Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (19 page)

It was the final ignominy of a strange and surreal war.

William’s mind had wandered, with such a stark and unwanted resemblance to a forgotten face of a bygone nightmare, and he forced himself to concentrate.

“So I trust that you were discreet about this impromptu little rendezvous,” the Colonel was saying. His hair was thinning slightly, but the brow was strongly pronounced, the moustache neat. His uniform was immaculate, and curiously, had a red carnation through the buttonhole. William detected the Highlander in his Scot accent, though distinctly public school elocution was tempering it. The man seemed charming enough, his features open, eyes bright and searching. He had the air of a great energy being contained.

“Yes, Colonel.”

“By that, I assume that your friends know about it?” The reply was fast, but not sharp. William decided to meet him head on with honesty. Lies didn’t appeal to his honed sense of morality, and it was too early to jeopardise whatever it was that this strange Colonel in no. 7 Whitehall had in mind with him.

“Yes they do, Colonel. They’re my comrades. We’ve fought in the trenches together, in war.”

“And by that, you mean Spain?”

“Yes.”

“You have experience fighting fascism…”

“Yes.” William resolved to give no further one-word answers; though relatively sweet tempered, he shared the egalitarian zeal of the previous decade and all the untold millions who subscribed to socialism in its various forms, or anarchism. Alan would have bristled at the thought of him being interrogated by some public school toff; Scottish or not.

The Colonel smiled. “But I dare say, my dear chap, you don’t quite believe in the social system of this country? In the Empire, capitalism and the King?”

William hesitated, wary of blowing some as-yet unspecified opportunity to do more than be an auxiliary fireman when the Germans came, and with anything from a quarter of a million to 400,000 men captive after the Dunkirk debacle, there was nothing more cruelly inevitable.

“I believe in a more egalitarian system that represents us as brothers,” William began cautiously. “Although I’m certainly not a communist.” He saw the Colonel’s eyes narrow almost imperceptibly at that, and realised that he’d underestimated him. Thinking fast, he continued, “of course I joined the party, but it was to secure a means to entering Spain. Myself, some friends and a handful of other members of the party all shipped out together. Once we reached Barcelona, three of us joined a Marxist militia instead. A year later the Communist Party outlawed them as fascist Trotskyites, and the aftermath is when I stopped believing in the naïve idealism of the dream. Nothing wakes you up quite like betrayal.”

The Colonel nodded. “I see.”

William decided to reinforce his position. “Point being is we were there to stop the rising tide of fascism. No pasarán;
They Shall Not Pass
. That was the idea, anyway. But that ideal, that dream, hasn’t died. It’s not even so much fascism, per se, although that word has come to symbolise evil. It’s German fascism. Hitler’s fascism. National Socialism, a doctrine of hate and suppression, racial Darwinism. That’s what I fight for. Not Comrade Stalin, death to the rich, collectivised produce and concrete tower blocks for all.”

The Colonel had nodded again, satisfied. “Good. Because personally, my lad, I don’t care what your politics are. I care about your passion to defend Britain against the enemy. Because this country, make no bones about it, is under the biggest threat to its survival it has ever encountered. Even the little French weasel Napoleon Bonaparte was child’s play, compared to this…”

He gestured in a vaguely south-westerly direction, towards where they both knew the Germans were massing. No mercy in their grey eyes – the average Jerry, the commanders, and the four greyest and coolly bluest eyes of all, those of Hitler and Göring. No respite. They had France, and Britain’s army was taken. The U-boats were slaughtering at sea, targeting shipping and cleaving through Royal Navy patrol boats. Even if they didn’t get the French Navy –
could we scuttle our Allies’ ships, kill their men
– that still left the Italian Navy, and with Franco eyeing Gibraltar, Spain would soon join the
Great Struggle Against The Jew Puppetmasters of London
. Only the Royal Air Force held out, and with a massive Luftwaffe concentration expected to supplement an invasion force that had already captured the bulk of the army supposed to defend Britain’s shores, the situation looked doomed.

“I’m a believer in unconventional warfare. The extent of that is, perhaps, unclear; but do you think for a moment that Germany is neglecting offensive bacteriological and chemical warfare? Do you think they will adhere to Geneva?”

Scorn was etched into the colonel’s face; William could see his naked ambition to fight Germany using any and all means.

“You may just be the fellow I’m looking for. You won’t know this, and in truth, even among the chaps like yourself I’m going to recruit we’ll be sparing with the details, in case they’re captured of course. But you, I know are dedicated to fighting these scum. And I served with your father, Lieutenant
Lawler
. It is ‘Lawler’ with an ‘e’, aye?”

William was astonished, but recovered quickly.

“Aye… uh, still Celtic but aye.”

He tried to elaborate, but his lips mouthed wordlessly and he gave up, waiting for the Colonel to explain. The old veteran nodded slowly, gauging his young charge.

“He was a
good
man. Fought at the Battle of Quentin, died 1
^st
April 1918, as the Expeditionary Force halted the Germans. I myself was evacuated from the trench soon after.” He did not elaborate further, nor did he need to. His guest was dumbfounded, and this time made no effort to disguise it.

The Colonel smiled. “You seem surprised?”

“I daresay I am a little bit, aye,” he admitted, inclining his head. His host picked up the silver cigarette case that lay on the neatly ordered desk in front of him, by his left hand, and offered it to William. The younger man accepted a smoke gratefully, which the military officer lit for him with the lift-arm lighter that had been next to his right. He took one for himself and lit it, all in one smooth movement with the grace of a man who’d performed that manoeuvre several thousand times.

Both sucked in their first drags of the cigarettes with gusto, nursing the smoke in their lungs before releasing it contentedly. Then, business-like once again; now the Colonel had his full attention, and he leaned in. This, they knew, was the crux of it.

“You’re from good stock, and while you may not want to defend this country for the
King
, I’m certain that you and your mob – your
comrades
– will do it out of some different kind of patriotism; a kinship with democratic values, if you like, or at least with fairness, and a good old fashioned hatred of racist, tyrant scum. And regarding central London, you may just be the man I’m looking for.”

William absorbed it all, nodding slowly. The invoking of democracy was amusing, given their ideals on the outset of war in Spain, but he wasn’t going to argue now. Left-wing extremism, they now knew, held as much malevolence for those who did not fit within its parametres as did fascism. But the colonel was a persuasive man. William was beginning to see where this was going, after being initially confused by the Whitehall office, and the mixed signals that this whole rather bizarre summons had sent out.

The Colonel continued. “Against an enemy such as the Germans, less-than-conventional means of warfare and resistance have been considered. Are you aware of any such plans?”

The young man shook his head.

“Nor will others recruited in similar vein to you. You and your mob; I have the feeling somehow that you won’t be captured, and if so, that you won’t talk. So, for your benefit, I
will
tell you that a certain major – now colonel, back on active duty – explored such possibilities in a national security service section and in doing so, happened to set wheels in motion for what I am being commissioned to implement. Let’s call them ‘D’. And the justification was clear, let me read you an excerpt from ‘Colonel D’s’ closing report…”

The Colonel cleared his throat, and turned the page of the notebook in front of him – neat and immaculately kept, much like the rest of his appearance – and found the correct page on the first attempt.

“… ok here we are…” he cleared his throat, “’The section was motivated to total war tactics by Adolf Hitler, who harnessed to his war chariot the four horses of treacherous diplomacy, lying propaganda, racial persecution and economic blackmail’. Furthermore… ‘With the sudden drastic misfortunes suffered on the military front, the menace of enemy occupation in part of the British isles has increased exponentially. This section conceived and began implementing plans for a closely coordinated sabotage and intelligence network among the civilian population who would be left behind in any territories which the German armies might temporarily be able to occupy…”

William smiled at that, despite himself.
Temporary
. The British spirit wouldn’t allow for permanence.

“… as such, Section D completed several thousands of secret dumps throughout the country of incendiary materials. Our own additions are the D-Phone – a telephone capable of encoding and decoding the human voice, and the Duplex Transceiver; a wireless telephone with a wavelength too short to be picked up by any other known receiver…”

The Colonel looked up briefly at William. “And this is where it gets interesting for you and I.”

He continued reading. “In light of the present dangers faced and the need for coordinated action through a network of Operational Patrols and Special Duties officers, in sabotage, intelligence and all means of subversive activity, Section D’s Home Defence Organisation network of agents and the means and materials with which to conduct guerrilla war, sabotage and subversion in German occupied territory now passes to the unified single command of the GHQ Auxiliary Units’.”

He looked up again. “That means us, my lad.”

William was momentarily speechless. Neither the Czechs, nor the Scandinavians, Poles, Dutch, Belgians or French had had the foresight for this. It was a resistance organisation in the making before the krauts even landed! Jack, Alan and Mary would be ecstatic. So much for Auxiliary Firemen, perhaps picking up some Great War era pistol at the end to make some desperate and quite pointless last stand against an enemy of overwhelming power. This was more like it.

He found his voice. “I understand fully and we are ready to do our part.”

The shadow of a smile played at the corners of the Colonel’s mouth at that, noting the young Scot had not said ‘duty’. But the fervour for German resistance was no less because of it; in fact, he was glad that his new recruits were driven by ideological hatred of National Socialism. That, or the visceral fear and loathing felt by older men who’d fought ‘Jerry’ knee-deep in mud and blood in the Great War, were far more reliable motivational factors in fanatical resistance than loose, crude patriotism and some vague sense of duty to the King.

“You readily accept that the life expectancy for this kind of work is not high.” It was rhetorical, not even qualifying as a question. They both knew it to be so.

“Yes.”

“Good. For now at least, I will not ask of you anything regarding weapons that are outlawed by the current conventions of war. But unconventional methods are needed. Sabotage, assassination, perhaps even direct combat.”

William nodded, and the colonel’s eyes bore into his.

“Elsewhere,” he continued with a low urgency, “you need not concern yourself; you are perfectly situated in Bloomsbury – your base, as it were, is central London. You will receive intelligence regarding German troop movements from other parts of the occupied zone. Radio operators are located all over. You will have access to one, and there is a weapons cache located in the following place; memorise this now…”

As William listened rapt, his forehead bunched in concentration, the old Scot described directions to the hidden storage dump, outside the city limits in a field bunker.

“And as for Bloomsbury… do you, perchance use
The Royal Oak
at all?”

Another surprise, William wryly though. Old Arthur.

“Sometimes. We mostly drink in The Portland Arms…”

The trademark smile once more split the Colonel’s face, stretching his skin and alleviating some of the lines. “Try the Royal Oak. Arthur will keep you informed.”

He stood up, a proud stance with chest stuck out, and William joined him. It was as though some unbreakable bond of kinship had been fostered between them; two Scots, more than two decades apart in age and who’d not laid eyes on each other more than twenty minutes before.

“The Germans are coming, William, and they’re a bloody ruthless lot I tell you. And with their army will come the SS, and with the SS will come secret police. I’m sure you’re as aware as I am of what ‘police work’ entails to these people.”

William nodded. They’d helped set up Franco’s own round-up gangs, and they’d been active enough in their own country for long enough. Concentration camps, emaciated internees in dirty pyjamas, dying of typhus and maltreatment in squalid pits of their own stinking waste. Floating corpses turning up in the canals, rivers and foetid becks of the cities; autopsies bypassed when the penis attached to the dead body in question was found to be circumcised; the criminal police, which had been seized in a Heydrich-Himmler coup to consolidate all Reich police forces, ordered by Heydrich to look the other way when their sister forces created fresh crime scenes whose victims were undesirables in the Reich. SD sabotage and intrigues on foreign soil.
Protective custody
, and other such sinister euphemisms. Ghettos being set up in Polish cities, Jews displaced from their homes in Germany itself, persecution having almost become ad hoc law.

Yes, William knew what
police work
entailed. They all had their reasons to fight the Nazis. And in his case, and his friends’, they had more reason than he hoped most ever would.