Eagle Has Landed Read online

  ‘To—to Prinz Albrechtstrasse?’

  ‘But of course. You might point out to Steiner that not only would it be in his own best interests to serve the Reich in any way he can at the moment. Such evidence of loyalty might well affect the outcome of his father’s case.’ Radl was genuinely horrified, but Himmler carried straight on. ‘Now, a few facts. I would like you to elaborate on this question of disguise that you mention in your outline. That interests me.’

  Radl was aware of a feeling of total unreality. No one was safe—no one. He had known of people, whole families, who had disappeared after the Gestapo called. He thought of Trudi, his wife, his three cherished daughters and the same fierce courage that had brought him through the Winter War flowed through him again. For them, he thought, I’ve got to survive for them. Anything it takes—anything.

  He started to speak, amazed at the calmness in his own voice. ‘The British have many commando regiments as the Reichsführer is aware, but perhaps one of the most successful has been the unit formed by a British officer named Stirling to operate behind our lines in Africa. The Special Air Service.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the man they called the Phantom Major. The one Rommel thought so highly of.’

  ‘He was captured in January of this year, Herr Reichsführer. I believe he is in Colditz now, but the work he started has not only continued, but expanded. According to our present information they are due to return to Britain soon, probably to prepare for an invasion of Europe, the First and Second SAS Regiments and the Third and Fourth French Parachute Battalions. They even have a Polish Independent Parachute Squadron.’

  ‘And the point you are trying to make?’

  ‘Little is known of such units by the more conventional branches of the army. It is accepted that their purposes are secret, therefore less likely that they would be challenged by anyone.’

  ‘You would pass off our men as Polish members of this unit?’

  ‘Exactly, Herr Reichsführer.’

  ‘And uniforms?’

  ‘Most of these people are now wearing camouflage smock and trousers in action, rather similar to SS pattern. They also wear the English parachutists’ red beret with a special badge. A winged dagger with the inscription Who dares—wins.’

  ‘How dramatic,’ Himmler said drily.

  ‘The Abwehr has ample supplies of such clothing from those taken prisoner during SAS operations in the Greek Islands, Yugoslavia and Albania.’

  ‘And equipment?’

  ‘No problem. The British Special Operations Executive still do not appreciate the extent to which we have penetrated the Dutch resistance movement.’

  ‘Terrorist movement,’ Himmler corrected him. ‘But carry on.’

  ‘Almost nightly they drop further supplies of arms, sabotage equipment, radios for field use, even money. They still don’t realize that all the radio messages they receive are from the Abwehr.’

  ‘My God,’ Himmler said, ‘and still we continue to lose the war.’ He got up, walked to the fire and warmed his hands. ‘This whole question of wearing enemy uniform is a matter of great delicacy and it is forbidden under the Geneva Convention. There is only one penalty. The firing squad.’

  ‘True, Herr Reichsführer.’

  ‘In this case it seems to me a compromise would be in order. The raiding party will wear normal uniform underneath these British camouflage outfits. That way they will be fighting as German soldiers, not gangsters. Just before the actual attack, they could remove these disguises. You agree?’

  Radl personally thought it probably the worst idea he’d ever heard of, but realized the futility of argument. ‘As you say, Herr Reichsführer.’

  ‘Good. Everything else seems to me simply a question of organization. The Luftwaffe and the Navy for transportation. No trouble there. The Führer’s Directive will open all doors for you. Is there anything you wish to raise with me?’

  ‘As regards Churchill himself,’ Radl said. ‘Is he to be taken alive?’

  ‘If possible,’ Himmler said. ‘Dead if there is no other way.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good, then I may safely leave the matter in your hands. Rossman will give you a special phone number on the way out. I wish to be kept in daily touch with your progress.’ He replaced the reports and the map in the briefcase and pushed it across.

  ‘As you say, Herr Reichsführer.’

  Radl folded the precious letter, put it back in the manilla envelope which he slipped inside his tunic. He picked up the briefcase and his leather greatcoat and moved to the door.

  Himmler, who had started writing again, said, ‘Colonel Radl.’

  Radl turned. ‘Herr Reichsführer?’

  ‘Your oath as a German soldier, to your Führer and the State. You remember it?’

  ‘Of course, Herr Reichsführer.’

  Himmler looked up, the face cold, enigmatic. ‘Repeat it now.’

  ‘I swear by God this holy Oath. I will render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and People, Adolf Hitler, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and will be ready, as a brave soldier, to stake my life at any time to this oath.’

  His eye socket was on fire again, his dead hand ached. ‘Excellent, Colonel Radl. And remember one thing. Failure is a sign of weakness.’

  Himmler lowered his head and continued to write. Radl got the door open as fast as he could and stumbled outside.

  He changed his mind about going home to his apartment. Instead he got Rossman to drop him at the Tirpitz Ufer, went up to his office and bedded down on the small camp bed that he kept for such emergencies. Not that he slept much. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the silver pince-nez, the cold eyes, the calm, dry voice making its monstrous statements.

  One thing was certain, or so he told himself at five o’clock when he finally surrendered and reached for the bottle of Courvoisier. He had to see this thing through, not for himself, but for Trudi and the children. Gestapo surveillance was bad enough for most people. ‘But me,’ he said as he put the light out again. ‘I have to have Himmler himself on my tail.’

  After that he slept and was awakened by Hofer at eight o’clock with coffee and hot rolls. Radl got up and walked across to the window, eating one of the rolls. It was a grey morning and raining heavily.

  ‘Was it a bad raid, Karl?’

  ‘Not too bad. I hear eight Lancasters were shot down.’

  ‘If you look in the inside breast pocket of my tunic you’ll find an envelope,’ Radl said. ‘I want you to read the letter inside.’

  He waited, peering out into the rain and turned after a moment or so. Hofer was staring down at the letter, obviously shaken. ‘But what does this mean, Herr Oberst?’

  ‘The Churchill affair, Karl. It proceeds. The Führer wishes it so. I had that from Himmler himself last night.’

  ‘And the Admiral, Herr Oberst?”

  ‘Is to know nothing.’

  Hofer stared at him in honest bewilderment, the letter in one hand. Radl took it from him and held it up. ‘We are little men, you and I, caught in a very large web and we must tread warily. This directive is all we need. Orders from the Führer himself. Do you follow me?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And trust me?’

  Hofer sprang to attention. ‘I have never doubted you, Herr Oberst. Never.’

  Radl was aware of a surge of affection. ‘Good, then we proceed as I have indicated and under conditions of the strictest secrecy.’

  ‘As you say, Herr Oberst.’

  ‘Good, Karl, then bring me everything. Everything we have, and we’ll go over it again.’

  He moved to the window, opened it and took a deep breath. There was the acrid tang of smoke on the air from last night’s fires. Parts of the city that he could see were a desolate ruin. Strange how excited he felt.

  ‘She needs a man, Karl.’

  ‘Herr Oberst?’ Hofer said.

  They were leaning over the desk, the reports and charts spr
ead before them. ‘Mrs Grey,’ Radl explained. ‘She needs a man.’

  ‘Ah, I see now, Herr Oberst,’ Hofer said. ‘Someone with broad shoulders. A blunt instrument?’

  ‘No.’ Radl frowned and took one of his Russian cigarettes from the box on the table. ‘Brains as well—that is essential.’

  Hofer lit the cigarette for him. ‘A difficult combination.’

  ‘It always is. Who does Section One have working for them in England at the moment, who might be able to help? Someone thoroughly reliable?’

  ‘There are perhaps seven or eight agents who may be so considered. People like Snow White, for example. He’s been working in the offices at the Naval Department in Portsmouth for two years. We receive regular and valuable information on North Atlantic convoys from him.’

  Radl shook his head impatiently. ‘No, no one like that. Such work is too important to be jeopardized in any way. Surely to God there are others?’

  ‘At least fifty.’ Hofer shrugged. ‘Unfortunately the BIA section of M15 has had a remarkably successful run during the past eighteen months.’

  Radl got up and went to the window. He stood there tapping one foot impatiently. He was not angry—worried more than anything else. Joanna Grey was sixty-eight years of age and no matter how dedicated, no matter how reliable, she needed a man. As Hofer had put it, a blunt instrument. Without him the whole enterprise could founder.

  His left hand was hurting, the hand which was no longer there, a sure sign of stress, and his head was splitting. Failure is a sign of weakness, Colonel. Himmler had said that, the dark eyes cold. Radl shivered uncontrollably, fear almost moving his bowels as he remembered the cellars at Prinz Albrechtstrasse.

  Hofer said diffidently, ‘Of course, there is always the Irish Section.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘The Irish Section, sir. The Irish Republican Army.’

  ‘Completely useless,’ Radl said. ‘The whole IRA connection was aborted long ago, you know that, after that fiasco with Goertz and the other agents. A total failure, the entire enterprise.’

  ‘Not quite, Herr Oberst.’

  Hofer opened one of the filing cabinets, leafed through it quickly and produced a manilla folder which he laid on the desk. Radl sat down with a frown and opened it.

  ‘But, of course … and he’s still here? At the university?’

  ‘So I understand. He also does a little translation work when needed.’

  ‘And what does he call himself now?’

  ‘Devlin. Liam Devlin.’

  ‘Get him!’

  ‘Now, Herr Oberst?’

  ‘You heard me. I want him here within the hour. I don’t care if you have to turn Berlin upside down. I don’t care if you have to call in the Gestapo.’

  Hofer clicked his heels and went out quickly. Radl lit another cigarette with trembling fingers and started to go through the file.

  He had not been far wrong in his earlier remarks, for every German attempt to make terms with the IRA since the beginning of the war had come to nothing and the whole business was probably the biggest tale of woe in Abwehr files.

  None of the German agents sent to Ireland had achieved anything worth having. Only one had remained at large for any length of time, Captain Goertz, who had been parachuted from a Heinkel over Meath in May, 1940 and who had succeeded in remaining at large for nineteen wasted months.

  Goertz found the IRA exasperatingly amateur and unwilling to take any kind of advice. As he was to comment years later, they knew how to die for Ireland, but not how to fight for her and German hopes of regular attacks on British military installations in Ulster faded away.

  Radl was familiar with all this. What really interested him was the man who called himself Liam Devlin. Devlin had actually parachuted into Ireland for the Abwehr, had not only survived, but had eventually made his way back to Germany, a unique achievement.

  Liam Devlin had been born in Lismore in County Down in the North of Ireland in July, 1908, the son of a small tenant farmer who had been executed in 1921 during the Anglo-Irish War for serving with an IRA flying column. The boy’s mother had gone to keep house for her brother, a Catholic priest in the Falls Road area of Belfast and he had arranged for him to attend a Jesuit boarding school in the South. From there Devlin had moved to Trinity College, Dublin, where he had taken an excellent degree in English Literature.

  He’d had a little poetry published, was interested in a career in journalism, would probably have made a successful writer if it had not been for one single incident which had altered the course of his entire life. In 1931 while visiting his home in Belfast during a period of serious sectarian rioting, he had witnessed an Orange mob sack his uncle’s church. The old priest had been so badly beaten that he lost an eye. From that moment Devlin had given himself completely to the Republican cause.

  In a bank raid in Derry in 1932 to gather funds for the movement, he was wounded in a gun battle with the police and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. He had escaped from the Crumlin Road gaol in 1934 and while on the run, led the defence of Catholic areas in Belfast during the rioting of 1935.

  Later that year he had been sent to New York to execute an informer who had been put on a boat to America by the police for his own good after selling information which had led to the arrest and hanging of a young IRA volunteer named Michael Reilly. Devlin had accomplished this mission with an efficiency that could only enhance a reputation that was already becoming legendary. Later that year he repeated the performance. Once in London and again in America, although this time the venue was Boston.

  In 1936 he had taken himself to Spain, serving in the Lincoln Washington Brigade. He had been wounded and captured by Italian troops who, instead of shooting him, had kept him intact, hoping to effect an exchange for one of their own officers. Although this had never come to anything, it meant that he survived the war, being eventually sentenced to life imprisonment by the Franco government.

  He had been freed at the instigation of the Abwehr in the autumn of 1940 and brought to Berlin, where it was hoped he might prove of some use to German Intelligence. It was at this stage that things had gone sadly wrong, for according to the record, Devlin, while having little sympathy with the Communist cause, was very definitely anti-fascist, a fact which he had made abundantly clear during his interrogation. A bad risk, then considered fit only for minor translation duties and English tutoring at the University of Berlin.

  But the position had changed drastically. The Abwehr had made several attempts to get Goertz out of Ireland. All had failed. In desperation, the Irish Section had called in Devlin and asked him to parachute into Ireland with forged travel documents, contact Goertz and get him out via a Portuguese ship or some similar neutral vessel. He was dropped over County Meath on the 18 October 1941 but some weeks later, before he could contact Goertz, the German was arrested by the Irish Special Branch.

  Devlin had spent several harrowing months on the run, betrayed at every turn, for so many IRA supporters had been interned in the Curragh by the Irish Government that there were few reliable contacts left. Surrounded by police in a farmhouse in Kerry in June, 1942, he wounded two of them and was himself rendered unconscious when a bullet creased his forehead. He had escaped from a hospital bed, made his way to Dun Laoghaire and had managed to get passage on a Brazilian boat bound for Lisbon. From there he had passed through Spain via the usual channels until he once more stood in the offices at the Tirpitz Ufer.

  From then on, Ireland was a dead end as far as the Abwehr was concerned and Liam Devlin was sent back to kick his heels in translation duties and occasionally, so farcical can life be, to take tutorials again in English literature at the University of Berlin.

  It was just before noon when Hofer came back into the office. ‘I’ve got him, Herr Oberst.’

  Radl looked up and put down his pen. ‘Devlin?’ He stood up and walked to the window, straightening his tunic, trying to work out what he was going to say. This had to g
o right, had to work. Yet Devlin would require careful handling. He was, after all, a neutral. The door clicked open and he turned.

  Liam Devlin was smaller than he had imagined. No more than five feet five or six. He had dark, wavy hair, pale face, eyes of the most vivid blue that Radl had ever seen and a slight, ironic smile that seemed to permanently lift the corner of his mouth. The look of a man who had found life a bad joke and had decided that the only thing to do was laugh about it. He was wearing a black, belted trenchcoat and the ugly puckered scar of the bullet wound that he had picked up on his last trip to Ireland showed clearly on the left side of his forehead.

  ‘Mr Devlin,’ Radl went round the desk and held out his hand. ‘My name is Radl—Max Radl. It’s good of you to come.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Devlin said in excellent German. ‘The impression I got was that I didn’t have much choice in the matter.’ He moved forward, unbuttoning his coat. ‘So this is Section Three where it all happens?’

  ‘Please, Mr Devlin.’ Radl brought a chair forward and offered him a cigarette.

  Devlin leaned forward for a light. He coughed, choking as the harsh cigarette smoke pulled at the back of his throat. ‘Mother Mary, Colonel, I knew things were bad, but not that bad. What’s in them or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Russian,’ Radl said. ‘I picked up the taste for them during the Winter War.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Devlin said. ‘They were the only thing that kept you from falling asleep in the snow.’

  Radl smiled, warming to the man. ‘Very likely.’ He produced the bottle of Courvoisier and two glasses. ‘Cognac?’

  ‘Now you’re being too nice.’ Devlin accepted the glass, swallowed, closing his eyes for a moment. ‘It isn’t Irish, but it’ll do to be going on with. When do we get to the nasty bit? The last time I was at Tirpitz Ufer they asked me to jump out of a Dornier at five thousand feet over Meath in the dark and I’ve a terrible fear of heights.’

  ‘All right, Mr Devlin,’ Radl said. ‘We do have work for you if you’re interested.’