In the garden of the Chancellery, the crumpled daffodil lay at Goebbels’ feet. ‘So that’s your task, Misch. Hencke is our talisman, our good luck charm, the one who can rekindle the German will to resist and buy us time. This may be our last chance, the only thing standing between us and total annihilation. Find him, whoever he is, wherever he is, before the Allies do, and bring him to Berlin. If it’s the last thing you do, you must bring me Hencke!’

Churchill stood on the hilltop, his Golgotha as he later came to call it, where Eisenhower and his aides had left him alone with his misery. It was a long time before Cazolet dared disturb him.

‘It’s over, Willie. We’ve lost. We shall not have Berlin now. He wants the troops back in the front line. And he wants Hencke’s head on a plate.’ He wiped his damp eyes with a huge linen handkerchief. ‘To win the war, Willie. To win after all the toil and bloody tribulation, yet to lose the peace, to have it thrown away at the last gasp. Will they ever forgive us?’

‘Defeat is but a state of mind, Prime Minister.’

‘Who said that?’

‘You did. Back in 1941.’

‘The whole of the world is turning on its head, Willie. We went to war to prevent Germany moving east; now the East is about to come to us.’ He blew his nose in one final, huge, tempestuous fashion. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? Eisenhower insists I destroy Hencke, and in doing so I shall only destroy myself.’

‘You mean … because we will lose Berlin?’

‘More than that. Much, much more than that. Hencke has become the most devilish and dangerous man in Europe.’ He looked at Cazolet through bleary eyes. ‘And it’s all my fault.’

Part Two

FIVE

Hencke shivered uncontrollably, feeling more wretched and forsaken than a fox before hounds. Even on a bad day a fox has some chance, he mused. Hiding in a copse, doubling back to confuse the pack, taking advantage of sudden bad weather which might deter his pursuers and take the sting out of their efforts before the light fades and they eventually tire or get bored and go home. But he would get no such chance. He had become the most wanted man in Europe. Every hour of every day, in any hiding place he chose, he would be hunted. They would never tire.

He was hungry and was sheltering in a doorway of a back-street in Cricklewood. The despicable rain, that most underestimated of English weapons, had scarcely ceased bombarding him since he had left the camp and he knew not where to turn; he was on the verge of despair. Prompted by the couple who thought he was a draft-dodger, many pairs of eyes had been turned on him in the Underground, eventually forcing him out of his shelter. The money thrust at him by the Spanish diplomat had largely gone in buying a hot meal and a fresh set of clothes to make him look less conspicuous, but now the second-hand suit was little more than sodden rags clinging to his back. Thoughts of giving up were beginning to bombard his mind. It was the easy course and the more wretched his physical condition the more attractive it seemed. Just to let go, to sink gently back into the relative warmth and comfort of captivity, to stop running.

But he wasn’t going to stop; he owed too many people, had too many memories to do that. His aunt had always said he could never make it on his own, that without her he was nothing. She’d been wrong then and he wasn’t going to prove her right now, not after all this time. He’d drown in this damned English rain first.

He huddled in the recesses of the doorway, flinching every time someone passed by, wondering how soon it would be before a policeman found this vagrant and demanded to see the identity papers which didn’t exist and realized that he had stumbled upon the most important prize of his career. Hencke had discovered during the last few days of wretched weather that doorways were not all the same. Some gave better protection, deeper shadows, warmer corners. Others gave easy access to a maze of back-streets into which he could disappear, given half a head start. This doorway was different; it gave him a view. Across the street there was a pub, with a fresh supply of beer and with the noise and jostle of ordinary people enjoying themselves. Somewhere inside a piano was being played, not very well but with a captivating enthusiasm. At that moment Hencke needed the sight and sound of people more than a four-course meal, to be reminded that there was a world outside his life of fear and flight, and to cling to the hope that some day he might be allowed to return to it.

Cricklewood was the Irish quarter, poor, rundown, dirty, like all immigrant communes. Yet perhaps because of the deprivation the moments of relaxation were embraced with more vigour and genuine relish than in less grubby areas of London, particularly on a Friday night. And although Hencke was losing track of time and didn’t know it, tonight was Friday. The piano beat out song after Irish song, the laughter was as coarse and disrespectful as the conversation, and Hencke longed to be part of it. He dug into his pocket and pulled out the few coins he had left. Eight pence. Enough for a small glass of beer. He hauled himself out of the doorway and stepped towards the pub.

Inside the lights were bright after the darkness of the street, and it made him conscious of the bedraggled state of his clothes. He needn’t have worried; most of the men were still in their working clothes and, judging by the amount of paint and cement dust on their trousers and mud on their boots, they had arrived straight from a building site. The cursory glances thrown at him through the smoky atmosphere were warm and friendly; fate had chosen his pub with care. He bought his small glass of beer at the brightly polished bar without problem; in spite of indications around the pub that the English – or Irish, at least – had a seemingly infinite variety of beers from which to choose, there was only one on offer this evening. He settled into a corner and soaked up the warmth.

He didn’t rush his beer; he wanted time to relax and, in any case, the beer tasted awful with a sharp, bitter tang. He put it down to wartime shortages. All around the conversation was of home, of Ireland, conducted in broad accents difficult for him to follow. Most people seemed to wish themselves in a different place, ‘across’ as he heard them refer to it; he identified with their longing and understood. It was a different world, like the one he could remember from many years ago, before the time when all conversation became dominated by the war, when men still joked about tomorrow and complained about their work and their wives. There seemed to be little talk about the war, and in their tales and reminiscences he could detect no sympathy for the British. At the next table two young women were talking about ‘the boys’ and ‘the struggle’ but it was clear they were not referring to the battle with Germany. He sat back and let their conversation drift over him.

He soon realized he had made a dreadful mistake. While the chatter washed around him and he listened to nostalgic talk of times past and a homeland far away, his own memories came flooding back. Of the happiness he once enjoyed in a homeland he had loved, of the bright faces that used to smile at him before they were riven with pain and death, of the love that he had shared and which had been shattered by shrapnel and taken from him by the men he would hate for ever. Normally such memories made him hard and determined, but he was weak from exposure and hunger and the mouthfuls of beer were beginning to have a soporific, sentimentalizing effect. He felt the resistance ebbing away from him; he wanted to curl up into a ball, to cast the world aside, to forget and to sleep for ever.