World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head

‘Oh, but it’s a wonderful book,’ said Veronica. ‘Don’t give up.’

‘I’ve tried so hard. The chapter I’m reading now: I’ve reread it, dictionary in hand, at least four times.’

‘Perhaps if we read a few pages together…’ Veronica stopped and hurriedly poured cream over the sliced peach. She hadn’t meant to say that…. She made her racing mind stop. She’d never looked at, not even thought of, another man in all the years she’d been married. When she first discovered that Harry had installed that very young girl Martha in an apartment in Vienna, she’d gone to pray in the Votivkirche, and so steal a glimpse at the street where his mistress was living. Yet, even in that hour of anguish, she had never thought of betraying him. But then she’d never met a man who might be able to tempt her to betrayal. Now, suddenly, she realized that.

‘That would be most civil of you, Mrs Winter,’ said the Englishman. ‘Sometimes it’s just a matter of understanding the heart of the author. Just a few pages properly understood might open a new world to me.’

‘I’m not a scholar,’ said Veronica. ‘I’m a thirty-five-year-old Hausfrau.’ It was her clumsy attempt to change direction.

‘I can’t let that go unchallenged,’ said Piper. ‘I cannot think of anyone in the world more likely to change my life.’

On the day that Father arrived, it rained without stopping. Not just the cold, thin drizzle through which the boys would walk, bathe in the ocean, or, in the happier days of the Valhalla, sail. It fell in great vertical sheets of water from slow-moving grey clouds that came from the North Sea to rain upon the bight.

While everyone prepared for Harald Winter’s arrival, the boys wandered through the house, getting in everyone’s way and feeling low. On previous days, Uncle Glenn or his English friend Mr Piper had kept them entertained with stories, tricks and card games. Pauli particularly liked Mr Piper’s magic and even learned to do some of the conjuring tricks himself. But today the two house-guests had gone to look at the wonderful old city of Lübeck and were not expected back until evening. By that time Father would have arrived.

Peter finally found something to do. Cook let him help prepare the vegetables. She needed the extra hand because the scullery maid was sick and the kitchen maid had been ordered away to ready the rooms on the second floor that Harald Winter and his wife used when both were there together.

After a brusque rejection by his grandmother, who wanted to sleep, Paul went in search of his mother. He found her in the turret room at the top of the house. It was a tiny circular room with a wonderful view of the countryside. This was where she liked to sleep when Father wasn’t with them. She was looking through her clothes in the wardrobe, taking her dresses out one by one and examining them before putting them on the bed for her maid to take to the other bedroom.

Paul stared at his mother. She did not look well. Her face was white but her eyes were reddened as if she’d been crying. ‘What is it?’ she said. She sounded angry.

‘Nothing,’ said little Pauli. ‘Can I help you, Mama?’

‘Not really, darling,’ she replied. Then, seeing Pauli’s disappointment, she said, ‘You can take my jewellery case downstairs. It will save Hanna a journey.’

Pauli always coveted his mother’s jewellery case. It was made of beautiful blue leather and lined with soft blue velvet. Inside, it was fitted with little drawers and soft pockets and velvet fingers upon which Mama’s rings were fitted. Pauli couldn’t resist playing with all the fittings of the box. It was such fun to pull out each drawer and see the sparkling diamond brooches or strings of pearls lying within. He looked at Mama, but she was completely occupied with her dresses – choosing one for Papa’s return, Pauli decided. He continued to play with the jewel box. Suppose it was a pirate ship and each drawer concealed a cannon, and as some unsuspecting boat came along … Oh dear: the contents of a drawer fell onto the carpet. How clumsy he was. He felt sure he would be scolded, but today it seemed as if nothing could divert her attention from her dresses.

Pauli picked up the tiny gold earrings, the large gold earrings, the pearl earrings, the diamond earrings that Mama wore only with her long dresses and pendant earrings. Two of each. He counted them again and then saw a silver earring on the carpet. Then there must be another …rolled under the bed, no doubt. He went flat on the floor to find it. Yes, there it was. And … there was something else there too. He pulled it out. A wristwatch. A large gold wristwatch with a seconds hand.

‘What are you doing, Pauli?’

‘I found a watch, Mama.’

‘What do you mean, Pauli?’

‘I found it under the bed, Mama.’ He showed her the wristwatch proudly. It was a fine Swiss model with a leather strap and roman numerals like the church clock.

‘Oh my God!’ said his mother.

‘It belongs to Mr Piper, Mama. I noticed him wearing it.’ He looked at his mother. He’d never seen her so horror-struck.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I borrowed it from him. Mine stopped last night at dinner.’

‘Shall I give it to him?’ said Pauli.

‘No, give it to me, Pauli. I’ll tell the chambermaid to put it in his room.’

‘I know which is his room, Mama.’

‘Give it to me, Pauli. He might be angry if he hears I’ve dropped it on the floor.’

‘I won’t tell him, Mama.’

‘That’s best, Pauli.’ His mother clutched the watch very tight and closed her eyes, the way children do when making a wish.

Three days after Papa arrived, everyone went to Kiel and stayed in a hotel. It was a momentous trip. Mama wore her new ankle-length motoring coat and gauntlet gloves. Papa drove the car. Its technology was no longer new, but he loved the big yellow Itala and clung to it, even though some people thought he should drive a German car. It was the first time he’d taken the wheel for such a long journey, but he knew that Glenn Rensselaer was able to make running repairs and the chauffeur was ordered to stay near the telephone at Omi’s house just in case something went very badly wrong. Glenn sat beside Harald Winter, the Englishman and Mama at the back, the two children in the folding seats. There were no servants with them. The servants had gone by train. As Harald Winter said, ‘It will be an adventure.’

It was not just an excursion. Harald Winter didn’t make excursions: he had an appointment in the Imperial Dockyard. The next day, while a sea mist cloaked the waterfront and muffled the sounds of the dockyards, he met with a young Korvettenkapitän and two civilian officials of the purchasing board of the Imperial German Navy. Harald Winter had not been forthcoming about the subject of his discussion. It concerned the prospect of a naval airship programme, and that was categorized as secret. The department was already named; it was to be the Imperial Naval Airship Division – but so far it consisted of little beyond a name on the door of one small room on the wrong side of the office block. Last year the appearance of the German army’s airship Z II at the ILA show in Frankfurt am Main had made the future seem rosy. But this year everything had gone wrong. The destruction of that same airship – one of the army’s two zeppelins – in a storm near Weilburg an der Lahn in April was followed by the loss of Count Zeppelin’s newly built Deutschland in June. To make matters worse, a competitor of Zeppelin had built a semi-rigid airship that not only beat Zeppelin’s endurance record by over an hour but arrived at the autumn army manoeuvres complete with its own mobile canvas shed. Now all the admirals and bureaucrats who’d delayed the decisions about purchasing zeppelins were congratulating themselves upon their farsightedness.

But while Harald Winter was sitting across the table from the earnest young naval officer and two blank-faced officials, his wife, children and guests were on the waterfront admiring the assembled might of the new Germany navy.

‘Look at them,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, indicating a dozen great grey phantoms just visible through the mist. ‘German shipyards have never been so busy. The one anchored on the right is a dreadnought.’ He used his field glasses but failed to read any name on the warship.

‘Three dreadnoughts last year, and four built the year before that,’ said Piper. Today the Englishman was looking like a typical holidaymaker, in his striped blazer and straw hat. ‘That makes the German navy exactly equal to the strength of the Royal Navy.’ He took the glasses Glenn Rensselaer handed him but didn’t use them to look at the ships.

‘No,’ said Glenn. ‘You British have eight dreadnoughts and at least three more on the slipways.’ He wore a cream pin-striped flannel suit with his straw boater at an angle on his head. The incoming sea-mist had made it too cold for such summer attire on this promenade. He had a long yellow scarf and now he wound it twice round his neck. Veronica noticed and wished she’d chosen something warmer. The cotton dress with its broderic anglaise trimmings was made specially for this holiday, but the dressmaker had not calculated on the spell of cold weather.

The Englishman nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘And what exactly is a dreadnought?’ said Veronica.

‘Oh, Mama!’ said young Peter, looking back from where he was climbing on the railing to get a better view. ‘Everyone knows what a dreadnought is.’ Little Pauli climbed up beside his brother.

‘It’s a new type of battleship,’ said the ever-attentive Piper.

‘They all look the same to me,’ said Veronica.

‘Maybe they do,’ said Rensselaer, ‘but when the British built HMS Dreadnought in 1906 it made every other capital ship obsolete. Steam-turbine engines, bigger guns and all to a common calibre: faster and more deadly than anything previously built. Now the strength of any navy is measured by the number of dreadnoughts they have. It took that Kaiser of yours a couple of years to get started, but now he’ll bust a gut rather than let the Royal Navy outgun him.’

‘Get down, Peter,’ Veronica called to her son. ‘You’ll make your trousers dirty and we haven’t brought any more with us.’ The Englishman smiled at her. ‘It’s so difficult without the servants,’ said Veronica.

Glenn Rensselaer took back his field glasses again and studied the big dreadnought. ‘Do you think they brought her through the canal, or is she too big?’ Now that the Nord-Ostaee-Kanal directly connected Germany’s North Sea Fleet with the Baltic Fleet, it had vastly increased Germany’s naval potential. Still using the field glasses, Glenn Rensselaer eventually answered his own question: ‘Too big, I think. That’s probably why they are working so hard to make it wider and deeper.’ Even without the glasses one could see the sailors moving about the deck in their white summer uniforms. From the size of the sailors it was easy to judge the dimensions of the huge battleship. ‘She’s big,’ said Glenn Rensselaer, ‘very big.’

Veronica, hampered by the fashionable hobble skirt, had walked on and now Piper followed her. The crisp cotton dress with its high tight lace collar and the lovely new hat with silk bow and artificial flowers made her look wonderful, and she knew it. The others were out of earshot by the time he caught up with her. It was the first chance for Veronica to speak privately with the Englishman since her husband had arrived, but she said only, ‘I wish my brother wouldn’t speak so disrespectfully of His Majesty. It has such a bad effect on the children.’

‘I know, Mrs Winter, but your brother means no harm, I’m sure of that.’ He smiled at her and she smiled back.

She felt very happy. It really didn’t matter what was said. She loved the Englishman and he loved her. There was no need to say it. There was no need to say anything at all, really.

They’d hoped that the mist would lift, but it was one of those days when the Kiel Bight remains shrouded in fog until nightfall. When they got back to the hotel, Harry had still not returned from his meeting. Alan Piper ordered tea. Glenn chaffed him about this curious English ritual, but they all sat together in the glass-sided lounge, exchanging small talk, until the Englishman took the restless boys outside to the promenade for another look at the warships.

Left without them in the lounge, Veronica turned to her brother and said, ‘There won’t be a war, will there, Glenn?’

He looked at her and took his time before replying. ‘Dad is convinced that there will be. The folks would like you to come back home; I guess they tell you that in their letters.’

‘Yes, they do.’ She poured more tea for herself. She didn’t want it, but she was nervous.

‘This year you didn’t get to see them in London.’ He sat back in the armchair and crossed his legs. Big bony skull, wide cheekbones, and easy smile – sometimes he looked so like Father, and so like little Paul. She’d not noticed before how much of a Rensselaer her son looked.