The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Seventeen

London, England

The Members of Parliament looked stunned and disorientated as they filed into the chamber, some of them fresh from viewing the damage to Downing Street and the results of the pitched battle in St James’ Park. The remaining German commandos had fought to the death and had left behind nothing but rubble when they had finally been crushed under the weight of superior fire-power Alex DeRiemer suspected that some of the commandos had actually escaped in the chaos, but it would be impossible to know for certain until they resurfaced, if they resurfaced. They might just have gone to ground and decided to wait until German panzers reached London.

He cast an eye down at Churchill. The former First Lord of the Admiralty and the new Prime Minister — almost all of the remaining Cabinet members were dead — looked grim. He’d spoken briefly to DeRiemer and Monty, ordering DeRiemer to stay with him and Monty to attempt to make some sense out of the reports that were pouring in from across the country. DeRiemer would have preferred to be working with the intelligence reports himself, but Churchill’s orders had been clear; he wanted the man who had predicted the new German offensive with him. DeRiemer didn’t know if he should feel honoured or very nervous.

The MPs settled down, quieter than normal. He saw a young lady in the Conservative ranks, her face pinched and grave, very grave. Others looked as if they were on the verge of heart attacks; the rumours placed the German Army within hours of London, something that was technically true, but only if they met no opposition.

DeRiemer was now convinced that Dover was a feint; the searching soldiers hadn’t encountered a single enemy parachutist, not even someone who had bailed out of a crashing aircraft. Dover was silent; the same could not be said for Suffolk. The Germans were on the land now, standing where Napoleon had failed; England had been invaded.

The Speaker gavelled for attention.

“Honourable Members,” he said, his own voice shaking, “I call upon the Right Honourable Winston Churchill, recently confirmed by His Majesty the King as Prime Minister, to address this august body.”

DeRiemer wondered, as Churchill stood up, just how tempted he had been to start his speech with ‘I told you so’. For the past seven years, Churchill and a small number of other politicians and military men had been a voice crying in the wilderness, warning the world that the threat of Nazi Germany had yet to end. His influence had seen some precautions taken, but they had proven themselves painfully inadequate when the Germans finally landed; DeRiemer felt that almost as a physical blow. If he had been able to predict the exact site of the German landing, they could have had an infantry battalion dug into the port, and the Home Fleet out of the harbour and protected by a cloud of RAF aircraft. If…

“Honourable Members of this House, I speak not only to you, but to the British Public,” Churchill said. He rarely spoke directly on the wireless; he had a slight stammer in his voice that was only apparent if people listened to him directly. Years of experience in public speaking had helped him suppress it until it was almost unnoticeable. “I come before you today with grave news; our country has been, for the first time in centuries, invaded by an enemy force. Yesterday evening, German forces landed in the Port of Felixstowe and commenced unloading the spearhead of a major fighting force aimed at nothing less than the conquest of our entire country.

“And yet, that is not the gravest of tidings,” he continued. “I must confirm to this house that Home Fleet was attacked last night from the air, a savage attack employing the most advance technology and anti-shipping weapons the Germans have at their disposal. It is with a heavy heart that I must confirm the loss of nine heavy capital ships and forty smaller ships. Even this setback pales in comparison to the deaths of thousands of our soldiers, sailors and airmen. The defenders of the harbour gave everything they could to stand the German Air Force off, but eventually the Germans were able to hit and seriously damage Home Fleet as a weapon of war.

“And yet, even that news is overshadowed by the German attack within the centre of London itself,” Churchill concluded. “I must confirm now, to the people of this great nation, that Prime Minister Atlee and dozens more were murdered by German commandos, who parachuted down into London. The commandos were finally defeated but in their wake they left nothing but destruction. Our country is bleeding, and yet…”

He seemed to be speaking directly to DeRiemer as he spoke.

“When Hitler showed himself for what he was, we did nothing,” he said. “When Hitler broke the bounds of international law, we did nothing. When we finally stood up to him, we found that he was too strong for us to handle any longer, and our valiant French allies went under, forced into a humiliating surrender and permanent submission to Hitler’s evil regime. We fought on, aiding those we could and salvaging what we could, but in the end, we made a critical error. We chose the easy way out.”

“We told ourselves that we could endure no longer,” he said, anger darkening his voice. “We told ourselves that all our allies, one by one, had fallen, and there was no disgrace in a peace without victory. We were safe from Hitler’s control, so there was no shame in coming to a respectable agreement with an honourable man… but did we understand that Hitler was not an honest man? Yes, we knew that, and yet we deluded ourselves that he would abide by a treaty that was only convenient for him for a short time. We allowed ourselves to let down our guard, and, yesterday, German forces thrust a knife at our nation’s heart.”

The Chamber seemed silent, wrapped up in the moment. “This is England’s darkest hour,” Churchill pronounced, and his words echoed in the air. “German forces are ashore in strength and are preparing an offensive towards London. When they come to London, they will attempt to take this proud city and shatter once and for all our empire. Hitler will remain unsatisfied until he has eaten the entire world, and now he has finally come for us… and we find ourselves in a weaker state than ever.”

He paused. “We have lost the ability to control the Channel,” he said. “Elements of the Royal Navy are steaming back towards England as fast as they can, but until they rendezvous with the remains of Home Fleet. We will have to stop the Germans in a war fought out in the villages and hills of England, a savage campaign that will lay waste to the land we love, but a campaign that must be fought.

“We know what defeat looks like,” he said, coldly. “We know the fate of the French, strangers in their own country. We know the fate of the Russians, broken into servitude. We even know the fate of the Italians, who are treated as dirt by their German allies… and we know just what fate the Nazis have in mind for the Turks, the Swiss, all the remaining free nations of Europe, including us. We know…

“And we will fight.

“I told this House once, long ago, that I could promise nothing, but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” he said. “I tell you now that we can win, and we will win, and we must win, so that a monster like Hitler can be defeated and prevented from controlling the entire world. If we are defeated, here, in our own lands, Hitler will have nothing preventing him from conquering the entire world. We will fight and we will win! Hitler’s empire will come to an end; we, we free people, bearers of the hopes and aspirations of an entire continent groaning under the yoke of slavery, will end him.

“There is no peace with Adolph Hitler,” he concluded. “We will fight him until he is defeated, or until he kills the last of us, who will never accept a role in his New Order. Today, we start fighting back!”

He sat down. After a pregnant pause, the entire chamber erupted into cheers and shouts, a handful of MPs singing ‘God save the King’. DeRiemer looked for the young female MP and met her eyes for a long moment; they, too, were glowing with passion and determination. For the moment, at least, Britain was united behind Churchill.

His lips twitched. All that they needed do now was drive the Germans back into the sea and then march to Berlin.

Kim Philby fancied himself as a man on the edge. As a young man, he had converted to communism and had, since then, followed orders from Moscow to remain above suspicion and continue to report from the heart of the British intelligence service. He’d accomplished a great deal over the years, gaining responsibility for monitoring the remains of the Soviet Union, an irony that never failed to make him smile. Moscow — through him — possessed near-perfect awareness of what their enemies were plotting, even Churchill’s desperate plan to have Beria assassinated and replaced with one of the Red Army Generals in hopes of keeping Russia in the war.

Philby hadn’t despaired when Beria had made the devil’s bargain with Adolph Hitler. It wasn’t unprecedented in the history of the Soviet Union — Lenin himself had made a bargain with the advancing Germans, buying time for Imperial Germany to collapse, as Lenin had predicted — and Philby had just continued to report, even through the hiatus that had followed when Moscow had fallen. The contact line had been re-established, however, and Philby had continued to feed reports to ‘contact zero’ until the day the Germans arrived.

He tasted brandy on his lips and looked up into the merciless eyes of Otto Skorzeny. He knew who Skorzeny was, of course; Radio Berlin had turned him into a superhuman, a perfect soldier and commanding officer, almost able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Skorzeny lived a charmed life, dancing through bullets as if they were nothing but rainfall; the only sign of any stress in his life was a scar that he’d picked up in the wars. If Skorzeny was Contact Zero, then…

Philby’s life had just shattered around him.

“Let me tell you a story,” Skorzeny said. “Moscow; nine years ago. The city has fallen, but a handful of senior NKVD officers are desperate to make a bargain with their new rulers, so they take their files to the senior SS office there and show him what they can offer. That man is none other than Himmler’s own personal hatchet man; he sees what they’re offering, arranges to have the building sealed off and examined by the SS, and takes the files back to Berlin. Himmler orders it to be kept a secret, checks through the files, and issues his orders. The windfall has to be used. A few months later, they make contact again with part of the chain that leads back to you, and start issuing orders.”

His face twisted into an ugly smile. “And you obey.

“You spend the next few years sending back all the information you could get you hands on,” he continued, his smile growing wider. “You get requests for information from the heart of the Soviet Union and you forward it on. You get requests about information on how Germany is penetrated by British Intelligence and you pass it on. You get requests about some dispositions of British forces and you pass it on… all unaware that you were working for the Reich. How does that make you feel?”

Philby blanched. His mind was racing, trying to find a way out of the predicament, but nothing presented itself. He’d had an evacuation plan for when the British finally realised what he’d been doing, but that plan had certainly fallen apart when Moscow fell; he’d almost certainly walk right into the hands of the Reich. If he made it to Russia, they probably wouldn’t be too happy to see him; from their point of view, he was an agent who had gone silent. He thought, briefly, about trying to talk MI5 into striking a deal, but…

“I know what you are thinking,” Skorzeny said, calmly. Philby jumped as the commando’s face came closer to this own. “You’re wondering if you can take us to the nearest army post and betray us, hoping to save your neck from the hangman’s noose. I don’t think that that would be a very good idea, Philby; your actions ensured the deaths of thousands of people in the Royal Navy and cleared the way for our invasion. You spied for us; once they finish laughing at you, you’ll be hung from the neck until you are dead.”

His hand stroked Philby’s neck; Philby flinched away, but didn’t dare lift a hand to brush Skorzeny away. “And that would be a great shame,” Skorzeny said. The touch of his hand was somehow soft yet threatening, crushing Philby’s soul as it moved around his vulnerable neck, reminding him that he could be killed by a single blow. “You have nowhere to go now, nowhere but the Reich. Your services have earned you a place in Germany, if you are prepared to help us now.”

Philby struggled, looking for an escape, but he couldn’t see one — apart from suicide. Skorzeny was right; if he were caught, the enormity of his crimes would ensure that he was tried in a secret session, then hung and his body buried somewhere without a marker. He hated the Reich, detested it and all it stood for, and he had worked faithfully to bring about its end… unaware that he had really been helping his ideological enemy. Hot tears stung his eyes as he started to shake; Skorzeny snorted in disgust and half-turned away, sparing Philby the sight of his smile.

He finally forced himself to speak, blinking away tears. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, for the moment, I want you to play host to us,” Skorzeny said, easily. “There are six of us, but this house has quite enough room for us all, and I’m sure someone as well-connected as yourself can get enough ration cards to get the food to feed us without problems.”

Philby shuddered. “I can’t…”

“Of course you can,” Skorzeny said. “You’ve lived a double-life for so long that you don’t even remember how to be a normal person. How much did you enjoy the feeling of having put one over your employers? You were the perfect loyal British citizen in the daytime, but at night, you spied for the Reich, thinking you were serving the Rodina. You will have no problems at all feeding us.”

He leaned closer and produced a knife, holding it to Philby’s throat. “You may still be thinking of betraying us,” he warned, his voice darkening. “You could, I admit, run to the barracks and call out the militia. But believe me, if you did that, you would be hung by your own people or killed by me personally.”

Skorzeny said, “Your choice, if you want to remain alive, is no choice at all; you will help me and support us in our operations.”

“Fine,” Philby burst out, bitterly. The sense of submission was too bitter for him to taste. Skorzeny’s jeering face pushed at him in truly terrifying ways. He was starting to wonder if Skorzeny was even human; he’d heard strange tales of experimentations and disgusting medical procedures from the east, supervised by the eerie figure of Doctor Josef Mengele. “I’ll do what you say, provided I get something in Berlin.”

Skorzeny smiled, cat-like. “And what do you want in Berlin?”

“I want a place to live, some freedom, and no more work,” Philby said. He’d surrendered, he realised grimly; all he could do now was sell out for the best price he could get. The Germans would be able to compensate him for his woes; the other Cambridge Spies could take care of themselves. “I need something in return for my efforts.”

Skorzeny nodded. “That won’t be a problem,” he said. He managed a reassuring smile that somehow managed to be the most terrifying facial expression he had yet produced, unsettling and somehow mocking at the same time. “Once you get to Berlin, your usefulness will come to an end, one way or the other.”