Raid 42

RAID 42

By the same author

DI Joe Faraday Investigations

Turnstone

The Take

Angels Passing

Deadlight

Cut to Black

Blood and Honey

One Under

The Price of Darkness

No Lovelier Death

Beyond Reach

Borrowed Light

Happy Days

DS Jimmy Suttle Investigations

Western Approaches

Touching Distance

Sins of the Father

The Order of Things

Wars Within

Finisterre

Aurore

Estocada

Raid 42

FICTION

Rules of Engagement

Reaper

The Devil’s Breath

Thunder in the Blood

Sabbathman

The Perfect Soldier

Heaven’s Light

Nocturne

Permissible Limits

The Chop

The Ghosts of 2012

Strictly No Flowers

NON

-

FICTION

Lucky Break

Airshow

Estuary

Backstory

GRAHAM HURLEY

RAID 42

www.headofzeus.com

First published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © Graham Hurley, 2019

The moral right of Graham Hurley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB) 9781788547505

ISBN (ANZTPB) 9781788547512

ISBN (E) 9781788547499

Cover images:

Soldier: Arcangel

Plane: AKG Images

Background © Shutterstock.com

Head of Zeus Ltd

First Floor East

5–8 Hardwick Street

London EC1R 4RG

WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

To Ute, Fiona,

And the memory of Sgt Ollie Kemp

‘This place is full of corpses, dancing and playing at war’

Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon (1962)

Contents

By the same author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prelude

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

BOOK TWO

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

About the Author

An Invitation from the Publisher

PRELUDE

London. A full moon rose on the night of 10 May 1941. It happened to be a Saturday. Luftwaffe bomber crews ate an early supper on their bases across the Channel and hours later the first wave of Heinkels and Dorniers lined up for take-off as the last glimmers of daylight died on the western horizon. Past ten o’clock, radar stations on the south coast were warning about the imminence of a major raid and within minutes ground observers in Kent and Essex reported enemy aircraft in sight. German aircrew peered down at the Thames estuary, silver in the moonlight, as RAF controllers scrambled night fighters and air raid sirens in the capital emptied the pubs.

One of the first bombs to hit the Palace of Westminster was an incendiary. The Victoria Tower was already under repair and a police sergeant climbed a tangle of scaffolding to extinguish the burning magnesium with a sandbag. Minutes later, high explosive bombs killed two auxiliary policemen, shattered windows and brought down a wall.

By midnight, with the bombs still falling, firemen were battling to save the House of Commons and Westminster Hall. Fifty fire pumps struggled to contain the blaze, hosing water directly from the Thames, but by daybreak both the Commons chamber and the Members’ Lobby had been destroyed. The Speaker’s chair was a pile of ashes and the padded green leather seats in the chamber, famous worldwide, were charred beyond recognition. Onlookers that Sunday morning stared at the drifts of smoking rubble, uncomprehending. The mother of parliaments had survived months of savage bombing throughout the blitz. Now this.

*

That same night, 340 miles to the north, a lone Me-110 appeared on another set of radar screens. It roared over the tiny coastal town of Bamburgh and disappeared into the darkness towards the west. Three Spitfires and a Defiant night fighter were ordered to intercept but failed to find the enemy aircraft. Thirty-four minutes later, his fuel tanks close to empty, the lone pilot baled out.

Word of the fast-developing raid on London had already reached Scotland but no one suspected that the two events might be linked. By now, radar controllers in the north had assigned the mystery intruder a codename.

Raid 42.

BOOK ONE

1

Six months earlier, on 14 November 1940, Major Georg Messner was trying to find a dentist. Messner was assigned to the Reichsregierung, Hitler’s personal transport squadron out at Tempelhof airfield and spent his working days at the controls of a Ju-52, ferrying his Führer and an assortment of other Nazi chieftains to the far corners of the Reich. On this particular day he’d just returned to Berlin with Goering and a couple of aides from the Reichsmarschall’s private office. A rogue tooth and ulcerated gum had been bothering Messner for weeks. Vague promises of dental help from the squadron’s medical officer had come to nothing. Now, the pain was close to unbearable.

He telephoned his wife from the main squadron office. She and their two-year-old daughter lived in a summer house on the shores of the Wannsee. So far Beata and young Lottie hadn’t been troubled by the increasingly frequent RAF raids on the capital, though Messner, like many of his colleagues, wasn’t sure how long this blessing would last. First thing this morning, moments before Messner had set off for the airfield, Beata had promised to lay hands on a dentist. Now all her husband wanted was a name and an address.

‘Kohnsson.’ She spelled out the name.

‘Jewish?’

‘I’m told not.’ She gave him an address in Charlottenburg.

‘You’ve talked to the man?’

‘Only his wife. She sounded nice. They’re leaving for Leipzig tomorrow but he can see you tonight as long as you’re there between nine and half past. They live above the surgery. And if you’ve got the money he might be able to find a little gold for the filling.’

Messner pulled a face. These days, if you could even lay hands on a dentist, they plugged teeth with tin alloy. Gold would be a godsend but it would cost a fortune.

‘You couldn’t find anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘You tried?’

‘Of course I tried. And I’m your wife, by the way, not your secretary.’

Messner mumbled an apology. Getting by on nothing but soup, he said, did strange things to a man.

Beata wanted to know whether he’d need something to eat when he finally got home. Messner was checking his watch. Nearly seven.

‘I imagine that depends on Herr Kohnsson,’ he said.

*

Under normal circumstances, Charlottenburg was half an hour from Tempelhof and as far as Messner knew there were no expected raids this evening. In any event, the English bombers – few as they were – rarely turned up before ten and so Messner settled down to sort out some of the last week’s paperwork. Within minutes, the door opened and he was looking at the squadron adjutant, an ex-Heinkel pilot who’d lost a leg in a pre-war training accident but whose web of connections seemed to include everyone in the Wilhelmstrasse.

‘You’re off home tonight? Or sleeping here?’

‘Home.’

‘Best leave early. Luftgaukommando are calling a raid for nine thirty.’

Luftgaukommando was the organisation responsible for the night-time defence of Berlin. They were in constant touch with a chain of Freya radar stations stretching all the way to the North Sea. Flying time from the coast to Berlin was nearly three hours.

‘We believe them?’ Messner asked.

‘We believe anything. Goering’s at the Russian Embassy tonight, along with Ribbentrop. Molotov’s in town. If I was British I’d know where I’d be dropping my bombs.’

Molotov, Messner knew, was the Russian Foreign Minister. He’d heard his name mentioned on today’s flight back from Munich. Both times by Ribbentrop, the Reich’s Foreign Minister, and one of the VIP passengers in the Ju-52.

‘Nine thirty’s early,’ Messner said.

‘I expect it coincides with the cheese course. The Russians are mad about Handkäse, especially these days. The British spend their lives spoiling everyone else’s party. It’s one of the few pleasures they have left.’

The adjutant shot him a grin and limped out of the office. Messner listened to the tap-tap of his false leg as he disappeared down the corridor. The sensible thing would be to leave now, while driving in the blackout was still legal. The moment the sirens sounded, all traffic had to come to a halt and park. But leaving at half past eight would still give him plenty of time and so he picked up his pen again, running his tongue over his throbbing gum, determined to get the better of the paperwork.

Nearly an hour later, he’d finished. Nearly half past eight. The adjutant was still at his desk down the corridor and looked up when Messner said goodnight.

‘You’re crazy,’ he tapped his watch. ‘They’re twenty-five minutes away.’

‘The British?’

‘Ja.’

Messner ran across the hardstanding to the allotted parking spaces. His own BMW was under repair and he’d borrowed Beata’s Volkswagen for this morning’s trip. Now, in the darkness, he had a moment’s difficulty getting the door open. Then he stirred the rattly old engine into life and headed for the long curl of concrete that led to the exit gate. A guard on the gate brought him to a halt with a torch. The adjutant had been right. The sirens would sound any minute.

Messner gunned the engine. Travelling at night without headlights was, as he knew only too well, an acquired art. In the gloom of the blackout you had to grope your way from landmark to landmark, constantly alert for the sudden loom of other vehicles. The official speed limit of 20 kph was often the triumph of optimism over blind faith but Georg Messner prided himself on his night vision and tonight of all nights he was determined to get to the dentist’s chair before the RAF arrived and made life a little more difficult.

The air raid sirens began to wail seconds later. Messner was following what looked like a lorry, probably full of coal. The driver stood on the brakes and Messner hauled the tiny Volkswagen to the left, hoping to avoid any oncoming traffic. Nothing. Just darkness and the sudden glimpse of the whiteness of a woman’s face as she ran across the road.

Traffic had come to a halt. Cars were pulling into the kerbside. Doors were opening. Drivers were looking for the nearest shelter. Messner watched them for a moment, his pulse racing, his ulcerated gum on fire. He flicked on the interior light and checked his watch. Twenty to nine. The raid would last at least an hour, probably longer. By which time Kohnsson would have gone.

Messner hit the throttle again. Anything was preferable to another sleepless night, another day trying to pretend there was nothing wrong with him, another bowl of tasteless slop masquerading as soup. He clawed his way past the truck, sensing nothing beyond. 10 kph. 20 kph. Up into top gear. For at least a minute, probably longer, Messner rode his luck, straddling the unoccupied middle of the road, tallying the intersections as they came and went, urging the little car faster and faster. Then, as if from nowhere, came a dim red lamp waving in the darkness. A ghostly uniformed figure. A shouted warning.

Messner stabbed at the brakes, feeling the car shudder. He tried to brace himself at the wheel, arms straight and locked. Ahead was a wall of something blacker than everything else, something solid, something that – in less than a heartbeat – stepped into his life and changed it forever. For a split second he caught, very faintly, the tear of rending metal and then came the brief kiss of the night air as his head went through the windscreen, and the pain in his gum vanished and the blackness grew blacker still.

*

That same evening, in a café in Stockholm, Tam Moncrieff was nursing a beer. He’d been in Sweden less than two hours, the time it took for the taxi to bring him in from the airport, and he was basking in the novelty of a city lit at night.

Outside, the street was still thick with passers-by. Already he’d lost count of the blonde girls shrouded in bright ankle-length coats, the kids kicking their way through an inch or two of snow, the older folk with their knitted mufflers and their string bags full of shopping. These people had a freedom and a confidence he could only envy. They were carefree. They looked well fed. Their very presence on the street spoke of a life he could barely remember.

Wilhelm Schultz, he thought. Would he share this feeling? Would he arrive from a Berlin as grey and disenchanted as the London Moncrieff had just left? Would he be tired of a life measured out in ration coupons and stern reminders about digging for victory? Or might his tiny corner of the Reich be treating him rather better? On balance, Moncrieff favoured the latter, partly because Schultz was a born survivor, but mainly because Moncrieff had always assumed that their relationship had ended a couple of years ago, the day the Germans sent him packing from Berlin. Which was why the invitation to meet here in Stockholm had come as such a surprise.

The message had been routed through a Swedish businessman with a ball-bearing factory in the Home Counties. Birger Dahlerus, like a handful of other intermediaries, had never believed in the war. War, he often said, was no friend of international commerce. Neither was it sensible to kill people en masse for no better reason than the mess that politicians made. Hence the neatly typed letter that had landed on Moncrieff’s desk. Your friend Wilhelm Schultz presents his compliments. He proposes a meeting on neutral territory. This I am only too happy to facilitate.

With the letter came a map of Stockholm with directions to the Café Almhult. The Almhult, Dahlerus assured Moncrieff, was owned by a good friend. He’d provide a room upstairs with the guarantee of privacy and something half decent to eat. There, Moncrieff and Schultz could talk to their hearts’ content.

Hearts’, content had raised a smile among Moncrieff’s bosses. This was vintage Dahlerus, they assured him. In a darkening world, the man remained an idealist. More to the point, he knew many of the people who mattered in Berlin and one of them was Hermann Goering. The trusty Hermann, they told Moncrieff, had performed well at Sylt. Sylt? They wouldn’t say. This, only yesterday, had irritated Moncrieff but his reaction had simply raised another smile. Ask Wilhelm about Sylt, they’d said. He knows.

Schultz arrived nearly half an hour later. Moncrieff watched him climb out of the back of an ancient Volvo and bend to the driver’s window to haggle over the fare. Three more years with the Abwehr at the heart of German military intelligence had done nothing to soften his appearance. The same shaven head. The same overpowering physical presence. The same black leather jacket. The same hint of menace in his battered face as he pocketed his change and turned to gaze at the café. The man walked from his shoulders, anticipating life’s next blow, the way ageing boxers did. Old habits, Moncrieff thought, die hard.

Inside the café, Schultz stamped the snow from his feet. The blond young man behind the bar got a smile as well as a nod. Then Schultz muttered something in Swedish that made the bartender laugh.

Moncrieff extended a hand, wanting to know whether he’d been here before. His German was fluent.

‘Twice,’ Schultz grunted. ‘The herrings are good. So is the cured salmon. Avoid the bread. These people are still at peace yet their bread is Scheisse. They have no excuse.’

Schultz settled on the bar stool. His eyes, pouched in the wreckage of his face, gave the lie to everything else about him. They spoke, to Moncrieff, of the essence of the man: watchful, alert, giving nothing away.

Schultz ordered a beer and then studied Moncrieff for a long moment. The expression on his face might have been a smile.

‘So what did they do to you?’ he asked at last.

‘When?’

‘At the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. Basement corridor, was it? Big room at the end? Man in a white coat with a hosepipe? Shit your pants and pray to God to get it over?’

‘Something like that.’

Schultz nodded, reaching for the beer. Two gulps and most of it had gone.

‘You did well, my friend.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘One minute twenty-two seconds. No one’s managed that before. Believe it or not, they still talk about you.’

Moncrieff managed a faint smile. The night before leaving Berlin for the last time he’d spent hours in the hands of the Gestapo. One of their party tricks was slowly drowning a man and the terrifying sensation of water in his lungs had never left him. He’d never discussed it with anyone since and he’d no intention of starting now.

‘So is life good, Wilhelm? Is the Abwehr keeping you busy?’

‘The Abwehr is up its own arse. One day someone will come along and put it out of its misery. If you were a betting man you’d pile your money on that little bastard Schellenberg. The trick he pulled at Venlo was crude as fuck but it did the trick. Do you want the pair of them back, by the way? I might be able to sort something out.’

The two men looked at each other for a long moment and then Moncrieff began to laugh. Time obviously meant nothing to Schultz. Three years ago they’d worked together in Berlin and Nuremberg while the world held its breath over the Czech crisis, Moncrieff the callow novice, Schultz the one-time SA brawler with a new perch in the Abwehr and powerful allies in the German military. Moncrieff, with his Royal Marine background and his language skills, was in Berlin to make contact with the opposition to Hitler and Schultz had the ear of the people who mattered. In the end the operation foundered, neither man’s fault, but the respect and the beginnings of a friendship were still there. Moncrieff found himself smiling again. September 1938 might have been yesterday.

Schultz was digging in a pocket of his leather jacket. At length he produced a small cigar. The barman supplied a light.

‘Dahlerus tells me you’re at St James’s Street. True?’

Moncrieff nodded. The former MGM building in St James’s Street was part of MI5’s London estate. He had a desk in a small office on the third floor.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I joined the day after war was declared.’

‘Your idea?’

‘Theirs. I’d have been very happy back in the Corps but everyone told me I was too old. So it was either Five or something noble in Civil Defence. I could never wear a blue uniform so it had to be the Security Service.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘You like it?’

Moncrieff hesitated, wondering quite where this conversation was heading.

‘Is this between friends?’ he asked.

‘It is.’

‘Then the truth is that I love it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it stretches me. And because I’m good at it. Back in the old days, up in Scotland, my dad had a couple of dogs. One of them was old. Her days in the field were over. But the other one was much younger, almost a puppy. She’d be out in the hills most days, chasing a neighbour’s sheep, and it was my job to get her back. I used to try every trick in the book to get inside that little dog’s tiny head. Work out what appeals. Lure her. Trick her. Tempt her. Bend her to your will. In truth nothing’s really changed. Except the weather’s better down south.’

‘And you’re dealing with people.’

‘I am.’

‘Our people.’

‘Possibly.’

‘Counter-espionage. Emptying a man of everything he knows.’

‘Lovely idea.’

‘So tell me,’ Schultz’s face was very close. ‘Are any of them as stupid as the puppies Schellenberg took at Venlo?’

Moncrieff ducked his head. Venlo was a Dutch town on the German border. A couple of months into the war, two MI6 agents were kidnapped by Walter Schellenberg, whom they believed to be heading a plot involving senior Wehrmacht officers to kill Hitler. In real life, Schellenberg was a rising star in Himmler’s intelligence organisation, the plot was a carefully baited trap, and the damage the Sicherheitsdienst inflicted on MI6 networks across Europe was substantial.

‘You could really get them back?’ Moncrieff reached for his drink. ‘If we asked nicely?’

‘No.’ Schultz caught the barman’s eye and nodded at a door towards the back. ‘But would you really want them?’

*

They ate in a smallish room upstairs clad entirely in wood. When Moncrieff asked Schultz whether this might once have been a sauna, he said it was more than possible. The building was old. The harbour was a sprint away. Half an hour in the oven and then a plunge into this corner of the icy Baltic? Difficult to refuse.

There was no menu. A buxom woman in her fifties who’d clearly taken to Schultz offered a list of dishes in Swedish. Schultz didn’t bother to consult Moncrieff on any kind of choice and sent the woman on her way with their order.

‘Let me guess…’ Moncrieff was emptying the glass he’d brought up from downstairs. ‘Fish?’

Schultz ignored the question. First they had to attend to business. He’d invited Moncrieff over to point out what seemed, at least to most Germans, the obvious.

‘It’s over,’ he grunted. ‘It’s finished. It’s a numbers game. Austria, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Poland.’ He tallied the countries that had fallen to Hitler’s armies on the fingers of both hands and then looked up. ‘Only the British have forgotten how to count.’

‘You missed out the Czechs, my friend. Easily done.’

‘Ja, them too. Do I hear a yes? Are we right to consider the war won?’

Moncrieff didn’t answer. Instead he wanted to know about Sylt. He’d looked it up on the map. A tiny Friesian island off the German–Danish border.

‘You don’t know what happened?’

‘That’s why I’m asking.’

Schultz nodded. Moncrieff’s question seemed to surprise him.

‘We organised a meeting there,’ Schultz said carefully, ‘a couple of weeks before the war began. If you really want to know what happens next in life you ask a priest or a businessman. They both have a stake in the future but on this occasion we stuck with the businessman.’

‘We?’

‘Goering was in charge. He wanted somewhere quiet, somewhere offshore, somewhere no one would notice us. He wanted to talk to the British face to face. He wanted to look them in the eye, explain the facts of life. The whole thing was his idea.’

‘And you were there?’

‘Yes. The Fat One’s thick with Canaris. I was the Admiral’s man at the table.’ Admiral Canaris was head of the Abwehr, an inscrutable old-school warrior who’d never bothered to hide his doubts about Hitler.

‘And?’

‘Goering was pushing for a treaty to keep Britain out of a war that everyone knew was a couple of weeks away. The British brought a selection of businessmen and a couple of aristocrats who all agreed it made perfect sense. Fighting each other would be crazy. Goering thought another four-power conference might do the trick. Get the French and Italians on board and we could have the whole thing tied up in no time at all.’

‘Like Munich?’

‘Exactly. Except you’d be shitting on the Poles this time, not the Czechs. It never happened, of course, but that really wasn’t the point. The Fat One made a big impression. This was someone you British could do business with when the time was right. Your phrase, not ours. I remember writing it down.’

Moncrieff nodded. When the time was right. At Nuremberg, three years ago, he’d shared a bottle of Spanish brandy with Goering at a late-night meeting brokered by Schultz. Moncrieff had brought word from London that the British would march if Hitler moved into the Sudetenland. He’d known from the start that Goering didn’t believe him, but they’d drunk deep into the small hours and laughed a great deal in one of those precious moments of implausible bonhomie stolen from a mind-numbing week of interminable military parades in the gigantic bowl of the Zeppelinfeld. Moncrieff hadn’t known what to expect but the father of the Luftwaffe had fully measured up to his advance billing. A man of gargantuan appetites and ready wit. A raconteur of the first order. A man you might do business with. Perfect.

‘So is this Goering’s idea, too?’ Moncrieff gestured at the space between them.

‘He knows we’re here, certainly.’

‘But he thinks the war’s over? As good as won?’

‘Yes. And not just him. We all do.’

There was a knock on the door. The woman was back with a tray of food. Moncrieff watched her serving Schultz first, bending quickly to whisper something in his ear. Schultz, eyeing the platter of soused herring, shot her a look, then nodded. Seconds later, she’d gone.

For several minutes they ate in silence. Schultz was right about the herrings. They were delicious. At length, Schultz reached for a napkin and wiped his mouth.

‘Hitler, I’m afraid, doesn’t understand the British. He thinks you’re all Nazis with better manners. In his view you should be making the most of your empire and getting very rich. Europe’s always been nothing but trouble as far as you British are concerned. Now he’s taken care of that, we might all make a new start.’

‘By bombing us every night?’

‘By getting rid of Churchill and having a sensible conversation. That man’s something else he doesn’t understand. You’re alone. Your army’s fucked. You don’t know what to do about our U-boats. There’s nothing left to eat. And you’re right, every night we help ourselves to another city. How many bombs do we have to drop before you people come to your senses?’

‘This is you talking? Or him?’

‘Both, my friend. Hitler is a tidy man. He likes things done a certain way. It starts with his domestic arrangements and it ends with most of Europe. Churchill upsets him. Just ask Hess. Rudolf is the only one Hitler really trusts. Churchill is a schoolboy, a lout. He loves to fight. He lives to fight. We all agree you’re better off without him. Hess thinks a conversation with the King might do the trick.’

Rudolf Hess served as Hitler’s Deputy. Moncrieff could pick him out in a photograph – bushy black eyebrows, piercing eyes – but knew very little else.

‘We owe Churchill a great deal,’ Moncrieff murmured. ‘I think you’ll find he’s very popular.’

‘Of course,’ Schultz stabbed at a flake of herring. ‘That goes for Hitler, too. As we both know.’

Moncrieff nodded. The operation he and Schultz had tried to mount three years earlier had come to nothing because Hitler knew how to ride his luck. First Austria and then Czechoslovakia had fallen into Berlin’s lap while the rest of the world looked the other way. How many Germans would argue with an ever greater Reich?

Moncrieff pushed his plate away. ‘If you’re asking me whether the British will get rid of Churchill then the answer’s no.’

‘Even at the cost of all those cities? All that shipping?’

‘Even then.’

‘So there’s nothing we can offer?’

‘I doubt it. Unless you’re talking withdrawal. Pack your bags and get out of France, out of Belgium, out of Scandinavia, and even Churchill might have second thoughts…’

Schultz nodded, said nothing. Moncrieff had the impression he might have planted a seed but wasn’t sure.

‘You want me to report this conversation back?’ he asked.

‘Of course. That’s why you’re here.’

‘The messenger again? Is that it?’

‘Yes. And tell your masters something else. That the bombing will continue until peace negotiations start. Our Leader’s pleasure, Tam. Neatness is all.’

The waitress had left a couple of glasses and a bottle of white wine on the table. Schultz poured. Moncrieff proposed the toast.

‘I hear the Russians are in town tonight,’ he said.

‘You mean Molotov?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s true. He’s thrown a dinner for Goering and that fool Ribbentrop. Should we be expecting a visit?’

‘Fifty-plus bombers,’ Moncrieff checked his watch and then raised his glass. ‘About now.’

*

Two Wehrmacht soldiers who happened to be on leave were first to the wreckage of Beata’s Volkswagen. The little car had telescoped into the back of one of Berlin’s big trolley buses, destroying the bonnet. A body hung over the wreckage, thrown through the windscreen by the impact. There was glass everywhere and blood dripped onto the torn metal from a deep gash on the driver’s forehead. Other lacerations had webbed his face with more blood.

Another figure emerged from the darkness, a local man in the uniform of a Blockwarten.

‘You need to get out of here,’ he gestured skywards. ‘There’s a shelter at the next U-Bahn station.’

The soldiers ignored him. One of them was bent over the body protruding from the car. He was trying to find a pulse.

‘He’s alive. Just.’ He threw a look at his mate. ‘We have to get the poor bastard out.’

Between them, the two men smashed the rest of the windscreen and eased the driver out of the wreckage of the car before laying him carefully on the road. One of the soldiers picked the bigger fragments of glass from the driver’s jacket. Then the other removed his own greatcoat and draped it carefully over his chest and legs. By now he’d recognised the uniform.

‘Luftwaffe,’ he said. ‘A Major, a big shot.’ He looked up at the Blockwarten. ‘Find a telephone. The man’s dying. He needs a hospital.’

The Blockwarten started to protest. Regulations were black and white. Bombing raid. Take cover.

‘The man’s dying,’ the soldier repeated. ‘He doesn’t need a fucking shelter.’

It had begun to rain now and very faintly from the west came the growl of aero engines. The Blockwarten glanced up into the darkness, then looked at the figure under the greatcoat. There was a telephone in a ground-floor apartment nearby. He’d do his best.