Churchill's Hour (14 page)

Soon soldiers from the Home Guard began to arrive. They came in a collection of vehicles and had little idea of what to do, so after much confusion they took the prisoner to their headquarters in a nearby scout hut. From there he was passed up the chain of military command much like a fire bucket until, in the early hours of the following morning, he ended up in the hospital wing of Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow, where his ankle was treated. Throughout the night he continued to repeat his name, and also his request that they should summon the Duke of Hamilton. He seemed to know that the Duke's home was nearby.

The prisoner was a man of striking appearance. He had prominent brows, eyes that were exceptionally deep-set and a chin so square it seemed to have been fashioned from the end of an anvil. He also had the demeanour of a man used to issuing orders rather than being questioned by the likes of ploughmen and Home Guard privates. He showed
no signs of submissiveness, and began to grow irritable when the Duke of Hamilton failed to appear. He was unlike any other prisoner they had encountered, and he quickly became an item of considerable interest, with many people arriving to peer around the door of the hospital barracks at this strange arrival.

It was one of these inquisitive visitors, a squadron leader in the Royal Observer Corps, who was the first to begin unravelling the mystery.

‘Who's that?' he asked the guard on duty.

‘Horn, sir. He's called Alfred Horn.'

The squadron leader was about to say something else, but shook it from his mind and went away, looking troubled. He was back a few minutes later.

‘Who did you say he was?'

‘Name of Alfred Horn, sir.'

The squadron leader stared at the patient with the intensity of a hunting cheetah, then retreated into the corridor, looking grim.

‘That's no flaming Alfred Horn,' he snapped.

‘No?'

‘It seems scarcely credible, but I think I recognize him from his photograph.'

‘Who is he, then, sir?'

‘Damn it if that man's not Rudolf Hess.'

‘What?'

‘Hess. Adolf Hitler's deputy!'

There was awkwardness the following morning as they walked through the fresh ruins of London. The sights they saw made their tumbling through the hours of the previous night seem not only indulgent but also selfishly irrelevant. Although the bombers had long gone, the fires still burned ferociously, filling the air with smoke. The sky glowed red.

Great gaps had been torn through the buildings of London. Homes had been ripped open to show their pathetic guts; half-rooms with pictures set at crazy angles and furniture peering over the abyss, and ducks still flying across the wallpaper. Broken rooms, broken lives.

The rubble stank—of ash, cinder, tar, burnt hopes. Families clawed at the still-smoking embers, scrabbling for clothes, blankets, sheets, dolls, past lives. Tarpaulins covered the gashes, turning entire streets into tented encampments. Women with exhausted faces boiled water in kitchens that had neither walls
nor windows, while children sat around in shabby, worn clothes, their eyes empty, their soot-covered faces streaked with tears. Shreds of burnt paper fell all around like autumn leaves, and dark brown tea spilled from cracked mugs.

They passed a double-decker bus. It was resting at a jaunty angle, its face buried in the roof of a building more than a hundred yards from where it had been travelling. There was blood streaked across its windows. Firemen and volunteers worked tirelessly to damp the flames, but many buildings were left to burn themselves out and die alone. The bells of the ambulances and other emergency vehicles tolled ceaselessly. The casualties were horrendous.

They felt ashamed.

‘Pam, about last night.'

‘Yes?'

‘I guess…What I mean…' His embarrassment was momentarily covered by shouts of alarm as a roof collapsed nearby, sending an angry fist of smoke and dust punching into the sky.

‘Hell, Pam, you're married, I'm married, I've got a daughter your age. It doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?'

She looked around her. ‘Nothing makes a lot of sense right now.'

‘It can't continue.'

‘The war?'

‘Us.'

‘Oh, I see.'

They walked a little further, their shoes crunching on a carpet of broken glass.

‘We should regard last night as a one-off,' she said, her tone leaving it up to him to decide whether it was proposition or question.

‘I guess so,' he replied, after a long pause and with evident reluctance.

‘I had a good time.'

‘So did I!'

‘A little Lend-Lease, then.'

‘You're a hell of a girl, Pam. I hope we can still be…'

‘Friends?'

A broken main was spilling water down the gutter. Nearby a grocer, his shop destroyed and still smoking behind him, had set up a stall on tea chests and was selling oranges, potatoes and eggs, which was all he had left, to a line of dark-eyed women. Beside the stall a young boy was ladling milk from a churn into empty bottles. The women glanced suspiciously at the state of his hands.

A girl no more than seven years old approached Pamela. Her smock was torn and she was clutching a rag doll under one arm. ‘Have you seen my mummy?' she asked. ‘Daddy says we've lost her. She's got hair the same colour as yours. Do you know where she is?'

A gaunt-eyed man came running after her and
muttered something in her ear before leading her gently away.

Pamela, surrounded by a flood of so many sorrows, burst into tears. She sobbed on Harriman's shoulder as they stood surrounded by the wreckage of people's lives.

‘Surely this can't go on,' he whispered.

‘Of course it can,' she said, shaking herself out of her grief. ‘War isn't a bloody one-night stand, Averell. Or is that the only thing you Americans are any good at?'

Héloise, the new French maid, was also in London. She had asked for permission to spend a day shopping and sightseeing, and Mrs Landemare had thought it an excellent idea to show her around the other end of operations, in Downing Street and the Annexe. She deserved her day off, for she was proving to be a willing worker. Churchill usually spent three nights of the week at Chequers, arriving on Friday and not leaving until the following Monday morning. He was always accompanied by an endless retinue of guests, some who stayed for only one night, others for only one meal, and as soon as they had left, their place was taken by new arrivals. This imposed a huge burden upon the staff, whose task was made all the more difficult as the Prime Minister's demands bounced between the
extravagant and the outrageous. Yet somehow they coped. He arrived with secretaries tumbling in his wake and left with assistants rushing to ensure everyone had their place in the cars, but even when Churchill was no longer there the pace of activity at the old house grew only slightly less frantic. There was cleaning and clearing to be done, laundry to be ironed, larders to be stocked, and the pressing knowledge that, in a few days, he would be back.

So Héloise had earned her day in town. It was a pity that London was still in a state of chaos, but it was a warm day, she had on a fine spring dress and even in the confusion there were still many young men who had the time to spare her a smile. She seemed not to mind as the bus she was on made painfully slow progress through the streets of the West End. Héloise sat on the upper deck, which gave her a good view of the English capital, and she made no objection when a well-dressed young Japanese man chose the seat next to her, in spite of the fact that the upper deck was far from crowded. Indeed, she seemed almost to welcome his company, for within a few moments she had dropped deep into conversation with him.

Churchill's return to London was accompanied by even more commotion than usual. It wasn't every day that the Deputy Fuehrer dropped in. As soon
as his car had stopped outside the door of Downing Street the Prime Minister leapt from his seat, scattering papers to every side, rushing across the threshold, barking instructions, summoning colleagues, stirring the blood of everyone around, but as he headed for the Cabinet Room he found that two men were ahead of him, waiting by the door.

‘Prime Minister.' Sir Stewart Menzies nodded in greeting as he struggled with a bulging file.

Max Beaverbrook was puffing at a cigar that was even larger than the Prime Minister's own. ‘Winston,' he growled. ‘Bloody thing, this Hess business.'

‘How does Max do it?' Churchill asked himself, awe mingling with suspicion as he strode inside the Cabinet Room. Menzies had the intelligence services under his command and was in a position to know, but Max…Max was one of his oldest friends, and in the same breath one of his greatest rivals, a Canadian entrepreneur who had left behind a murky past to seek better times in Britain. And how well he had succeeded. His lists of achievements were legendary—politician, peer, press magnate, Cabinet Minister along with Churchill during the last war, and now Ministerial colleagues once again in this. He was a man who treated his friends with extraordinary generosity and ran his newspapers with outstanding ruthlessness. In short, a man too powerful, too rich and too graced by good fortune
ever to be completely trusted. Now it seemed he also had an intelligence service that was every inch as effective as Menzies'.

‘Max, not a bloody word in your newspapers,' Churchill began as they settled themselves around the Cabinet table. ‘Not a bloody word, do you hear me? Not until we figure out whose arse Hess has come here to kick.'

Later, Churchill was to record that from the start he had never regarded the Hess affair as one of serious importance. This was what he usually claimed when he had lost the argument.

And the argument was fierce. Was it really Hess? Beaverbrook said it was, for he knew Hess well from before the war and had already identified him from photographs wired down from Scotland, but Churchill insisted that Menzies send one of his intelligence officers to Glasgow to confirm the matter.

‘This could be the greatest propaganda coup of the war,' Churchill told them, ‘and we don't want to bugger it up before we start.'

Yet confirmation of the Deputy Fuehrer's identity proved to be only the start of the debate. It came to a head later that night as they met around the table in the Cabinet War Rooms that were buried in the basement beneath the Annexe—Churchill, Menzies, Beaverbrook, Eden the Foreign Secretary, Margesson the War Secretary, and several others. No one felt comfortable here; the ceilings were too low,
the reinforced beams too red and bright, the atmosphere too much like that of a tramp steamer's engine room, but after the terrible pounding that London had taken in recent nights it would have been folly for so many powerful men to have gathered together in the same place above ground.

‘So, it's confirmed,' Churchill began. ‘The man is Hess. And he wants to stop the war.' He nodded at Menzies, who began reciting a brief outline of the facts, so far as they had been put together. Hess had come alone, unarmed, wanting to meet with the Duke of Hamilton whom he had met briefly before the war and whom he believed to be a friend of the King.

‘Knows you too, doesn't he, Max?' Churchill prodded.

‘I know all sorts of scoundrels, Prime Minister,' the Canadian offered in reply, returning Churchill's stare.

‘Have we come to any conclusion about his mental state?' Eden enquired.

‘No indication that he's mad, if that's what you mean, Foreign Secretary,' Menzies replied.

‘And thank heavens for that,' Churchill said. ‘Spoil all the fun if he were frothing at the mouth.'

‘Fun, Prime Minster?' Eden asked, perplexed.

‘I propose to make a statement,' Churchill began, ‘to the effect that Hess has fled to Britain in the name of humanity—and where else in the whole
of Europe would any humanitarian flee other than to this country? Hess hopes to bring an end to the war. It is a sure sign that a collapse of morale is under way in Berlin and that the Nazi hierarchy is split. If his Deputy chooses to flee, how long will it be before the rest of Germany deserts Hitler? They know they can no longer win this war.'

‘If only that were true.'

‘What?'

Beaverbrook's gnome-like head came up from drawing doodles on his paperwork. His colonial accent was strong, his words typically blunt. ‘You can't say that. It's all wrong.'

‘What on earth do you mean?'

‘You go round suggesting Hess is a peacemonger and that there are many more like him back home, and you'll blow a hole in the entire war effort.'

‘Explain.'

‘How do you think this will play on Pennsylvania Avenue?' Beaverbrook replied. ‘The only way Roosevelt and his men are going to get involved in the war is if they think every German is a rabid maniac who's thirsting to get his hands on their firstborn. You tell them that they're all really kind and cuddly, and America goes back to sleep.'

Churchill was silent for a moment, disappearing behind a cloud of cigar smoke.

‘It's certainly a point to be considered,' Eden offered cautiously.

‘And I take the point,' Churchill said, a little grudgingly. ‘It would perhaps be best to avoid a discussion of his motives, be they humanitarian or otherwise. We shall instead concentrate on his plea for peace.'

But Beaverbrook was shaking his head.

‘That also troubles you, Max?'

‘Not me. But I think it may trouble many others. You know what it's like out there, on the streets—or what's left of them. You start telling them that there's some sort of peace deal on offer and many of them won't stop to ask questions, they'll simply grab hold of it and begin their street parties. Sure, they've been offered peace with honour before and it didn't work out last time either, but when you've just lost your home, your neighbourhood, your hope, it's exactly the kind of tune they might dance to.'

Churchill looked around the room. He could see in their faces that they thought Max was right. And now that Churchill himself had been given a chance to pause and reflect, he, too, thought Max was right. But he did so resent having to acknowledge the fact in public.

‘I've always made it clear that any so-called peace which leaves Hitler dominant in Europe would not be worthy of the name.'

‘And I agree,' Beaverbrook added, trying to be helpful.

‘It seems, therefore, that the most important point to emphasize in this extraordinary matter is the light that it throws upon the divided leadership in Berlin.' Churchill was trying to sum up, to move on, but…

‘You still have problems, Max?'

‘If Hess's arrival says anything to the outside world—well, it may be about splits in Berlin, sure. But it also talks about splits right here in Britain.'

A blue haze of silence hung across the room.

‘He didn't come here to talk to you, Winston—not to me, either,' Beaverbrook continued, his voice softer. ‘Looks like he wanted to do a deal with others. Those who think the war's not going too well. You know the whispering that's going on. You remember the debate we had in the House the other day.'

The silence continued.

‘From what I gather, Hess still loves his Fuehrer, thinks Germany is going to win. He's come as a salesman, not to surrender.'

Menzies was nodding his head gently.

‘We can't afford to make a public spectacle of Hess,' Beaverbrook said, looking directly at the Prime Minister. ‘You said we had to figure out whose arse Hess had come to kick. Well, I guess it's ours.'

It had seemed like the greatest propaganda coup of all time, but suddenly no one was so sure.

‘What, then, are you suggesting we say?'

They were still arguing about that when news of the German communiqué came in. Berlin had beaten them to it. According to German radio, Hess had been under suspicion for some time. He had disobeyed orders, stolen a plane. Was ill, had a mental disorder, had been suffering from hallucinations for years.