was still wearing.
‘Not in enemy uniform, for God’s sake. They’ll shoot you for sure!’
‘They’ve got to catch me first,’ Hencke shouted back over his shoulder.
Moments later the sound of an engine, a Norton 250, began throbbing through the night. ‘They even left a map with it,’ he smiled in triumph, revving the bike before letting out the clutch with a snap which sent a shower of wet dirt cascading into the air. Hencke was gone.
The commander gazed after the disappearing figure. ‘You are a strange one, Hencke. But I chose the right man. You’ll get back to wherever you came from, I’m sure. Even if it’s the other side of hell.’
He could neither see nor hear the motorbike by the time it pulled up sharply several hundred yards beyond the camp gates. Hencke reached into the pocket of his tunic where the commander had stuffed the precious envelope. ‘My word of honour,’ he whispered, ‘one German officer to another.’ The dark eyes glowed with contempt as he tore the letter into a hundred tiny fragments, sent scattering in the wind as he rode away.
The sun was rising and London was beginning to stir, but it made little difference within the Annexe. Daylight didn’t penetrate here, and the only sign of the new day was the progress of the clocks and the arrival of those rostered for day duty. The duty secretary, Anthony Seizall, was rubbing the sleep from his eyes and staring at the telephone as if it had broken wind. Perplexed, he clamped it back to the side of his head.
‘You’re not pulling my leg, are you? Because if you are I shall have great pleasure in coming round with half a dozen of the local boys in blue and pulling the head off your bloody neck!’ There was a pause while he listened to a heated voice on the other end of the phone, his head bent low over the bakelite mouthpiece and his straight hair falling over his eyes while he punctuated the conversation with references to a variety of spiritual saviours before descending into repeated low cursing. Seizall was chapel, practically teetotal. Something was clearly up.
He sat chewing the end of his pencil for several minutes, the tip of his rubbery nose twitching like a rabbit’s and dilating in time to the successive floods of indecision which swept over him. Eventually his gnawing broke the pencil clean in two; time was up, action was required. He proceeded down a maze of underground corridors, shaking his head from side to side as if trying one last time to disperse the fog of inadequacy that had settled upon him, until he came to the staff sleeping quarters. Hesitating only briefly for one final burst of indecision, he knocked on a door and entered.
‘Sorry to wake you, Cazolet. Got a tricky one.’
Cazolet rolled over and waved his hands in front of his eyes, trying to ward off the light from the bare bulb which was prying his lids apart. He spent a great deal of his time in the Annexe and the result was a grey pallor across his face made worse by lack of sleep. He wasn’t supposed to be on duty at the moment, but he knew the PM’s mind so well that the other staff had taken to consulting him on many matters. What it meant, of course, was that they brought him all their problems, as if he didn’t have several filing trays full of his own to deal with. But he didn’t mind; consultation was the finest form of bureaucratic flattery.
‘Seems there’s been a break-out. Some POW transit camp in Yorkshire. Haven’t got the final figures but it looks like – almost two hundred and fifty Jerry on the loose. I’ve double-checked, of course. No doubt about it, I’m afraid. Bit of a cock-up, really.’ Seizall’s sentences were clipped, giving but the barest detail, as if too much flavour might somehow involve him in it all, and every instinct in his civil service body told him to steer well clear of this one.
‘I was just about to let the Old Man know,’ Seizall continued. ‘Trouble is he’s fast asleep; got in dreadfully late last night from some swill of a dinner party and you know he’s like a rhinoceros with piles when he’s woken. So I thought I’d let him sleep on a little. Trouble is I’ve got to inform all the other necessary Departments … What’ll we do?’
‘So all of a sudden it’s our problem, is it?’ Cazolet grumbled. One day, one day very soon, he prayed, they would let him get a full night’s sleep. He poured cold water from a large jug into an enamel washbasin – all that passed for facilities in the primitive subterranean accommodation – splashing urgent handfuls over his face to encourage a little more oxygen into his brain while Seizall stood uncomfortably in the doorway of the narrow room. The cold water seemed to have worked, for when Cazolet stood up from the wash-stand he was decisive.
‘You tell all the other Departments, Seizall, and the news will be round Fleet Street before you’ve had time to finish breakfast. And once that’s out, we’ll never be able to put it back in the bag, wartime censorship or no. It’ll be blaring out on Radio Berlin within five minutes. Two hundred and fifty of them? It’s a disaster. And it’s just what the Prime Minister’s political opponents want. They’ll pin the blame for slack security on him personally, try to make him look old and incompetent. So you go right ahead and inform everyone from the Labour Party to the Third Reich that we have one of the biggest security lash-ups of the war on our hands.’ He paused to dry his face vigorously with a rough cotton towel. ‘Then you can go wake up the PM and tell him what you’ve done.’
The effect on Seizall was impressive. His lower jaw wobbled in fair impression of a mullet, his Adam’s apple performing balletic gyrations of distress.
‘There is a better way,’ Cazolet continued, his supremacy in the matter clearly established. ‘We tell the minimum number of people – only those in the security services who need to know in order to start getting Jerry rounded up. We make it clear to them that this is a matter of top national security, that any public discussion of the escape can only give comfort to the enemy. Be vague about numbers. Then, when the Old Man’s awake and in harness, we’ll tell him what we’ve done. If he wants to let the whole world know, he can. But that’s up to him, not you or me.’
Seizall was nodding, trying to look as if he were merely accepting endorsement of a course of action he had already made up his mind to pursue.
‘There’s a lot riding on this, Seizall. Perhaps the Old Man’s entire political future. I think he’ll be grateful you waited.’
For the first time that morning an impression of relief began to etch its way across the duty secretary’s face and he paused to give silent thanks for the binding effect of powdered egg.
Dawn was beginning to paint lurid pictures in the sky, thin fingers of rain cloud stretching towards him like witches’ claws, their fire-red tips making the heavens appear to drip with blood. Around Hencke the dark woods seemed to crowd in, the trees bending down as if trying to pluck him from the seat of his bike while the throbbing of the engine surrounded him in a cocoon of sound which carved out a little world of his own and detached him from reality. From the moment he had scattered the commander’s letter to the wind he had kept his head low and the throttle stretched open, taking full advantage of the deserted roads. The wind snatched at his hair and froze his face and fingertips, all the while urging him onwards. He was free! But there was no elation in Hencke. As he looked at the fierce sky above him, the memories came crowding back. In the glow that brushed the clouds he saw only the embers he had found burning in the schoolhouse, consuming everything he loved. In the gloom of the trees bowing and sagging in the wind he found images of the veils pulled close around the mothers who had come to sorrow and mourn, weighed down by incomprehension at their loss. In the thumping noise of the engine there was no sound of freedom, only the tramp of boots as they had
