‘Hirschfeldt. He’s being posted to Prague. Effective immediately. I want that son-of-a-bitch out of here within an hour. See to it.’

‘Zu Befehl!’ Misch responded, but made no move to leave as Goebbels indicated he had something else on his mind.

The Reichsminister rose from his chair and began to pace the small room, trailing one highly polished boot. He’d been born with a club foot which he had dragged behind him all his life, which was why he had always taken care not to be forced to march swiftly in public, to ensure that the cinema newsreels hid the impediment and made him look as whole and as manly as the others. It was why he could never be a leader in his own right, and perhaps why he had been attracted to Hitler from the first. The Fuehrer never marched briskly but always adopted a strolling swagger; it made it easy for Goebbels to keep up without embarrassment. Yet the days spent in claustrophobic underground shelters, with the excursions outside becoming increasingly less frequent, had aggravated his leg. The fuggy atmosphere seemed to stick in the lungs, the blood circulated less freely, the damp seemed to worm its way inside his foot and the dull ache stretched from his toes to every other part of his body and soul. He rubbed his thigh, trying to force the blood to circulate some warmth, but it was no good.

‘Let’s get out of this sewer, Misch. Christ, I need some fresh air.’

Without a word the captain followed him through the door, where they turned right and immediately began ascending a long flight of bare concrete stairs. They proceeded slowly, one step at a time since the brace on Goebbels’ leg made using stairs difficult. There were lifts, at least when the power supplies were operating, but a few evenings before Goebbels had been stuck in a lift after one of the first bombs of the nightly raid had fractured a main power system. He had been forced to wait for more than two hours in a lightless, tiny steel box which at any moment threatened to become his coffin. He had needed all his considerable mental powers to control his mind let alone his bladder as he waited, powerless and trapped, in the dark to die. It had given him nightmares, a hatred of being stuck underground in these wretched bunkers and an overwhelming, animalistic desire to die out in the open, not in a hole in the ground. So Goebbels didn’t use lifts anymore.

Soon he and Misch were in the gardens of the Reich Chancellery. He stood for a while, allowing the daylight to replenish his energies, breathing in air which bore no taint of the gas filters and oily air-conditioning. The Allied raids had reduced much of the once ornate gardens to a rubbish heap yet the daffodils were in bloom and he plucked one, savouring its faint scent and admiring the lustre and bright colour. The flowers would be blooming in the Alps by now, he thought. The narcissi, the alyssum, the whole mountainside would be bursting with life, and hope.

‘Before the daffodils fade, Misch. We must be ready before the daffodils fade,’ he muttered after several minutes.

‘Yes, sir!’ Misch responded, with as little comprehension as if the Reichsminister had been discussing the finer points of Nietzsche.

‘I must buy time!’ He would trade half his remaining panzer divisions for the few more weeks required to prepare for the Alps. ‘Misch, what does the twentieth of April mean to you?’

‘The Fuehrer’s birthday, sir.’

‘Exactly. Less than a month. We must be ready by then. We won’t have another chance. When they all gather to honour the Fuehrer I want the occasion to be a celebration, not a damned wake. We need something special, an omen, a symbol, something which will turn the gathering into a revival of the German fighting spirit and give us the time we need.’ His eyes burned and his scrawny neck strained like a greyhound in the slips. His thin fingers with their finely manicured nails closed claw-like around the daffodil until it disappeared.

‘Misch. We need Peter Hencke!’

The bloom fell to the ground, crushed.

‘I will not submit to your blackmail, General!’ Churchill clenched both his fists, as if he were ready to take a swing at Eisenhower should he come a few inches closer.

‘No blackmail, Prime Minister. Only facts. Hard and cruel, perhaps, but facts you can’t avoid.’ Eisenhower had taken out a cigarette and was lighting it carefully. He needed one, to be sure, but more importantly he wanted Churchill to see his steady hand, how much in control he was.

‘What facts are these?’

‘The fact, Prime Minister, that after this shooting match is over, there’s going to be only two great powers in Europe. The Americans and the Russians. Germany and France are defeated. Britain is exhausted. Don’t get me wrong, I take no pleasure in it. But my admiration for what you and your countryfolk have done can’t change the fact that you’re down on your knees.’

Churchill was flexing his bottom lip as if chewing Eisenhower’s words in preparation for spitting them out, but for the moment he held his silence.

‘You can’t duck it, you can only pick sides. American or Russian. It may not be fair, but Britain has no other choice.’

‘What sort of choice is that?’

‘Not much of a choice, I admit. A power from halfway round the world which left Europe to rot after the last war, or a bunch of Communists led by a ruthless son-of-a-bitch who’d slit his grandmother’s belly just for the practice.’

‘Then why, oh why, give him Berlin?’ The tone was almost pleading.

‘Because Berlin is of less military importance than cutting Hitler off from his hideaway in the Alps. And because it’s my duty to see that the piles of dead which get left behind in the rubble are Russian rather than American!’ He drew long and thoughtfully on his cigarette. ‘Time to choose, Mr Churchill.’

There was a long silence. Less than a mile away, a Dakota returning from the dropping zone came down in flames, the explosion as it hit the ground emitting a deep roar and sending a ball of fire and black smoke many hundreds of feet up in the air, but neither of the men noticed. They were busy deciding the future of post-war Europe, two elderly and overweight men stuffed uncomfortably into khaki uniforms.

Eventually Churchill broke the silence. ‘What is it that you want of me?’

‘I want you to stop fighting over Berlin. Not another word, a sigh, no raised eyebrow or even an impatient puff of cigar smoke. For me it has become an article of faith that you accept my judgement on this matter and we put it behind us. Or else.’

‘Or else what?’

‘Or else I’ll let Stalin know you’re trying to fiddle him out of Berlin. If he knew, he’d tear up every bargain he’d made with you British and he’d never let you near the negotiating table again.’

‘You would do that?’

‘If you force me, I’d even let the Labour Party know. Wouldn’t look too good in the run-up to an election, would it? Cheating Stalin out of Berlin and me out of my troops.’

‘You would go to such lengths …?’ A timbre of uncertainty had begun to infect the voice.

‘I don’t want to, believe me I don’t. You and me, we’ve always worked so well together. More than allies, I thought; friends. I know how passionately you feel about this but it was you who raised the stakes. You’ve lost. Now it’s time to pay.’

Churchill swallowed deep. It was sticking in his maw. ‘How?’

‘I want an end to the games you’ve been playing. Not another step towards Berlin. Above all I want those troops.’

‘But I need the troops to prevent Hencke getting back to Germany. He would be such a prize for them. And he killed a widow, you know …’ It was a weak card, played with an uncharacteristic lack of vigour, but it was the only one Churchill had left.

‘Then there’s only one solution. Do your job. Get Hencke!’