Winter's Bullet (22 page)

Willa crawled over to him. ‘What's that?'

Tygo grabbed the stone and rinsed it in the shallow water. It glittered in the light of the burning plane. Willa stared at it, then at Tygo. ‘You swallowed it?'

‘Seemed a good idea at the time. Here, take it, it's yours.'

Willa looked at it for a moment or two. ‘I don't want it, Tygo.' She looked back at the plane. ‘Come on, we need to get out of here, that bomb . . .'

‘You must take it, it's yours, it's priceless.'

‘Not to me.'

‘But it's your future . . .'

‘Now you sound like him, like Krüger.'

Tygo dropped his head. ‘You're right. I'm sorry.'

Willa leant over and folded his fingers back around the stone. ‘Why don't you look after it for me, Tygo, keep it safe?'

Tygo smiled. ‘I can do that. I can absolutely do that.'

‘Right, now can we get out of here!'

Tygo nodded and climbed unsteadily to his feet.

‘Come, I'll race you to the woods!' Willa made it sound like they were on a day out to the beach.

‘I can't . . .' Tygo felt dizzy.

‘Don't tell me the great Tygo Winter is giving up?'

Tygo stared at her, her blonde hair plastered flat against her porcelain skin, her topaz eyes staring down at him. They were no longer filled with fear as they had been when he had first looked into them. Now they were smiling at him.

‘Never,' he croaked.

She took his hand and pulled him forward, and they started to run along the sand.

Behind them the plane was engulfed in flames, like some Viking sacrifice.

CHAPTER 28

15 January 1945

A
t 2.57 a.m. the Nazis' first and only nuclear bomb exploded inside the burning wreckage of the Arado, almost six months to the day before the Americans' Trinity test in Nevada.

The Führer's convoy had successfully retreated back on to the main road to Haarlem. The vehicles were grouped together, their engines running. When the bomb had exploded, the light had illuminated the line of cars as if a battery of searchlights had been parked in front of it and switched on. Then a roaring wind had hit them, filled with dust, sand, leaves, sticks . . . anything that could be
picked up and hurled their way. It was accompanied by a sound like a dozen express trains driving straight through them.

Müller staggered forward to the Führer's car, his eyes still dazzled. He had failed to reach Krüger on the radio for the last hour, and now he knew why. In the distance was a column of smoke.

He reached the car; Bormann stared out at him from the back. He put up his hand for Müller to wait. Müller caught a glimpse of the Führer; his face was incandescent with rage. After several minutes the passenger door opened and Bormann climbed out.

‘Did you see the power of it?' Müller shouted, his ears ringing.

‘Yes, truly it is a wondrous weapon. Once again, the Führer's genius has been demonstrated.' He shook his head bitterly. ‘And once again his trust has been betrayed!' He swore loudly, using every filthy word he could think of.

Müller waited until he had finished. ‘What are the Führer's orders?'

‘Operation Black Sun is finished. The plane is gone, the bomb is gone. Now it is the Führer's wish to continue the fight from Berlin.'

‘We can get another plane,' said Müller. ‘There are more bombs.'

‘It is too late now. The Führer has decided: he will stay and fight, fight until victory is achieved.'

‘But that is impossible.'

‘Those are the Führer's orders.' Müller could see that Bormann felt the same.

‘Of course.' Müller nodded. It was all over now. Time for him to make his own separate travel plans.

Pieter and Alisa had made it to the outskirts of Haarlem when the whole night lit up for an instant, like a switch had been thrown from above. The street they were standing in was suddenly washed white, and then the darkness returned, accompanied by a murderous thunder rolling towards them.

‘What was that?' said Alisa.

Pieter shook his head and coughed again, tasting blood.

‘Whatever it was, it's gone now,' he said. He was feeling light-headed from the loss of blood. He sagged against Alisa, and she caught him, pulling one of his arms over her shoulders to support him. He was a dead weight.

‘No, don't you dare!' she said. ‘Big strong brute like you . . . we're nearly there.' The safe house was in the next street. She would call a doctor, he would take care of Pieter. She would save him, like he had saved her.

‘Come on, now.' Alisa started to sing softly to him. ‘Poor Old Man . . .'

At first light, Tygo and Willa found a gap in the barbed wire and made their way up through the dunes. The sand was rock hard, covered in snow, and the tufted grass that grew on the hillocks was iced with frost.

They were glad that hellish night was finally over, but neither of them would ever forget the moment when the darkness had turned to a searing white light. The roaring blast of the wind, throwing them to the ground, the
sound like the earth being torn apart.

Shaken, they had got back to their feet and seen in the distance a tall thin column of smoke rising up in the dark sky, the top of it forming the shape of a mushroom. It was horribly beautiful.

‘Do you want to rest?' Tygo asked.

‘No, I'm okay.' Willa took his hand. Her fingers were freezing.
Cold hands, warm heart
, that was what they said. In Willa's case Tygo was sure it must be true.

‘Look, what's that?' Willa pointed to something further up on the beach.

Tygo squinted against the light from the rising sun. ‘It's a little boat!' he exclaimed. He sprinted down through the dune on to the beach. Willa ran after him.

The two of them examined it. It was a clinker-built skiff with a bench seat in the middle, and a little mast with a tatty sail forward of that. Tygo looked inside.

‘There's a pair of oars.' He looked at Willa, excited. ‘Let see if it's seaworthy.'

The two of them pushed the boat down into the surf. The icy water bit into their feet and shins.

‘Seems sound enough to me,' Tygo said. ‘Come on.'

He helped Willa clamber on board, then pulled himself in. He fitted the oars into the boat's rowlocks.

‘Where are we going?'

‘Wherever we want,' Tygo replied with a grin.

And with that, the two of them dropped their oars into the water and heaved.

HISTORICAL NOTE

As you may have realized, this is a work of fiction, and of course none of what takes place in the plot actually occurred, although some things in the story are true.

The Winter of Hunger was a very real event for the brave people of the Netherlands, and many thousands died of malnutrition, cold and disease. Many were also shot for their Resistance work or in reprisal actions. Although the south of the country was liberated by the end of 1944, Amsterdam and the north were not freed from the Nazi yoke until May 1945.

The guns, planes and cars used in the story are all accurate, except for the T-Waffe weapons that were loaded on the plane at the end. However, more primitive versions almost certainly existed, including many different types of rockets and missiles. It is generally believed that the Nazis had some nuclear capability by the end of the war, and there is a school of thought which argues that the nuclear material inside the Little Boy, the bomb the Americans dropped on Nagasaki, was in fact captured from a Nazi U-Boat 234 at the end of the war. Reports also exist of the Nazis testing such a weapon on the island of Rügen in the Baltic in late 1944, and in Thuringia in March 1945. Furthermore, there are a number of sources that suggest that nuclear weapons were being made at the Gusen concentration camp near St Georgen.

In particular, much mystery remains about an enormous secret weapon project called the ‘Bell'. It is believed to have been some sort of anti-gravity device, and perhaps is the reason for so many reports of flying discs and flying balls by Allied pilots at the end of the war. They gave rise to the
nickname ‘foo fighters', based on the French word
feu
, meaning fire. Modern stealth and drone technology is directly attributable to these experimental designs and prototypes.

Of the people in the story:

General ‘Gestapo' Heinrich Müller

General Müller was head of the Gestapo to the very end of the war. He escaped from Hitler's bunker in Berlin and disappeared as the Soviets closed in. It is generally believed he survived the war and either went to work for the Americans or the Soviets, depending on whose propaganda and counter-propaganda you believe.

Han van Meegeren

Van Meegeren was a celebrated Dutch forger and art dealer who was put on trial by the Dutch authorities after the war for his forgeries of Vermeer paintings. He managed to make himself something of a folk hero from the case, claiming that by making the Nazis pay a fortune for his works he was contributing to the war effort.

Werner Baumbach

Baumbach was a highly-decorated Luftwaffe pilot and one of the commanders of the special operations flight known as KG 200. Baumbach really did fly captured American planes and other very specialized craft, and was involved in many secret missions. He survived the war, and even wrote a book about his life without ever mentioning the KG 200 air squadron.

Eva Duarte

She became, on 18 October 1945, the wife of General Perón, who was vice president of Argentina in January 1945. He later became president of the country in 1946. It is widely known that both he and previous regimes were pro-Nazi (despite having declared war on Germany at the beginning of 1945) and that vast amounts of money and gold were transferred to German companies set up in Argentina by Martin Bormann. A great number of ex-Nazis settled there comfortably after the war – including, if you choose to believe alternative history books, Martin Bormann and even Adolf Hitler himself.

Eva Braun

She was Hitler's long-time mistress. He married her in the bunker in Berlin on 29 April 1945 and they committed suicide together the following day. Her sister Gretl Braun survived the war and died in 1987.

When researching this novel, I found these books really useful:
The Man Who Made Vermeers
by Jonathan Lopez;
KG 200: The Luftwaffe's Most Secret Unit
by Geoffrey J. Thomas & Barry Ketley;
The Hunger Winter
by Henri A. van der Zee;
Nazi Looting: The Plunder of Dutch Jewry during the Second World War
by Gerard Aalders;
The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina
by Uki Goni;
The Truth About the Wunderwaffe
by Igor Witkowski; and
Emmy Andriesse – Photographs 1944/52
by Emmy Andriesse
.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is like the end of a film when the credits roll and everyone leaves. For the odd few who stay to the copyright and Panavision logos here are the people I would like to thank for helping me with this story. My parents who at the time of writing are robust ninety-year-olds and thus actually fought in the war! My wonderful wife and four gorgeous children. Michael, Nelda and Judy who know who they are and what they do! Major Von Hapen, my fabulous editor, Rachel, who is an alchemist; Barry, my amazing boss; the other incredible Rachel; and of course everyone else at Chicken House which is the best publisher in the galaxy. Thank you one and all.

ALSO BY WILLIAM OSBORNE

HITLER'S ANGEL by WILLIAM OSBORNE

O
tto and Leni have escaped the Nazis and fled to England.

They thought they were safe, but now the British want them to go back to Germany.

Dropped behind enemy lines, they embark on a secret operation. Their mission is to find and kidnap a girl who could bring down Hitler.

And so begins their bravest journey yet . . .

‘Nail-biting . . .'

THE BOOKSELLER

Paperback, ISBN 978-1-908435-08-8, £6.99 • ebook, ISBN 978-1-908435-38-5, £6.99