, little more than a road junction a couple of miles north of Battle. The only light came from the trucks' headlights; the vehicles' engines were running, rumbling. He saw people being lined up, ten or a dozen at a time. There seemed to be more SS men than captives. The men stood around, helmets of smoke around their heads in the cold air. One man bent to pat his dog. He heard laughter.
A man, an SS-schutze waving a torch, stopped him a hundred yards from the site. 'Halt, Herr Obergefreiter. You have your card?'
Ernst got off the bike, and fumbled in his jacket pocket for his papers.
The schutze inspected them by torchlight. 'What are you doing here, Herr Obergefreiter?'
'There is somebody here I know,' Ernst said. 'Not British – French. A mistake.'
Another volley of gunfire.
'I wouldn't go down there if I were you,' the schutze said. 'It is nearly done, the work. If your friend was ever there, well… The einsatzgruppen are not fond of being interrupted.'
Ernst took a step forward. 'But-'
The schutze put a gloved hand on his chest. 'Please.'
Another group was lined up. They stood at the edge of a pit. Ernst wondered how it had been dug out, for the ground was frozen. Perhaps it had been prepared in advance; the SS were nothing if not efficient. Ernst saw the silhouettes of the men with their pistols, standing behind their targets. When the order came to fire there was a spray of blood and brains, you could clearly see it, vivid crimson by the glow of the trucks' lamps. Some of the victims fell cleanly, others quivered and trembled before they dropped, and some screamed, not yet dead. Men stepped forward and pistols cracked, as the work of clean-up was finished.
The schutze watched this impassively. 'Would you like a cigarette, Herr Obergefreiter?'
'No.'
'Um. Then, do you have one to spare?'
Ernst dug a packet out of his greatcoat pocket.
The man took a cigarette gratefully. He lit it within cupped fingers, and the glow illuminated his face. He was very young, Ernst saw. 'It is not as easy as you might think,' the schutze said slowly, 'to kill a man.'
'It is a mistake,' Ernst said. 'She should not be there.'
The schutze nodded. 'Such things happen. I once read of a pope who, when receiving complaints about the unfairness of the Inquisition, said that he would leave it to Saint Peter to sort out saints from sinners. Do you believe in God?'
'Do you?'
'Not any more, Herr Obergefreiter.'
The men dispersed from the edge of the pit, and the trucks' engines roared.
XXV
24 December
The Sea Lion monument was already astonishing, Mary thought as she was driven up with George. Even incomplete, it was a henge of concrete and scaffolding that utterly dominated the Richborough site. All around its base the ground was churned into ruts, and rainwater stood everywhere, glimmering, scummy.
'All this must be playing merry hell with the archaeology,' she said.
George sat beside her in the car, the buttons on his uniform polished to a gleam. He twisted his head to see the arch. 'Look at that bloody thing. These Germans really are crackers.'
'The SS scholars know their history, though. Claudius would have been impressed. But I'm surprised the RAF haven't bombed this monstrosity to bits.'
George grinned. 'Oh, their way is to wait until the thing is nearly finished, then bomb it to bits.'
New buildings huddled at the feet of the arch, neat but boxy. Staff stood in rows, mostly uniformed. As Mary's car drew up, flashbulbs popped. Evidently they were expected.
And Gary was here, somewhere in this strange complex.
Mary would have been nervous anyhow, even if not for Gary. She'd never been involved in an operation like this before, and the fact that Germany and the US had gone to war with each other since Mackie had cooked up his plan had made things 'a tad more complicated', in Mackie's dry words. Still here she was, the show was on the road. But when she thought of Gary being close by, the day seemed distant, unreal, even the mass of the unfinished monument transient and illusory.
The car drew up at the base of the arch. The SS driver opened the door and Mary got out. The driver took a package from the car trunk. It was Mackie's Roman spear, preserved within a beautifully crafted wooden box. The box was heavy, but George carried it easily.
Under lumpy cloud it was dark, Christmas Eve turning out to be one of those English midwinter days that never seem to gather the strength to break into full, honest daylight; at noon this was about as bright as it was going to get. But the monument somehow looked right under such a sky, four mighty silhouetted stumps. She could smell the sea, and that reminded her that Tom Mackie was not far away, standing offshore in a motor boat, waiting to take her to safety.
A small party of SS officers approached, trailed by photographers.
'We'll get through this,' George said to Mary. 'Just a couple of hours and it will be done.'
'I'm glad you're here,' she whispered.
One SS man closed on her, hand outstretched; he was not tall, but slim and unreasonably good-looking. 'Mrs Wooler? I am Standartenfuhrer Josef Trojan. Merry Christmas! I am really so delighted to see you again. We have worked together a long time now, haven't we?' Trojan took Mary's hand and shook it; the grip of his gloved hand was firm, warm. He turned with practised ease to face the little party of photographers. There was a blizzard of popping bulbs. 'And Constable Tanner, we meet again.'