Asa went into the mess and took off his flying jacket. Underneath he wore a beautifully tailored uniform in field grey, SS runes on his collar patch. On his left sleeve was a Stars and Stripes shield and the cuff-title on his left wrist said: ‘George Washington Legion’. He had the ribbon of the Iron Cross Second Class on his tunic and the Finnish Gold Cross of Valour.
His very uniqueness made most other pilots avoid him. He ordered a cognac, drank it quickly and ordered another.
A voice said, ‘And it’s not even lunchtime.’
As Asa turned, the Gruppenkommandant, Colonel Erich Adler, sat on the stool next to him. ‘Champagne,’ he told the barman.
‘And what’s the occasion?’ Asa demanded. ‘First, my miserable Yankee friend, the good Brig-adefuhrer Farber has recommended you for an immediate Iron Cross First Class which, from what he says, you deserve.’
‘But Erich, I’ve got a medal,’ Asa said plaintively.
Adler ignored him, waiting for the champagne, then passed him a glass. ‘Second, you’re out of it. Grounded immediately.’
‘I’m what?’
‘You fly out to Berlin on the next available transport, priority one. That’s usually Goering. You report to General Walter Schellenberg at SD Headquarters in Berlin.’
‘Just a minute,’ Asa told him. ‘I only fly on the Russian Front. That was the deal.’
‘I wouldn’t argue if I were you. This order comes by way of Himmler himself.’ Adler raised his glass. ‘Good luck, my friend.’
‘God help me, but I think I’m going to need it,’ Asa Vaughan told him.
Devlin came awake about three in the morning to the sound of gunfire in the distance. He got up and padded into the living room and peered out through a chink in the blackout curtains. He could see the flashes on the far horizon beyond the city.
Behind him, Use switched on the light in the kitchen. ‘I couldn’t sleep either. I’ll make some coffee.’
She was wearing a robe against the cold, her hair in two pigtails that made her look curiously vulnerable. He went and got his overcoat and put it on over his pyjamas and sat at the table smoking a cigarette.
‘Two days and no suitable landing site for a plane,’ he said. ‘I think the General’s getting impatient.’
‘He likes to do things yesterday,’ Use said. ‘At least we’ve found a suitable base on the French coast and the pilot looks promising.’
‘You can say that again,’ Devlin told her. ‘A Yank in the SS, not that the poor sod had much choice from what the record says. I can’t wait to meet him.’
‘My husband was SS, did you know that? A sergeant-major in a panzer regiment.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Devlin said.
‘You must think we’re all very wicked sometimes, Mr Devlin, but you must understand how it started. After the First War, Germany was on her knees, ruined.’
‘And then came the Fuhrer?’
‘He seemed to offer so much. Pride again – prosperity. And then it started – so many bad things, the Jews most of all.’ She hesitated. ‘One of my great-grandmothers was Jewish. My husband had to get special permission to marry me. It’s there ‘on my record and sometimes I wake in the night and think what would happen to me if someone decided to do something about it.’
Devlin took her hands. ‘Hush now, girl, we all get that three o’clock in the morning feeling when everything looks bad.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Here, I’ll make you smile. My disguise for this little jaunt I’m taking. Guess what?’
She was smiling slightly already. ‘No, tell me.’
‘A priest.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You, a priest?’ She started to laugh. ‘Oh, no, Mr Devlin.’
‘Wait now, while I explain. You’d be surprised at the religious background I have. Oh yes.’ He nodded solemnly. ‘Altar boy, then, after the British hanged my father in nineteen twenty-one, my mother and I went to live with my old uncle who was a priest in Belfast. He sent me to a Jesuit boarding school. They beat religion into you there all right.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Oh, I can play the priest as well as any priest, if you follow me.’