Dominion (67 page)

The screen went blank again. Drax was still screaming, ‘Stop! No!’

‘Lights, please.’ Gunther spoke quietly. Kapp went out and switched the light on again. At a nod from Gunther the technician lowered the screen with a snap and began packing his
equipment away. He kept his head averted from the others in the room; he had not looked at anyone the whole time. Syme was leaning against the wall, rather pale.

‘We’ve only made that first scene so far,’ Gessler said to Drax, voice full of sarcastic amusement. ‘It could be quite a long film if you want it to be.’

Drax turned to Gunther with a desperate look on his thin face. ‘Don’t hurt them,’ he pleaded. ‘Please don’t hurt them. They know people, you’ll get into
trouble—’

‘Not in this case,’ Gunther said quietly, almost sympathetically. ‘They’re only members of a provincial Conservative Party branch, Beaverbrook won’t do anything to
protect little people like that. Since Muncaster escaped Berlin has been applying real pressure on your government, and he’s given them to us.’ He added, ‘I’m sorry you had
to see that, but we need you to talk. Heroics won’t help here. Your parents are just a few doors away, we filmed what you saw ten minutes ago.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We’ve
shown you what we’re prepared to do and if you don’t tell us what we want to know we’ll start on them. And afterwards we’ll show you the film.’ Gunther hoped Drax
would talk now, he hadn’t liked any of this and would be pleased if one woman’s finger was all it cost.

Kapp turned to him cheerfully. ‘Otherwise, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘First the fingers, then the toes. This little piggy went to market, then this one. None of them stay at
home. Then we go for the eyes.’

‘We don’t need them alive, you see,’ Gunther continued. ‘And then, if you still don’t talk, it’ll be your turn, though in your case we’d probably
combine the physical methods with drugs. We learned a few things from the Russians there. So you see, however brave you are personally, it won’t help in the end. But we’d rather have
you fully awake. You’ll talk tomorrow at the latest, you should understand that.’ He looked intently at Drax. ‘There’s no shame in talking to save others. Four people are on
the run, four lives. They’ll probably get caught but even if some of them get away the Americans will almost certainly kill them once they’ve got what they want out of Muncaster.’
Drax’s head jerked up at that. Gunther didn’t know what the Americans had planned for them, though he wouldn’t have been surprised if they killed Muncaster, given he had a head
full of dangerous knowledge. He could see, though, that the thought hadn’t yet crossed Drax’s mind. ‘Weigh that against your parents being tortured to death.’

There was silence for several seconds, then Drax said, his voice desperately weary, ‘I don’t know anything. That’s how we do things, on a need-to-know basis only. I
haven’t a clue why the Americans want Muncaster, I’ve no idea.’

Gunther nodded. ‘We know more than you think.’ He took a deep breath. Time for his bluff, while Drax was in a weakened, shocked state. He said, ‘You were planning to leave the
country. A submarine, we believe, from the Sussex coast. The coasts are being watched, we’ll pick them up.’

Gunther saw from Drax’s surprised expression that his guesswork had been right; this was what they were going to do.

‘How do you know all this?’ Drax looked appalled.

Gunther didn’t answer, just inclined his head. The Englishman was silent for a moment, then lowered his head and began to cry, weeping like a child, his shoulders shaking, all that proud
reserve gone. He had broken. Gessler smirked. Gunther closed his eyes.

‘If I tell you the little I know will you let my parents go?’ Drax’s voice was toneless and dead. ‘You seem to know all of it already.’

‘Of course. We’ve no further use for them.’

Drax’s shoulders sagged. ‘I don’t know where we were going to be picked up from, except that the rendezvous is only an hour from here.’

Gunther considered. An hour to the coast. Central Sussex. A lot of cliffs there, which narrowed down the places they could be picked up from. He said, ‘Thank you.’ He gestured at the
wall where the screen had been. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that, I really am.’

Drax said, ‘All that you know – who told you?’

‘I’d worked it out; the look on your face confirmed I was right. And now we can narrow the pickup point down further.’

Drax’s head fell hopelessly forward, the way people’s often did after they broke. Gunther nodded to Gessler, who followed him and Syme out of the cell, leaving Kapp on guard. They
halted a few feet along the corridor. Up ahead a young SS man was sitting at his desk, filling in forms. The telephone on his desk rang and he picked it up.

Gessler said, ‘Well done, Hoth. That was a masterpiece of interrogation. Admirable. We could turn this round after all.’

‘Thank you. I would ask you, please make sure the guards keep a careful eye on him. He’ll be a suicide risk. Guilt will come now.’

Syme said, ‘You bluffed him. About the submarine.’

‘Yes. We can tell our people on the Isle of Wight to look for an American submarine off the Sussex Coast. He’s not sophisticated. People like him are brave, but they have too narrow
a focus. Since being captured he was probably thinking only about how to bear great pain himself. He would have held out a long time.’

Gessler laughed. ‘You had him crying like a child. Like a little girl.’

Gunther said sadly, ‘My brother used to say that for him that was the hardest thing to see. When grown men cried like children, kneeling beside the graves his men had made them
dig.’

Gessler frowned at the unexpected remark. He said a little stiffly, ‘Well, keep me closely informed.’ He nodded at Syme and walked away down the corridor, boots clacking on the
marble. The young SS man had put the phone down and was standing up. His face was very pale. He saluted Gessler, then said something to him in a low voice.

Gunther turned to Syme. ‘You need to work out the best methods for each individual, you see. I learned that a long time ago.’ He saw that Syme’s face had a film of sweat on it,
he was blinking fast. He looked as though he might faint.

‘Are you all right?’ Gunther asked, extending an arm.

‘Yes,’ Syme said brusquely. ‘I was just expecting something a bit rougher, a bit more – basic. The film – I was a bit taken aback.’

‘It was too much for you?’ Odd, Gunther thought, what sensibilities appeared in the unlikeliest people. If they’d beaten Drax up, Syme would probably have been happy to join
in.

‘’Course not,’ Syme answered sharply. ‘It’s just it was so bloody hot in there, all those people. And the camera, those things generate a lot of heat. A lot of
heat,’ he repeated fiercely.

Sudden footsteps, Gessler was walking quickly towards them, his hands raised, as though he were trying to ward off something terrible. Behind him, at the desk, the boy had put his head in his
hands.

‘What?’ Gunther asked.

Gessler’s face was stricken, his lips trembling. ‘It’s the Führer,’ he said. ‘He’s had a heart attack. Our Führer is gone.’

O
N
S
UNDAY
, 30 N
OVEMBER
, Sarah had travelled by train to Brighton. She had been told where she was going
the previous evening by Meg, who had returned to Dilys’ with a suitcase of new clothes, some money and new identity papers. Briskly, Meg went through the details of Sarah’s new
identity. From now on she would be Mrs Sarah Hardcastle, widow of a London schoolteacher. She would be staying in a Brighton boarding house until David, and some others, were ready to join her. The
cover story was that she had wanted to get out of London for a few days following her husband’s death in a car crash earlier that year. Meg didn’t know or wouldn’t say where they
would be going after that.

Dilys had dyed her hair – it was dark red now, the colour surprisingly convincing, the style quite short. By the time Meg left it was late evening and Sarah was very tired. She spent the
night on a camp bed in the room where she had met Jackson, and where, Dilys told her, her customers waited. I’ve gone from a suburban lounge to a prostitute’s waiting room, all in a
day, Sarah thought. She wanted to laugh hysterically.

Next morning Dilys walked with Sarah to Piccadilly Circus tube station, Sarah carrying her suitcase and wearing a pair of tough, sensible shoes. In the crowded foyer Dilys hugged her tightly.
‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. She added, ‘Will you be all right? Where are you going to go?’

‘A new flat. Good luck, love.’ Then Dilys hugged her again and left. Sarah forced herself to move, she shouldn’t just stand there, she would draw stares. A little group of
young Blackshirts, the electric flash of the BUF on their armbands, strolled along on their way to some function; she walked rapidly away to the ticket booth. She caught a tube to Victoria and
bought a ticket for the Brighton train. Waiting on the platform, her heart jumped at a glimpse of a patrolling policeman. She was glad to get on the train.

After the horrible chaos of the last few days the normality of the train journey felt surreal. Sarah stared blankly at the Southern Railway Company crest embossed on the seat opposite her.
Someone had left a newspaper there. It was the
Guardian
, the old liberal newspaper which her father always took. Beaverbrook had bought it last year and now it was laden with right-wing
propaganda like all the other papers. An article said there had been an incident in France: Communist agitators from the Resistance had attacked a lorry taking Jews to the internment camp at
Drancy. Some gendarmes had been killed, a couple of Jews too. She wondered how much of it was true; she knew the French Resistance was said to be growing larger and to be even more violent than the
British. There was an article too about a senior civil servant, working for the junior health minister, Church, being suspected of having relations with a prostitute, visiting brothels with his
cousin, a mental hospital superintendent, Dr Wilson. She was dubious; people said the government often blackened the names of people they wanted rid of by leaking such stories to the press. Either
way, he would soon be gone.

There were few people on the train, and by the time it left Haywards Heath her carriage was almost deserted. Sarah had been to Brighton a few times as a child, on summer day trips with her
family, the train full of eager, excited children. At the thought she might never see any of her family again she burst into tears, sat hunched over in the empty carriage sobbing quietly. She knew
she should do nothing to draw attention to herself but couldn’t help it.

She had been told to get a taxi to the hotel. Brighton Station smelt of smoke but when she stepped outside the air was wonderfully clean, bitterly cold with a salty tang. She hailed a taxi and
it drove her through dingy streets, then came out into the broad avenue of the Steine. She saw the domed roofs of Brighton Pavilion, George IV’s Indian palace. The taxi drove across the
Steine and turned into a side-street of narrow three-storey buildings with flaking paint, hotel signs above the doors, boards with
Vacancies
in the windows. At the end of the road was the
sea, startlingly close.

The hotel was called Channel View
.
There was no porter and she dragged her suitcase into a dark, poky vestibule. Behind the little counter sat a small, tired-looking
woman in her forties. Sarah put her identity card on the desk. ‘Mrs Hardcastle,’ the woman said, then looked at her anxiously. ‘Come through and meet my husband.’ Her voice
had a gentle burr, an almost rural sound. She opened a flap and Sarah followed her into a little office where a plump, balding man in shirt sleeves and waistcoat sat working on some accounts. His
wife gave him Sarah’s identity card. He read it, then looked up and studied her.

‘You got down here all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You look as though you’ve been crying.’ His tone was reproving.

‘Yes. On the train. There was no-one else in the carriage.’

He looked at her severely. ‘Someone might have come in.’

Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Two days ago I was a normal housewife. Now I’m on the run, I’ve learned my husband’s a spy, I’ve no home and I don’t know if my
family are all right or whether I’ll ever see them again. So yes, I’m sorry, but I had a cry.’

‘You didn’t know your husband was working for us?’

‘He never told me.’

‘Well, that’s often best,’ the man said, his voice less hostile. ‘Your family are all right by the way, we know that. We’ve been watching their houses. Your sister
and parents have had Special Branch visits, but that’s all. Your brother-in-law has a lot of Blackshirt friends –’ he looked at her sharply again for a moment – ‘that
will have helped.’

Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘What about my husband?’

‘There are delays in London. It may be a few days before he gets here.’

‘Then what happens?’ Sarah asked. ‘No-one will tell me.’

‘The plan’s to get you out of England. You and your husband, and some friends.’

‘How? Where to?’

The woman said, ‘Somewhere safe, we can’t tell you any more for now. I’m sorry.’ She added, ‘I’m Jane by the way, and this is Bert.’

Bert handed back her identity card. ‘We’ve got you a room here. You can go for little walks round the town if you like but don’t stray too far. We don’t have many
residents this time of year, just a few commercial travellers who come and go. Best if you keep yourself to yourself.’

‘I’ve been told to say I wanted to get out of London after my husband died. I can say I don’t like all the fuss about Christmas. It’s true, I hate it.’

‘Good,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t get into conversation with the other guests, some of them have a roaming eye.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Mealtimes are on a card in your room.’ Jane gave her a key. ‘There’s hot water on if you want a bath.’

‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. As she went through the door Bert said quietly, ‘Mrs Hardcastle?’

She turned. ‘Yes?’

He smiled. ‘Just making sure you remember your new name.’