Last Man to Die (17 page)

‘Surely not …’ Cazolet felt sure that Churchill was going too far in personalizing events, but the Old Man raised his voice to shout him down.

‘Hencke is a remarkable man, a prize in anyone’s army. Unique. Powerful. He has outwitted an entire nation.’ Animation had sparked within the Old Man, as if he were caught personally in the excitement of Hencke’s adventure; he waved away the smoke that was clinging around his forehead in order to see Cazolet more clearly. ‘If he makes it back to Berlin, the only German soldier to do so throughout the course of this entire bloody war, Hencke becomes a mighty weapon. It has been inevitable since the moment he escaped.’

‘Then let us pray he never makes it back.’

Churchill glowered. ‘Goebbels has stacked the odds so fearfully against him.’

‘Goebbels …?’ Cazolet was growing impatient. Churchill talked in such riddles, making no sense that Cazolet could discern.

‘In order to use him as a weapon against me, Goebbels has betrayed him. He should never have told us that Hencke was in Ireland.’

‘But we can’t touch him in Ireland. Can we?’

‘Already he will have been smuggled out of Dublin, to somewhere safe, somewhere beyond our reach. But …’ The lower lip quivered, the moist end of the Havana forgotten. ‘To accommodate his disastrous timetable Goebbels has to get him from Ireland back to Germany in a fearful hurry. He cannot be smuggled through Spain or some third country – it would take too long. He cannot be flown there, for we have total mastery of the skies. They have no ships left afloat which could make the journey. No. There is only one way. By submarine!’

Cazolet was nodding slowly; this much he could understand.

‘And there is only one route, Willie! To run the
gauntlet of the English Channel, so full as it is of our frigates and patrol boats, would be suicide. A twenty-mile stretch of water without so much as a friendly rock behind which to hide. He couldn’t escape detection if he tried to swim through! No, Willie, no. He must go the long way round, beyond Scotland and down through the North Sea. There he might hope to hide in the depths, to escape our attentions. Nearly two hundred thousand square miles of dark water. There he might stand a chance.’ Churchill had seemed caught up in Hencke’s challenge himself, his cigar stabbing the air to leave a trail of smoky exclamation marks, but in an instant his demeanour changed. It was as if a string had been cut. He slumped back in his chair. ‘And it is
there
they shall stop him. Because of Goebbels’ precipitateness and stupidity. The Navy are already moving everything they have to throw a gate across the North Sea so solid that even the fishes will have trouble penetrating it.’ The voice brimmed with anguish. ‘They will leave nothing to chance, Willie.’

After many years spent so close to the Old Man, Cazolet was accustomed to the sharply swinging emotions, his sudden tempers too, but never had he seen his mood change so quickly. One moment Churchill had been lost in self-pity, the next caught in the thrill of trying to outwit Goebbels and even his own sea defences, yet now he was shedding tears.

‘Goebbels has sacrificed him, to get at me. He could have waited, got Hencke back home before making his wretched announcement, keep us unawares. But he couldn’t wait to humiliate me. Goebbels has betrayed him with the kiss of Judas. And so we must betray him also and nail him to a hard cross on which only brave men perish.’ His
bottom lip quivered, the head fell forward, the tears began to fall into his lap, tears of sorrow, of pity, and of guilt. ‘We move great armies around the chessboard of war, knowing the battle will result in tens of thousands of deaths. When I went to thank the troops on the night before they left for the Normandy beaches, they cheered, even with the knowledge that many of them were shortly to die as a result of my orders. There will be death warrants to be issued even after this war is over, and I shall not shrink from signing them. The game of war brings death, and the devil has ensured that this has been a hellishly long game. But to conspire in the destruction of this one brave man, whose only crime has been to love his country and to show the most peculiar courage, to order him cast over like a pawn, is almost more than I can bear. For he is no ordinary man. The whole world has betrayed him, poor, poor man. And now it is our turn.’

‘How on earth can you betray a murdering bloody German?’ Cazolet burst out in alarm, for the first time beginning to wonder whether the older man’s logic, like his emotions, was beginning to succumb to the strain.

Churchill reached over to grab the knee of his young companion, beseeching his understanding. ‘He is not just another bloody German! Haven’t you realized yet? He is … Berlin! My victory! Or was, until Eisenhower intervened.’ He sobbed, his voice subdued in recognition of his own defeat. ‘The Alps … the idea was always ridiculous, so far-fetched … I wanted to make sure. But now I am no more than a spectator in this game. Berlin is gone, and all I have done is ensure the needless death of one brave man.’

The sun was setting, a vivid cusp on the horizon, by the time they reached their destination. They had been travelling since morning, just the two of them in a battered Bedford farm truck, for the last three hours bumping along unmade tracks as they scurried as rapidly as the conditions would allow beside the bleak coastline of western Ireland. They had passed barely a dozen cottages and several of those had stood abandoned and roofless, their bare chimney stacks standing like gravestones, memorials to a past, better life. The way of life in this part of Ireland had scarcely changed since the Famine, she had explained, except to get worse. The scenery was green yet barren, and the rugged basalt coastline stood out like the craters of the moon as it was caught by the embers of the dying sun.

She parked the truck on the cliffs above a broad bay; there was no cover to hide the vehicle, no tree, no bush, only bare grassy slopes. Out to sea the final rays of the sun kissed the tops of low islands that guarded the entrance to the bay and kept its waters calm and smooth. All was still, the only sound the lapping of the tide and the mewing of gulls as they cartwheeled overhead and plunged into the sea in search of sprats. They trod carefully down a rocky path which he would never have spotted had he not been walking on it. They held each other’s hands tightly. She led the way, while he acted as a great anchor to guard against the boulders and stones trying to trip them and send them stumbling, until they had clambered down to the narrow shingle beach below. The tide lapped gently across the stones.

‘What do we do now?’ he asked.

She checked her watch. ‘We wait.’

They were the only words exchanged. They knew
these would be their last moments yet neither could find the things to say. They stood side by side looking out to sea, still holding hands, losing themselves in colours which in the final struggle of day were swirling turbulently above the horizon. She felt the elements mimicking the turmoil inside her, happy that he was almost safe, feeling desolate that his salvation would make her miserable for the rest of her life. She thought once more of that night in Liverpool when, for a fleeting moment, she felt she had got close to him. But the feeling had never returned.

Then it began. The sea before them which had been peaceful and at rest started to lift and part, a fermenting brew of waves and foam which rippled out and filled the bay.

‘Your lift,’ she said simply.

They watched as through the clinging beds of kelp rose the profile of a conning tower, its U-boat insignia still identifiable in the last light of day, and already there were men scuttling across the upper deck, manning the anti-aircraft guns and launching a small collapsible rowing boat. It was soon approaching the shore, its crew alert and wary. Hencke and Sinead had only moments left together.

‘Thanks,’ he whispered. He was still looking out to sea rather than at her.

‘No thanks needed. I love you.’

‘Please, don’t. Don’t love me.’

‘But I do, Peter Hencke.’

‘You mustn’t, Sinead. There’s no future for us.’ Still he could not look at her.

The rowing boat was already beginning to scrape its way onto the beach, with two armed sailors
jumping out and taking guard against unforeseen danger.

‘Kill hope, Peter, and you kill the heart. Don’t take that from me.’

‘I know what you mean. Believe me. But I’m not coming back.’

‘The war will be over eventually …’

‘Not even then. Not for me. I’m sorry.’

She wanted to scream at him, to demand that he open the doors inside which he kept so tightly bolted, that he owed her more than ‘I’m sorry’ after all she’d done, that the least he could give her was an explanation, but an officer was scrambling up the shingle towards them and was almost upon them.

‘Captain Eling,’ he introduced himself with a salute. ‘My compliments! Please come with me.’

She tried once more but the captain was glancing around anxiously.

‘Please. We must leave. Immediately.’

Only then did Hencke look directly at her, with that light in his eyes turned from defiance to a soft glow of comfort. ‘I shall remember you, always.’

‘Pity we can’t live on memories.’

‘But at least we can live
with
them, which is more than many will be able to say after this madness is over.’

‘What will you remember?’

He smiled, and perhaps for the first time she felt the doors inside opening a little. ‘Someone who took my despair and gave me hope. Someone with whom I shared a special kind of love. Someone who, in a different world, could have become my dearest friend. And who knows, perhaps in the next world it might be.’

‘Then there’s no need to be sorry, is there.’

‘No regrets?’

Hesitantly, reluctantly almost, she shook her head.

‘I’m very glad to have met you, Sinead No-Name.’ And with that his hands slipped from hers and he was gone.

He didn’t look back all the time the boat slapped through the water on its way out to the waiting submarine. As they approached, in the gathering dusk, he could see the crew lined up along the hull, watching him. He heard no one give an order but as they drew near the men and officers raised their arms in salute. The final red and purple glow was fading into a dark sky and the submarine stood in silhouette, the last rays of day glinting off the conning tower and bringing an edge of fire to the dull and battered metalwork, making him feel as though he were in the midst of a timeless ceremony of champions, like a warrior being greeted on arrival in Valhalla.

He turned to the captain in puzzlement. ‘Why?’

The captain paused to consider his answer. He had several weeks’ growth of beard, his white officer’s cap was crumpled and the eyes beneath appeared haunted and exhausted. His face bore the marks of many missions. ‘Because we understand the meaning of duty, and know what it’s like to risk everything to get home. A submariner is never captured, he never has the option like so many others nowadays of sitting safely on his ass and waiting in comfort for the end of the war. A submariner knows only one thing – to fight or to die. In our book, Hencke, you’re one of us.’ The captain’s hand came to touch the peak of his cap and offer his own respectful salute, one fighting man to another.

‘They sent an entire submarine crew – just for one man?’

‘Three crews of three submarines. Out there are two more U-boats. Me to take you. The other two to act as decoys. We have to assume that the whole British anti-submarine effort is waiting for us out there. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.’

‘Decoys? You mean like decoy ducks?’

The captain gave a thin, humourless grin. ‘Something like that. Decoys who will fly off in opposite directions and hope to drag the British after them. Disperse their effort, create a hole in their defences through which we might sneak undetected.’

‘But that’s no better than …’

‘War is a dangerous profession. We’re used to it. At least with you aboard we’ll be heading back home. If we have a choice, I’d rather be heading home, not buried along with the worms three miles down in some mud hole in the middle of the Atlantic. Feels better the closer you get to home, if you know what I mean.’ He sniffed the salt air with the intensity of a man taking his last breath.

‘How many men on a submarine, Captain?’

‘Like this? Around fifty.’

‘Times three. A hundred and fifty men. To bring me back home.’ He nodded towards the crew waiting on the U-boat deck. ‘Do they know …’

‘That’s why they’re all there. To see you. To honour you. To know what they might be dying for. That’s all a soldier ever wants, isn’t it, to know what he’s dying for? I thought it only fair.’

‘And I have become their Angel of Death …’

They were bumping alongside the hull, the dark waters of the Atlantic slapping its side, throwing the tiny rowing boat around and making it impossible
for him to keep his balance, but there were hungry hands stretching down to grab him and haul him on board. As he found his feet on the slippery wooden deck casing he glanced around the men who were facing towards him, still saluting. He tried to look everyone directly in the eye, relieved in the near-darkness that he couldn’t. He stood to attention but did not return the salute; he saw no point in saluting death, there had already been too much dying.

‘Straight below, please. We’re already taking more risk than we ought to, sitting here. I think we’ve outstayed our welcome in Irish waters.’