‘But what of the remaining thirty-six prisoners? And are we to allow the country to hear about this through CBS?’

Churchill smacked his hand decisively on the dark blue velvet of the Cabinet table. ‘I think you will all agree, gentlemen, that we have reached an entirely appropriate stage at which to seek the public’s assistance in rounding up the thirty-six strays and stragglers.’

‘So we’ll no longer ’ide it, we’ll make a full public announcement?’ Bevin pressed.

‘I agree with the Minister. It’s time the people heard about this most recent British success.’

There was a snort of ridicule from Bevin, but no more. It had been a close-run thing and Churchill would dearly love to have the individual who leaked the news dangling by his balls from a bomb bay at 30,000 feet but that, for the moment, would have to wait. For now the chase was on in earnest.

When Hencke opened his eyes and lifted his head from the shotgun the old woman had gone. He’d fallen asleep, lost in his recurring nightmare of memories and pain as the cold, sluggish blood had drained into his exhausted muscles, denying his faculties. Asleep! Only for a moment or two, perhaps, but it had been enough. Maybe she had gone for another phone, the police might already be on their way. His mind was still numb, disorientated – how much time did he have; which way to run, was there any point?

Then he heard it again, that same noise, coming from the stairs. Turning, he found her descending, still dressed in the white cotton dressing gown, a large darkening lump above her left eye, her eyes filled with hate. And she was holding another shotgun.

‘This time, you bastard,’ she breathed in quavering voice and started to raise the gun to her shoulder.

Later Hencke would find many justifications and different crumbs of logic for what happened next. She intended to kill him, of that there was no doubt. Even if there had been doubt, he would never find another opportunity to escape. And the benefit of his succeeding far outweighed any cost. War was filled with such calamities. He even wondered, very privately in those dark spaces within, if it was because she reminded him too much of his aunt, that he had woken in the middle of a nightmare to see this old woman, shrivelled with hate, come back to haunt him. He was not certain of the reason, only that he had no time to resolve uncertainties. As the barrels of the old woman’s shotgun rose inexorably towards him he felt the other shotgun beneath his hands, it was the work of a moment to swivel the stock around until the weapon was pointing in her direction, quell the doubts, ignore the screaming inside his head, pull the triggers. One barrel exploded and a damp, dark patch appeared on the woman’s dressing gown just by her left breast. The look of hate on her wizened face turned to surprise, a slow, stupid look, as she was plucked from her feet and deposited against the wall several steps above where she had been standing. The patch on the pure white cotton had turned to sticky crimson and the blood began to seep down the front of her body and through her inquisitive fingers to gather in a pool on her lap. She died where she fell.

Hencke remained still. He sat staring at the body, juggling the justifications, arguing with himself, contradicting, unable to move. His body felt distant, separate, as though it belonged elsewhere. A battle developed within his gut as the guilt and vomit fought against resolution and excuse, tangling his emotions and leaving his mouth soaked in bile. Then he stopped. He didn’t need alibis, even to himself, so he said. It had happened, an accident, unintended and unwanted, but it couldn’t be changed and there was no point in futile analysis. It was a fact of – a fact of death, like so many others in this war, and there was no time for grief or regret. He had learned in the ruins of his classroom that war leaves no neat divide between the warriors and the innocent, that no one could escape this game which others had begun. But he would finish it, if he could.

He rose and with great care mounted the stairs, stepping past the body with its arched, sightless stare of incomprehension, not daring to glance back. When he descended many minutes later he was clean and dressed in a complete change of men’s clothes found in a bedroom cupboard. And outside he had a bicycle, or perhaps even something better in the garage. He stopped beside the damp tangle of Canadian and POW uniforms which still steamed beside the stove. If they found them near the body there would be no place for mercy in the hunt, any more than they would show a rabid dog. They would know that at least one escaped German prisoner of war would stop at nothing to get back to the homeland. They would know it, the whole world would know it. And eventually they would know it was he.

Hencke stepped over the pile of clothing and closed the kitchen door gently behind him.

FOUR

London was hell. When Hencke first arrived, by fortune he had found himself immersed and anonymous in a sea of humanity. The capital was teeming – with soldiers on leave, with homeless persons bombed on to the streets and scratching around for a place to shelter, with refugees from occupied Europe. None of them seemed to belong anywhere, none could be easily traced by the authorities and, most helpful of all, many of them were foreign. Hencke could slip between the folds, unnoticed. It had kept him going for several days while he tried to focus on what he should do next. He’d slept on the platform of Swiss Cottage underground station, crowded with others who had nowhere else to go or who were simply unwilling to risk the attentions of a V-1 or V-2 while sleeping in their own, unprotected beds. It had been like a tower of Babel built beside railway lines with a cocktail of foreign tongues stirred vigorously by European Jews, Poles, Greeks, Hungarians, even a sprinkling of Yugoslavs, alongside resident Londoners and itinerant Scots and Irish. He got little sleep in the fetid atmosphere but it had been warm and even welcoming; his strong accent was unlikely to arouse suspicion amongst the cosmopolitan crowd. There had also been food, queued for at the soup kitchens or begged off American GIs, all of whom seemed to have a pocket stuffed full with oranges, chocolate and cigarettes and who were constantly surrounded by groups of youngsters clamouring for gum. As the war moved closer towards its end there were too many people wandering the streets of London with no background and no permanent residence for one more dishevelled foreigner to arouse much suspicion and, anyway, people were tired of suspicion. It had worn them out over all these years, and it was a relief to be able to relax, to let the guard down, to smile once more.

Then news of the escape had broken. And the hunt was on. At every street corner a newspaper billboard proclaimed it, in every soup kitchen queue people discussed it. Twenty-one still free! Within three days only a dozen left at large! Then but three! Hencke could feel eyes everywhere, probing, questioning, demanding to know who he was and why he had no money to buy food. It was his imagination, of course, but the sea of humanity in which he had been able to swim seemed to have become angry and full of menace, threatening to swallow him at any moment. He knew it was only a matter of time before his luck disappeared, before he was caught out, when someone asked an impossible question or his nerve broke and he gave himself away.

The day had come when the billboards screamed ‘One More To Go!’ He was the last one. He was on his own. There was no more time.

For the previous three days he had been keeping watch on the Spanish Embassy early in the morning, around lunchtime and again in the late afternoon, always from a different position, constantly on the move to avoid rousing the suspicions of the police guard, but studying everyone who entered and left. He was looking for the diplomatic staff, trying to recognize those who passed through every day and guessing which of them could be trusted and might help. Spain was nominally neutral yet had been friendly towards the Axis ever since the fledgling Luftwaffe had helped Franco bomb Guernica and the Republican movement into rubble. In spite of their neutrality someone might remember, and might be willing to repay the debt. But which one? How to tell a man’s motivation from the way he dresses, from the turn of his collar or the crook of his nose? To distinguish a brave man from a coward, or a potential friend from somebody who wanted simply to play it by the rules? Yet Hencke had to try.