A Very British Ending (Catesby Series) Read Free Page B

cod thrashing about on the deck was called ‘a priest’.
    The U-boot bunker was a dark and spooky place. A few weeks before the end of the war two eleven-ton Grand Slam bombs had finally managed to penetrate the fifteen-foot-thick roof rendering the submarine pen useless. Steel reinforcing rods now hung down from the blasted concrete roof like the venomous snakes dangling from Medusa’s head. Catesby didn’t like being alone there in the middle of the night. It was a place of monsters where hidden eyes seemed to be tracing his every movement. Catesby touched the Webley MK IV revolver, a dead dank weight that stretched his trench-coat pocket. He liked the Webley. It was big and awkward – two and a half pounds and ten inches long – but simple and reliable, like a friendly black Labrador. The Webley could vanquish a gunman who was a poor shot or an assassin coming at him with a garrotte or a knife. But it couldn’t silence the ghosts.
    How many ghosts were squeaking and gibbering againstthose massive concrete walls? Catesby didn’t know. No one ever would. The deaths of the Polish and Russian slave labourers who built the U-boot bunker were too numerous and insignificant for the construction company to keep a record. Not long after the war Catesby had been assigned to the intelligence branch of the Control Commission for Germany. His real job was spying, but his cover job had been compiling a report on the activities of Organisation Todt, the construction company that had used Zwangsarbeiter – forced labour – in Bremen. One of his sources of information had been a mild-mannered bespectacled man who had been an accountant for Todt during the construction of the Weser submarine pens. The accountant was very apologetic about his role – and desperate to avoid a trip to Nuremberg – but he was safe. There were far bigger fish to hang. The accountant estimated that the project had used 10,000 slave labourers, of whom 1,700 were registered as dead, however he admitted – sighing and wringing his hands – that the actual number of deaths may have been 6,000 owing largely to Unterernährungoder physischer Erschöpfung – malnutrition and physical exhaustion.
    Catesby looked through the huge hole in the ceiling. The clouds had parted and starlight poured into the bunker illuminating the rubble like ancient ruins. He knew that he was alone and safe from anyone other than himself. He touched the revolver again and wondered if the American was going to turn up. Kit Fournier wasn’t always reliable. Catesby knew that Fournier had his own demons. He had bribed Fournier’s Putzfrau to do some snooping. The Putzfrauen , the cleaning women of post-war Germany, were Catesby’s most reliable agents. Fournier’s Putz didn’t even require training; she had used a Minox spy camera before. The snaps of Fournier’s private diaries, letters and sketches revealed a private passion that had tortured the American since adolescence, if not before. The blackmail card would always be ready if Fournier didn’t do what was asked.
    The ruined bunker wasn’t a quiet place. There were drips of water and the scuffling of rats – and the grinding tectonic shifts of loose rubble. But a footstep was distinct and human. Catesby froze and gripped the handle of his revolver. He was good atmaking enemies – and his extracurricular vendetta against Nazis had singled him out as a troublemaker. The problem – and a constant source of friction with his American intelligence colleagues – was the Gehlen Organisation. Reinhard Gehlen, the Wehrmacht ’s former Chief of Intelligence for the Eastern Front, had cut a deal with the CIA. In return for generous funding and immunity from prosecution for their agents, the Gehlen Org provided intelligence to the Americans about what was supposedly going on in the East Bloc.
    Catesby knew that Gehlen Org intelligence was useless. Nazis were terrible spies. The real purpose of the Org, thought Catesby, was to