“Very much so.”
“And Martineau was here? With you?”
She crossed to a Georgian desk, opened a drawer and took out a small folder When she opened it I saw at once that it contained several old photographs. She passed one to me. “This one I don’t keep on top of the piano for obvious reasons.”
She was dressed pretty much as she had been in the other photo and Martineau wore the same leather trench-coat. The only difference was the SS uniform underneath, the silver death’s-head badge in his cap. “Standartenftihrer Max Vogel,” she said. “Colonel, to you. He looks rather dashing, doesn’t he?” She smiled as she took it from me. “He had a weakness for uniforms, Harry.”
“Dear God,” I said. “What is all this?”
She didn’t answer, but simply passed me another photo. It was faded slightly, but still perfectly clear. A group of German officers. In front of them stood two men on their own. One was Martineau in the SS uniform, but it was the other who took my breath away. One of the best-known faces of the Second World War. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. The Desert Fox himself.
I said, “Was that taken here too?”
“Oh yes.” She put the photos back in the desk and picked up my glass. “I think you could do with another drink.”
“Yes, I believe I could.”
She got me one, handed the glass to me, and we moved to the fire. She took a cigarette from the box. “I should stop, I suppose. Too late now. Another bad habit Hany taught me.”
“Do I get an explanation?”
“Why not?” she said, and turned as rain drummed against the French windows. “I can’t think of anything better to do on an afternoon like this, can you?”
I t started, if one can ever be certain where anything starts, with a telephone call received by Brigadier Dougal Munro at his flat in Hasten Place, ten minutes’ walk from the London headquarters of SOE in Baker Street. As head of Section D at SOE he had two phones by his bed, one routed straight through to his office. It was this that brought him awake at four o’clock on the morning of April 28,1944.
He listened, face grave, then swore softly. “I’ll be right over. One thing, check if Eisenhower is in town.”
Within five minutes he was letting himself out of the front door, shivering in the damp cold, lighting the first cigarette of the day as he hurried along the deserted street. He was at that time sixty-five, a squat, powerful-looking man with white hair, his round, ugly face set off by steel-rimmed spectacles. He wore an old Burberry raincoat and carried an umbrella.
There was very little of the military in either his bearing or his appearance, which was hardly surprising. His rank of brigadier was simply to give him the necessary authority in certain quarters. Until 1939, Dougal Munro had been an archaeologist by profession. An Egyptologist, to be more precise, and fellow of All Souls at Oxford. For three years now, head of Section D at SOE. What was commonly referred to in the trade as the dirty tricks department.
He turned in at the entrance of Baker Street, nodded to the night guard and went straight upstairs. When he went into his office, Captain Jack Carter, his night duty officer, was seated behind his desk. Carter had a false leg, a legacy of Dunkirk. He reached for his stick and started to get up.
“No, stay where you are, Jack,” Munro told him. “Is there any tea?”
“Thermos flask on the map table, sir.”
Munro unscrewed the flask, poured a cup and drank. “God, that’s foul, but at least it’s hot. Right, get on with it.”
Carter now got up and limped across. There was a map of the southwest of England on the table, concentrating mainly on Devon, Cornwall and the general area of the English Channel.
“Exercise Tiger, sir,” he said. “You remember the details?”
“Simulated landings for Overlord.”
“That’s right. Here in Lyme Bay in Devon there’s a place called Slapton Sands. It bears enough similarities to the beach we’ve designated Utah in the Normandy landings to make it invaluable for training purposes. Most of the young Americans going in have no combat experience.”