A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (17 page)

He put the gun away, reached over, and wrenched the glove compartment open. He pulled out the papers inside—car registry and his citizenship documentation, left there by MI6 when they provided him the car—and ran his hand along the compartment’s inner wall. Nothing.

He bent over and searched underneath the driver’s side dash in the same way, neatly and systematically running his fingertips along every surface, reaching up inside any opening and checking its interior as far as he could fit his fingers, running his hands along the underside of the accelerator, the brake and the clutch, then repeating the process beneath the dash on the Ellie’s side. Beneath his seat. Beneath Ellie’s seat.

Ellie watched him in confused, slightly alarmed fascination, remaining silent except to emit a slight yelp and jerk her feet up when he stuck his hand between her knees to check the underside of her seat. After he had checked there, he pulled up in turn both of the rubber mats on the floor beneath his own feet and Ellie’s, but he found nothing under there either. Eventually he might have to check the gear box, but there were still other, easier places he could eliminate before he had to take
that
apart.

He pulled the lever to pop the car bonnet, got out of the car and went round to the front, leaving the car door open behind him. He lifted the bonnet and examined the engine. He held the bonnet to shield the engine parts from the rain, but it was coming down at an angle and a few drops of water still got in, sizzling against the hot metal and rubber. Three years as a tank driver in Siberia, where maintenance and replacement components were often hard to come by, had left him an expert on automotive engines, but he could see nothing wrong here. Damn.

He lowered the bonnet and went back round to the car door, leaning in, turning the car off and removing the key from the ignition.

“What’s going on?” Ellie demanded, but he ignored her. He went round to the back of the car, unlocked the boot, and began to run his fingertips along its inside.

Ellie got out of the car and followed him round. She grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him round to face her.

“
What
is going on?”

He ran a hand through his soaked black hair and wiped water from his eyes. He could feel the rain dripping off the tip of his beaked nose. “They were British,” he said at last.

She stared at him. He was acutely aware of how beautiful she was in the eerie red glow of the car’s taillights, already drenched after just a few seconds, water streaming off the end of her nose.

“What?”

“One of the SS troopers saluted.” He demonstrated the Western salute perfunctorily, elbow bent, fingers of the right hand touched to the forehead. Not like the Nazi salute, right arm held straight out in front, open palm facing the ground and fingers rigidly straight. “He saluted. They were Westerners. They were bloody British disguised as Gestapo.”

She blinked again. “You mean like the English soldiers at Jurgen’s last night?”

“
Just
like the soldiers last night.” Had Captain Barnes been the officer who shot Garner?

She did not respond. He bent back over the boot and began his search once more.

There. That strange bump under the upholstery. He probed at the fabric seam where it was glued down around the rim of the car boot, searching for a loose end. He tugged at it, hard, and it came free with a loud rip. He stuck his hand down inside the fabric and closed his fingers round the small, warm piece of metal he found there. Some sort of adhesive tape secured it to the inside of the Focke-Wulf’s metal frame, and he had to pull twice at it before it came free. He removed his hand from inside the fabric, still clutching the device.

It was a small radio transmitter with a tiny red light blinking slowly at one end. He held it out to Ellie. She stared at it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A shortwave transmitter. A beacon. They’ve been second guessing me the whole bloody time. They gave me the car. The British did, and it was bloody bugged. And then they’ve been following me since I got here.”

He tossed it onto the ground and raised his foot, ready to smash it with his heel, but thought better of it. He picked it up again and instead threw it as hard as he could away from the road. That should confuse them for a few hours at least, thinking he was still sitting here by the side of the road a dozen kilometers north of Munich. They both stared after it.

What was going on? He needed to understand, and it was time he faced up to that. One man had already died tonight because of his own indecision.

He turned to Ellie. “Will you drive?” he asked.

She had not expected the question. “What?”

“Will you drive?”

She nodded. He closed the boot and tossed the keys to her, then went around to the passenger side and got in. He watched her get in on the other side, her soaked skirt clinging to her thighs, then reached into the back seat and grabbed Garner’s envelope from his jacket as she turned the key in the ignition and the engine growled to life. As she put the car into gear and pulled back onto the road, he switched the car’s dome light on and tore the file open.

HE EMPTIED the contents of the envelope onto his lap. There were three documents: two sets of papers, each maybe a dozen pages long and paperclipped together, and a loose, typewritten sheet. He examined the single sheet first. It was a letter from Garner.

Ellie glanced over at him intermittently as he sorted through the envelope’s contents. “What is it?” she asked when he had still not said anything after the better part of a minute.

“I don’t know,” he said. He wanted her to be quiet for a bit while he studied the documents and came to some initial conclusions of his own.

I do not take the decision I have reached lightly. For twenty-eight years I have served my Sovereign, my superiors, and my belief in right and wrong, and it has taken careful consideration of my present misgivings over an extended period to convince myself that the actions demanded by those three masters are no longer compatible. The path which my service has taken has, by its nature, occasionally demanded that I set aside qualms about what my country has required of me, and that I accept that conscience is not a luxury permitted to the men and women who fight the battles I fight. Previously, I have always found such a moral compromise bearable because I have known that the deeds I have done have been performed in the service of England, and that England remains a bastion of freedom in opposition to the world’s greatest evil. Concepts such as patriotism, honor, and liberty are often considered out of date in the modern world, I know, especially in my line of work, but for me they are still the defining concepts of my life
.

Yet now I find that my conscience has indeed discovered the act that it cannot countenance, the line it will not let me cross. My country demands of me an act of complaisance in direct opposition to what my belief in right and wrong tells me I should do. I am about to take the first step in a very drastic action, and for the first time in my life I will be betraying the oath I took to my Queen. I admit that, at the time I take this first step, I have no idea whether I will be able to take the second, or even what the second step will be. I only know that to refrain from taking action will be to serve the evil I have dedicated my life to trying to end, and that therefore action must be taken. I believe that now, in acting to fight against this evil, I am ultimately serving Great Britain and her people, even if I am committing treason against the British Government in so doing. I only hope that God—and perhaps one day my Queen and my country—can forgive me
.

The documents accompanying this note are the final draft of the product of eight secret meetings between the elite echelon of the German SS hierarchy and senior officials at the British embassy in Berlin between February 1970 and April 1971. The principal negotiators were, for Germany, SS-Oberstgruppenfuehrer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the RSHA German security service, and SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Hermann Fegelein, personal deputy to Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler; and for Great Britain, the British Ambassador to Germany and, representing Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, myself. So as to remain away from watchful eyes, these substantive meetings were held at the abandoned Columbia-Haus SS prison in Berlin, though minor functionaries of both parties met several times at Gestapo headquarters at No. 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse, Berlin, for the purpose of resolving minor procedural conflicts regarding the policies determined at Columbia- Haus
.

Richard A. Garner

Berlin, 23 May 1971

He set the letter aside and turned to the two packets of papers. They appeared to be identical translations of the same text, one in English, one in German. Both documents were typewritten, though unlike Garner’s letter, they had been typed on a typewriter capable of reproducing German characters. He studied the English document.

The Greater German Empire and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, hereinafter referred to jointly as the Parties and individually as, respectively, Germany and the United Kingdom
,

Conscious that nuclear war would have devastating consequences for all mankind, and that their mutual policies regarding each other since the signing of the Armistice in January 1946 ending the previous hostilities have not been the most conducive towards preventing nuclear conflict, but to the contrary, have tended to escalate tensions between the Parties
,

Declare hereby their intentions to take steps to promote the harmonising of relations between the Parties in the interest of the preservation of European and world peace, and in pursuance of such have agreed as follows:

“MY GOD,” he said, unaware of whether he was speaking English or German. He leafed through the pages.

“What?” Ellie asked.

ARTICLE III. The British Zone of Occupation in Italy

The United Kingdom undertakes to withdraw completely from its Zone of Occupation in the Italian Social Republic within six months of the signing of this document, to turn over all facilities therein currently occupied by the British Armed Forces to agents of the Italian Government in said time frame, and to withdraw recognition of and sever all diplomatic ties with the government that it has established in the Zone of Occupation, namely the Republic of Sicily
.

“It’s a détente,” he said.

“A what?”

“It’s an agreement. A permanent treaty. Between Britain and Germany.”

“You mean a peace treaty?”

“More like a bleeding surrender,” he murmured.

“Speak German. I don’t understand English.”

He glanced at her. “I said it’s more like a surrender than a peace treaty.”

ARTICLE VI. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NATO being an offensive alliance constituted specifically to target Germany and Germany’s Warsaw Pact Allies, and not, as its founding document maintains, a defensive alliance against any unspecified external threat, the United Kingdom undertakes to withdraw forthwith from NATO. The United Kingdom does not undertake to replace its NATO membership with membership in the Warsaw Pact, though neither Party construes this to prevent the United Kingdom’s admittance to the Warsaw Pact at a future date. Once the United Kingdom has withdrawn from NATO, Germany undertakes, in the event of military invasion of the United Kingdom’s integral territory in the British Isles, or of British territory in the Mediterranean Sea, to employ the full military force of the Warsaw Pact in defense of British sovereignty
.

ARTICLE VII. Foreign military presence in the United Kingdom

In pursuance of the removal from the United Kingdom of offensive nuclear weapons targeted at Germany, as per Article I, and the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from NATO, as per Article VI, the United Kingdom undertakes to re-establish sovereignty over all United States military and naval facilities within its borders in the British Isles and to expel all United States military and naval personnel stationed in the British Isles within twelve months of the signing of this document, excepting only those personnel expressly attached to United States diplomatic missions to the United Kingdom
.

In the case of military and naval bases in the British Isles held by the United States as recompense for material assistance provided by the United States to the United Kingdom during the war of 1939-1946 under the provisions of the Anglo-American Agreement of 1940, Germany undertakes to compensate the United States monetarily for the proportion of such aid as those bases represent. This provision shall not apply to British facilities outside the British Isles leased by the United States under the 1940 agreement, such as the Royal Navy bases in Bermuda or the Caribbean Sea
.

In eleven pages and nineteen articles, the document tied up every loose end left hanging for twenty-five years by the Corunna Armistice, neatly and succinctly—and, in almost every case, markedly in favor of the Germans. Occasionally a provision included a degree of reciprocity, as when Britain agreed no longer to fund Algerian freedom fighters against the French in exchange for an end to clandestine German support of nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. But clauses where it was Germany making concessions markedly in Britain’s favor were hard to come by. He shuffled through the pages, searching for such provisions. They were few and, for the most part, minor.

ARTICLE XII. The Channel Isles

Germany undertakes to turn over possession of the German Luftwaffe base on the island of Jersey and the German Kriegsmarine submarine base on the island of Guernsey to the British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, respectively, at a time chosen by the United Kingdom, and to withdraw wholly from the Channel Isles immediately upon receipt of notification from the United Kingdom that it is ready to reestablish its sovereignty there
.

And then, two pages later on,

ARTICLE XV. The Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Zone