Omega

The corporal squinted at him through the gloom. “Can I ask what you’re doing out here, sir?”

“Bird watching,” Owain said aggressively, leaping up on to a wheel arch. “This is an emergency. Get moving!”

It took less than a minute to reach the mansion. Slivers of golden light were leaking out of its shuttered windows.

His uncle had been put to bed in one of the upstairs rooms. Giselle was at his side, as was another man whom Owain recognised. A portable television sat next to the bed, but Sir Gruffydd lay with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly, the colour drained from his face.

“He collapsed an hour after lunch,” Giselle told him.

“What happened? Is it his heart?”

Giselle shook her head. “We think he ate something that disagreed with him. They’ve just pumped his stomach.”

Strands of curly white hair were stuck to his forehead. The corners of his lips were cracked and crusted with dried blood.

I made Owain ask: “Was he poisoned?”

“Unlikely,” said the doctor. It was Tyler, the man who’d attended him after Regent Street. “Though if you ask me the chef wants shooting.”

“Mussels,” Giselle said. “He had a big dish. I warned him they didn’t smell right.”

Tyler turned to a nurse. “Where’s the damned monitor?”

“It’s on its way,” she told him. “They’re having to bring it up from the gyms.”

“Is he going to be OK?” Owain asked.

“He’ll be on his back for a day or two,” Tyler said. “Should sleep now till morning at least. We’ll keep an eye on things. Make sure he doesn’t do anything for twenty-four hours. Complete bed rest, eh?”

He was addressing Giselle. “I’ll lock him in if I have to,” she assured him.

“Get rid of the TV. No news reports, bulletins, paperwork. Nothing that’s likely to raise his blood pressure.”

The television was showing brief campaign scenes, intercut with the smouldering ruins of an aeroplane in a field of snow and broken pines. It was the BBC’s restricted access channel. The sound had been turned off, but the caption read: CinC & CofS DIE IN POMERANIAN CRASH.

“What’s that about?” Owain asked Giselle.

“He insisted on watching,” she said wearily. “A Dornier carrying some senior commanders came down near Kolberg this morning. Engine failure.”

The picture switched, showing the Chancellor delivering a tribute. He was in his office, backdropped by the flags of state, looking suitably grave but in command of the situation. His image had been refined over the years to maximise his appeal to a diverse audience.

Owain’s uncle made a growling sound and subsided. The picture had now cut from the Chancellor to that of the two principal victims of the crash. I recognised one of the faces instantly.

Generaloberst Blaskowitz.

I swirled the white wine in my glass. Two young men were talking to me, one about war-gaming, another about his collection of replica model tanks.

The room was hot and crowded, subterranean, with bare brick walls and arches. A crypt, possibly. People stood in clusters, holding their complimentary drinks, chatting earnestly. A few spilled bowls of dry-roast peanuts remained on side tables. At a bustling bar two attractive young women in black dresses were doling out wine and bottles of Becks. A poster hung on one pillar showed a shield with runes severed vertically by a lightning bolt.

A publisher’s party to mark the launch of a new book. I’d been invited months before, had been persuaded by Tanya to attend. Where was she? I scanned the heads, failed to spot her. Now one of the young men was talking about the SAS and how they would be a brilliant subject for a series. Both of them had ardent faces. Both of them were obviously thrilled to be talking to me. I kept making affirmative noises that encouraged they hecontinue.

Nobody in the place looked older than fifty. The book was something about the Waffen-SS, I remembered. They were always among the most popular of wartime subjects for military enthusiasts. The Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking. A mantra of storm troopers, the elite of the Wehrmacht, always shown with their hulking Tigers, invariably smashing enemy formations, racing to plug gaps in the German lines, conducting desperate heroic counterattacks. And all the while butchering and burning and raping and maiming. For the good of the cause. The Triumph of the Will.

At that moment I felt complicit. I felt my father at my shoulder, asking me what I was doing here, demanding to know when was I going to treat history with the respect it deserved.

Unfair, I thought. As ever, his judgements were too severe.

The two young men were waiting for me to say something. I excused myself, slipping away through the crowd towards a darker corner where few people were lingering, nodding to anyone who spoke my name or said hello but not risking eye contact, keeping my head down.