Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘Indeed.’

‘But why not Russia, sir? They’re the ones who are all but above us now.’

Hitler reached out his right hand and rested it lightly on Hauser’s arm. The other hand, Hauser noticed, was tucked out of sight beneath the desk. ‘Their capacity to endure destruction and death is so much greater than the Americans. Losing a city wouldn’t stop Stalin now, losing a dozen wouldn’t. But New York?’ Hitler winked at him. His eyes that only a few moments ago had looked moist with fatigue and despair now sparkled with an almost benign mischief. ‘The Americans are already seeing the Russians as a threat. Imagine how terrified they will be at the thought of them getting their hands on your technology, Karl? Especially after this demonstration of ours. They will have no choice, no choice at all, my friend… ’

Hauser studied his face. Hitler was waiting for him to complete the sentence, to understand the implication.

‘So… America, will have no choice but to declare war on Russia?’ he uttered in a voice little more than a conspiratorial whisper.

Hitler nodded approvingly, as a mentor would to a student. ‘They would have to push the Russians back, out of our country, to be sure of this?’ added Hauser.

He squeezed Hauser’s arm gently. ‘Yes.’

‘But why not just explode the bomb somewhere closer, my Fuhrer. Like London, or maybe outside Berlin, where the Russian army is concentrated?’

‘American presidents are weak, Karl. They rely on the will of their voters. The people over there need to be as frightened by this technology as their leader… after New York has vanished, the President will have no choice but to push his soldiers forward from the west into Berlin to fight the Russians. It will be an easy decision for him to make. We will have forced it to be the only decision he can make.’

Hauser managed to look up again at the Fuhrer’s face, to meet those intense eyes. The relief was conspicuous. His demeanour was that of a man who had escaped the hangman’s noose by an inch, or a second. He looked years younger, magnificent, almost the man who had led them to war in 1939.

‘This is a brilliant plan, sir,’ he managed to say.

‘It is a little regrettable that our first bomb will have to be dropped on the nation that should have been our ally from the very beginning. There are many people in that country who would welcome us as friends. It is a shame.’

Hitler reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of brandy.

‘I put this aside earlier today, for this little meeting. I’m not a big drinker, Karl, but I would like us to toast your genius. Dr Hauser, you are a German who has beaten the Jewish technicians in America at their own science.’

Hauser took the glass tumbler offered him, and Hitler awkwardly poured a dash of the liquor into his own glass and a much larger measure into Hauser’s.

‘To you and your wonderful bomb, Karl.’

‘Th-thank you, my Fuhrer,’ he said, emotion thickening his voice.

Hauser smiled and drank his brandy. Hitler smiled and sipped his.

5 p.m., 16 April 1945, an airfield south of Stuttgart

Major Rall stood on the grass outside the entrance to the bunker and watched a flock of seagulls swoop and circle the airfield.

‘There must be a storm out at sea, that’s what brings them inland,’ he muttered to no one in particular.

Storms at sea.

He wondered how U-1061 was faring. The North Sea was becoming a dangerous place for the Kriegsmarine. There was a fair chance that the sub had failed to receive its orders, or worse, had been destroyed by a Royal Navy vessel. He had yet to hear from the U-Bootflotille in Bergen any news on whether the sub was on its way back. Of course, no news meant nothing, it was getting increasingly difficult these days to keep the lines of communication open between disparate elements of their armed forces. It hadn’t been easy to get the order through to Norway, partly because it had not gone through the usual channels.

Worrying about the U-boat demonstrated quite clearly to Rall how fraught with uncertainties this whole operation was. The U-boat was just one small piece in the jigsaw. It was the only way of transporting a platoon of troops from Norway, north around the coast of Scotland and Ireland to a particular airstrip on the west coast of France. Intelligence reports indicated that the airfield was operated by the USAAF and staffed only by aviation mechanics and administrative personnel; a perfect place for the Messerschmitt escort planes to refill their tanks and continue escorting the B-17 beyond fighter range of France. No U-boat, no troops; no troops, no captured airstrip; no airstrip, no fighter cover for the bomber those first few hundred miles into the Atlantic — and that’s undoubtedly where the Americans and British would converge to take her down.

And then there were the other uncertainties: would the bomb be ready before it was all too late? Could it be safely transported here without being accidentally intercepted by an Allied plane or ground troops?

He had received precious little information about the bomb from Speer since he’d been headhunted and assigned the task of planning its delivery all those months ago. Other than being informed that it employed a new explosive formula that allowed it to yield destruction well in excess of its size, there had been no information about its dimensions and whether the B-17’s bomb racks would need to be modified to accommodate it. Nor had there been any information about the weight of this weapon, so the size of the extra fuel tanks had been guessed at. Although the brief he had been given by Speer, the Minister for Armaments, months ago had been very specific, the paucity of details about the bomb itself was causing Rall an immense amount of concern.

And then there was the fighter escort. He had two Me-109s in the hangar; they had both been flown in the previous night under cover of darkness. The pilots that had flown them in said it had been touch and go getting them across skies crawling with American, British and Russian aircraft. What about the other ten or so he had been promised? Would they make it here?

The seagulls lost interest in the airstrip and swooped away northwards. His gaze fell upon Max and his men playing football with some of the ground crew just inside the hangar. The dim light of the late afternoon made little impression on the darkened interior of the building where the B-17 and the first two Messerschmitts of the squadron were discreetly hidden in the shadows. He watched the men kick the football between them; each one taking turns to do a trick with the ball.

It was good to see them play like that.

The morale of the men seemed quite high here on the airfield. It had become a remote outpost where order still reigned, while beyond the solitary guard hut it was a turbulent sea of drifting refugees, running before a Russian tidal wave. On the airfield it almost felt like another time, the happy days at the beginning of the war when it appeared as if every campaign they embarked upon would lead inevitably to victory. Just a few days ago, all of these men had nothing else on their minds other than how to find American or British troops to surrender to safely. Now, once more, they looked like men with some fight left in them, some purpose greater than making it through the next few days alive. Rall found it hard not to smile. Even with grim defeat staring them all in the face, and an uncertain future ahead for them at the hands of their Russian conquerors, it seemed to take the smallest spark of hope to turn them once more into soldiers.

And, in all honesty, it was just that, a small spark of hope. Max and his boys would be lucky to make it out of German airspace, let alone reach the Atlantic or beyond. They had to know that too.