SS-GB Read online

  LEN DEIGHTON

  SS-GB

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  By Len Deighton

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  ‘My book, Inside the Third Reich, never reached the top of the New York best seller list,’ Albert Speer told me. ‘It was Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but were afraid to ask that always remained at number one.’

  I am still not sure if he was joking. Hitler’s onetime Minister of Armaments had a sharp sense of humour, especially about the men with whom he had been in Spandau prison; he always referred to Field Marshal Milch as ‘Milk’. And when writers get together sales talk is not unusual.

  But Albert Speer was not the catalyst for SS-GB. It began over a late-night drink with Ray Hawkey the writer and designer, and Tony Colwell my editor at Jonathan Cape. ‘No one knows what might have happened had we lost the Battle of Britain,’ said Tony with a sigh as we finished sorting through photos to illustrate my book, Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain.

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ I told him. ‘A great deal of the planning for the German occupation has been found and published.’

  I had read some of that material and, after this conversation, I sought out the official German publications and began wondering if Britain under German rule would make a book. It would have to be what was then called an ‘alternative world’ book and that was outside all my writing experience. On the other hand, research for Fighter and Funeral in Berlin and particularly Bomber, had brought me into contact with many Germans, mostly men who had fought in the war.

  I work very slowly so I don’t embark on a story until I am confident that I will be able to get the material for it and live with it for many months, perhaps years. The plot problems seemed insurmountable. Would I create a hero in the German occupation army? I wouldn’t want a Nazi as a hero. If I told the story through the eyes of a British civilian how would such a person have enough information to make the plot work? A notable member of the resistance would qualify as a hero but such heroes would all be dead, or fugitives.

  This story had to be told from the centre of power. The police would be the people who connected the conquerors with the conquered but that sort of compromise role was not attractive to me. I went round and round on this until I thought of a Scotland Yard detective as hero. A man who solved crimes and hunted only real criminals could have contacts at the top and yet still be acceptable as a central character. I would frame it like a conventional murder mystery, with corpse at the start and solution at the end.

  I like big charts and diagrams. They serve as a guide and reminder while a book is being written. Using the German data I drew a chain of command showing the connections between the civilians and the puppet government, black-marketeers and quislings and the occupying power with its security forces and bitterly competitive army and Waffen SS elements. My old friend, and fellow writer, Ted Allbeury had spent the immediate post-war period in occupied Germany as what the locals called ‘the head of the British Gestapo’. Ted’s experience was very valuable indeed and I used his experience and anecdotes to the full.

  For the London scenes, I used only places that I had known in the war, so in that respect there is an autobiographical element in the story. I remembered London in wartime: the dimly lit streets, gas lights that hissed and spluttered, tin baths in front of the fire, rationing that made food a constant subject of thought and conversation, and bombed homes that spewed their intimate household contents into the streets.

  The Scotland Yard building had to be the stage upon which my story was played but the police were no longer using it. It had become an office building for members of parliament and was strictly guarded. The Metropolitan Police were very cooperative about letting me into their new building and they let me use their fascinating library and their archives too without restrictions of any kind. I spent many days studying wartime crimes and looking at pictures of Scotland Yard detectives in the natty suits that were mandatory at that time. But the obstacle remained, the police had no authority over the building they had vacated.

  By a wonderful piece of luck I found an elderly ex-policeman who knew the building from cellar to attic. I recorded hours of his descriptions but I still could not get into it until a friend named Freddy Warren devised a method by which I could explore every nook and cranny of the historic Scotland Yard building. Freddy’s authority as an official of the Whip’s office was to allot the offices to the politicians. He took me on a guided tour. With him I went everywhere; opening doors, interrupting conferences, awakening sleepers and declining liquid refreshment. No one was going to risk upsetting Freddy. I remain indebted to him and I hope that this record of the Scotland Yard building, as once it was, justifies the trouble he took on my behalf.

  When writing the main text begins I have found it beneficial to step away from phones and friends and any social commitments. Together with my wife Ysabele and two small children I climbed into an old Volvo with its trunk crammed with research material. We went to Tuscany. My friend Al Alvarez the writer and broadcaster lent us his wonderful mountainside house near Barga. It was winter and, no matter about the pictures in the brochures, winter in northern Italy is cold and wet. I searched far and wide for an electric typewriter and failed to find one. All I could find was a tiny lightweight portable Olivetti Lettera 22. Yes I know the Lettera 22 is an icon of the nineteen fifties and is found in design museums, but after the soft touch joys of an electric machine, pounding the mechanical keyboard took a lot of getting used to. My fingers swelled up like salsiccia Toscana. But rural Italy worked its magic. Our elderly ‘next door’ neighbours adopted us. Signora Ida and her husband Silvio lavished our children with love, made pizzas for us in their outdoor oven and showed us the secret of making ravioli and the secret of happiness on the slim budget that a few olive trees provide. We will never forget those two wonderful people. They made my time in Tuscany writing SS-GB one of the happiest times of my happy life.

  Len Deighton, 2009

  ‘In England they’re filled with curiosity and keep asking, “Why doesn’t he come?” Be calm. Be calm. He’s coming! He’s coming!’

  Adolf Hitler. 4 September 1940,

  at a rally of nurses and social workers in Berlin.

  Oberste Befehlshaber

  Berlin, den 18.2.41

  Der Obers
te Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht

  10 Ausfertigungen

  Ausfertigung

  Instrument of Surrender – English Text. Of all British armed forces in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland including all islands.

  The British Command agrees to the surrender of all British armed forces in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland including all islands and including military elements overseas. This also applies to units of the Royal Navy in all parts of the world, at port and on the high seas.

  All hostilities on land, sea and in the air by British forces are to cease at 0800 hrs Greenwich Mean Time on 19 February 1941.

  The British Command to carry out at once, without argument or comment, all further orders that will be issued by the German Command on any subject.

  Disobedience of orders, or failure to comply with them, will be regarded as a breach of these surrender terms and will be dealt with by the German Command in accordance with the laws and usages of war.

  This instrument of surrender is independent of, without prejudice to, and will be superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by or on behalf of the German Command and applicable to the United Kingdom and the Allied nations of the Commonwealth.

  This instrument of surrender is written in German and English. The German version is the authentic text.

  The decision of the German Command will be final if any doubt or dispute arises as to the meaning or interpretation of the surrender terms.

  Chapter One

  ‘Himmler’s got the king locked up in the Tower of London,’ said Harry Woods. ‘But now the German Generals say the army should guard him.’

  The other man busied himself with the papers on his desk and made no comment. He thumped the rubber stamp into the pad and then on to the docket, ‘Scotland Yard. 14 Nov. 1941’. It was incredible that the war had started only two years ago. Now it was over; the fighting finished, the cause lost. There was so much paperwork that two shoe boxes were being used for the overflow; Dolcis shoes, size six, patent leather pumps, high heels, narrow fitting. Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer knew only one woman who would buy such shoes: his secretary.

  ‘Well, that’s what people are saying,’ added Harry Woods, the elderly Sergeant who was the other half of the ‘murder team’.

  Douglas Archer initialled the docket and tossed it into the tray. Then he looked across the room and nodded. It was a miserable office, its green and cream painted walls darkened by age and the small windows heavily leaded and smeared by sooty rain, so that the electric light had to be on all day.

  ‘Never do it on your own doorstep,’ advised Harry now that it was too late for advice. Anyone other than Harry, anyone less bold, less loquacious, less well-meaning would have stopped at that. But Harry disregarded the fixed smile on his senior partner’s face. ‘Do it with that blonde, upstairs in Registry. Or that big-titted German bird in Waffen-SS liaison – she puts it about they say – but your own secretary…’ Harry Woods pulled a face.

  ‘You spend too much time listening to what people say,’ said Douglas Archer calmly. ‘That’s your trouble, Harry.’

  Harry Woods met the disapproving stare without faltering. ‘A copper can never spend too much time listening to what other people say, Super. And if you faced reality, you’d know. You may be a bloody wonderful detective, but you’re a shocking bad judge of character – and that’s your trouble.’

  There weren’t many Detective Sergeants who would dare speak to Douglas Archer like that but these two men had known each other ever since 1920, when Harry Woods was a handsome young Police Constable with a Military Medal ribbon on his chest, and a beat littered with the broken hearts of pretty young housemaids and the hot meat pies of doting cooks. While Douglas Archer was a nine-year-old child proud to be seen talking to him.

  When Douglas Archer became a green young Sub-Divisional Inspector, straight from the Hendon Police College, with no more experience of police work than comes from dodging the Proctors in the back streets of Oxford, it was Harry Woods who had befriended him. And that was at a time when such privileged graduates were given a hard time by police rank and file.

  Harry knew everything a policeman had to know and more. He knew when each night-watchman brewed tea, and was never far from a warm boiler house when it rained. Harry Woods knew which large piles of rubbish would have money under them, never taking more than a third of it, lest the shopkeeper found some other way to pay the street-cleaners for their extra work. But that was a long time ago, before the generosity of the publicans and barmen of London’s West End had provided Harry with his ruddy face and expanded his waistline. And before Douglas Archer’s persistence got him into CID and then to Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad.

  ‘C Division have got a juicy one,’ said Harry Woods. ‘Everyone else is busy. Shall I get the murder bag ready?’

  Douglas knew that his Sergeant expected him to respond in surprise, and he raised an eyebrow. ‘How the devil do you know about it?’

  ‘A flat in Shepherd Market, crammed with whisky, coffee, tea and so on, and Luftwaffe petrol coupons lying around on the table. The victim is a well-dressed man, probably a black-marketeer.’

  ‘You think so?’

  Harry smiled. ‘Remember that black-market gang who killed the warehouse manager in Fulham…they were forging Luftwaffe petrol coupons. This could be the same mob.’

  ‘Harry. Are you going to tell me where all this information comes from, or are you going to solve the crime without getting out of your seat?’

  ‘The Station Sergeant at Savile Row is an old drinking pal. He just phoned me. A neighbour found the body and told the police.’

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ said Douglas Archer. ‘We’ll move slowly.’

  Harry bit his lip. In his opinion Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer never did otherwise. Harry Woods was a policeman of the old school, scornful of paperwork, filing systems and microscopes. He liked to be talking, drinking, interrogating and making arrests.

  Douglas Archer was a tall, thin, thirty-year-old. He was one of a new generation of detectives, who’d rejected the black jacket, pin-stripe trousers, roll-brim hat and stiff collar that was almost a uniform for the Murder Squad. Douglas favoured dark shirts and the sort of wide-brimmed hat he’d seen on George Raft in a Hollywood gangster film. In keeping with this, he’d taken to smoking small black cheroots as often as his tobacco ration permitted. He tried to light this one for the third time; the tobacco was of poor quality and it did not burn well. He looked for more matches and Harry threw a box across to him.

  Douglas was a Londoner – with the quick wit and sophisticated self-interest for which Londoners are renowned – but like many who grow up in a fatherless household, he was introspective and remote. The soft voice and Oxford accent would have better suited some more cloistered part of the legal profession but he’d never regretted becoming a policeman. It was largely due to Harry, he realized that now. For the lonely little rich boy, in the big house on the square, Harry Woods, without knowing it, became a surrogate father.

  ‘And suppose the Luftwaffe petrol coupons are not forgeries; suppose they are real,’ said Douglas. ‘Then you can bet German personnel are involved, and the case will end up with the Feldgericht der Luftwaffe, Lincoln’s Inn. Waste of time our getting involved.’

  ‘This is murder,’ said Harry. ‘A few petrol coupons can’t change that.’

  ‘Don’t try to re-write the laws, Harry, there’s enough work enforcing the ones we’ve got. Any crimes involving Luftwaffe personnel, in even the smallest way, are tried by Luftwaffe courts.’

  ‘Not if we got over there right away,’ said Harry, running his hand back over hair that refused to be smoothed down. ‘Not if we wrung a confession out of one of them, sent copies to Geheime Feldpolizei and Kommandantur, and gave them a conviction on a plate. Oherwise these German buggers just quash these cases for lack of evidence, or post the guilty ones off to some soft job in another country.
’

  For Harry the fighting would never end. His generation, who’d fought and won in the filth of Flanders, would never come to terms with defeat. But Douglas Archer had not been a soldier. As long as the Germans let him get on with the job of catching murderers, he’d do his work as he’d always done it. He wished he could get Harry to see it his way.

  ‘I’d appreciate it, Harry, if you’d not allow your personal opinions to intrude into the preferred terminology.’ Douglas tapped the SIPO Digest. ‘And I’m far from convinced that they are soft on German personnel. Five executions last month; one of them a Panzer Division Major, with Knight’s Cross, who did nothing worse than arrive an hour late to check a military vehicle compound.’ He tossed the information sheets across to his partner’s desk.

  ‘You read all that stuff, don’t you?’

  ‘And if you had more sense, Harry, you’d read it too. Then you’d know that General Kellerman now has his CID briefings on Tuesday morning at eleven o’clock, which is just ten minutes from now.’

  ‘Because the old bastard drinks too much at lunch-time. By the time he reels back from the SS Officers’ Club in the afternoon he can’t remember a word of English except, “tomorrow, tomorrow!”’

  Harry Woods noted with satisfaction the way that Douglas Archer glanced round the empty chairs and desks, just in case anyone had overheard this pronouncement. ‘Whatever the truth of that may be,’ said Douglas cautiously, ‘the fact remains that he’ll want his briefing. And solving a murder that we’ve not yet been invited to investigate will not be thought sufficient excuse for my not being upstairs on time.’ Douglas got to his feet and collected together the documents that the General might want to see.

  ‘I’d tell him to go to hell,’ said Harry. ‘I’d tell him the job comes first.’

  Douglas Archer nipped out his cheroot carefully, so as to preserve the unsmoked part of it, then put it into the top drawer of his desk, together with a magnifying glass, tickets for a police concert he’d not attended, and a broken fountain pen. ‘Kellerman’s not so bad,’ said Douglas. ‘He’s kept the Metropolitan Force more or less intact. Have you forgotten all the talk of putting German Assistant Commissioners upstairs? Kellerman opposed that.’