Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Authors
Also in the Doctor Who History Collection
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Epigraph
Schwerpunkt
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Waffenstillstand
Historical Note
Authors’ Additional Note
Copyright
The Stone Rose
Jacqueline Rayner
The Roundheads
Mark Gatiss
The Witch Hunters
Steve Lyons
Dead of Winter
James Goss
Human Nature
Paul Cornell
The English Way of Death
Gareth Roberts
The Shadow in the Glass
Justin Richards and Stephen Cole
Amorality Tale
David Bishop
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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BBC Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Justin Richards and Stephen Cole 2001, 2015
Justin Richards and Stephen Cole have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This book is published to accompany the television series Doctor Who broadcast on BBC One. Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production.
Executive producers: Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
This edition published in 2015 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
First published in 2001 by BBC Worldwide Ltd.
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 849 90905 1
Editorial director: Albert DePetrillo
Series consultant: Justin Richards
Project editor: Steve Tribe
Cover design: Two Associates © Woodlands Books Ltd, 2015
Production: Alex Goddard
The Shadow in the Glass was born of necessity and no small measure of desperation. Looking back at the short author biographies in the original 2001 edition, you would find that Steve’s ended: ‘One of Stephen’s goals for 2001 was to write a Doctor Who novel – so here’s his second in a month.’ Justin’s however closed like this: ‘One of Justin’s goals for 2001 was to avoid having to write a Doctor Who novel. So here it is.’
So what on earth possessed us to do it? Well, that’s where the necessity and desperation come in.
Back in the dim and distant days when Doctor Who was not actually on television, BBC Books published twenty-two Doctor Who novels a year. Two 80,000-word works of fiction every month, except December (as nothing tended to be published so close to Christmas). And that was on top of putting together two non-fiction books each year, audiobooks every quarter, a video release eleven months of the year, etc., etc.
For Steve, who had launched the BBC Doctor Who range as Project Editor, and then for Justin, his successor, commissioning and editing even just the two novels each month was a bit of a slog, to put it mildly. But the process worked, just so long as everyone did everything they were supposed to do, and did it when they were supposed to do it. But occasionally – and looking back it’s surprising that it was such a rare occurrence – an author would run into problems (legitimate or otherwise) and a draft didn’t turn up on time.
And, early in December 2000, that’s just what happened.
The book was scheduled for delivery before Christmas so it could be swiftly edited over the break and handed into production in January 2001 for typesetting ready for publication at the start of April. As bad luck would have it, none of the subsequent novels were far enough advanced to be brought forwards in the schedule.
Cue Cloister Bell. Wild catastrophe. Man the battle stations.
Still – cometh the hour, cometh the man (even if the man would rather be down the pub). With Christmas looming, Justin knew his chances of finding someone prepared to forgo family festivities in order to produce a last-minute Doctor Who book were slight – particularly as there was so little time to get a storyline together first. The only way to be sure of getting a book together in time was to write it himself. After all, he’d done it before; similarly stymied in 1999, Steve had asked Justin to write a replacement book in under three weeks. One rotten turn deserved another, so when Justin explained his predicament to Steve (who’d already delivered the other title due for publication that April), Steve took the hint and offered to co-write.
The postponed novel had been due to feature the Sixth Doctor as played by Colin Baker, and we were both happy to retain him as our leading man. As for who should join him, our discussions didn’t last long. Justin had just finished reading a book about the death of Adolf Hitler and it was fresh in his mind, so he decided to make that the novel’s starting point. As a result, dear old Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart seemed a natural fit. It wasn’t just the partial Second World War setting, or the sort of military access that the Brigadier would have that could help with the ‘research’ section of the book – it simply seemed to us a perfect opportunity to have the Sixth Doctor and the Brig meet, as they never did in the TV series. (We thought they’d work well together. We still do.)
Justin prepared a rough outline. He and Steve met in a pub the week before Christmas to go through it and panic about what they might write, and how. There was beer involved as well as panic. Quite a lot of both in fact. A plucky journalist was added to the plot. Some alien details were clarified. The work was divvied up by plot strands and locations. Research was undertaken and some quite frighteningly convincing conspiracy theories were evolved.
And swiftly after, battle commenced (or rather, the writing began). The first casualty of war was Christmas, and then New Year, but if a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing in adverse conditions with a turkey sandwich and a cold mince pie to keep the stomach churning and the adrenalin pumping along.
Justin and Steve met again in the same pub three weeks after their initial discussions to go through the draft text they’d produced and make sure that Steve’s chapters fitted into the gaps left by Justin’s, and vice versa. Which, by and large, they did. They’d gotten through the first draft, and proceeded to get through a lot more beer.
A swift edit later, and with a striking cover design that originally included a pantomime goblin (which both authors requested be removed as a late Christmas present), the book was off to Editorial and from thence to Production to be typeset, proofread and so on. For the slightly frazzled Steve and Justin, the war was over (or a battle won, at least).
Despite being created in extremis, The Shadow in the Glass was well received and well reviewed. Looking back at it now, given the strictures of time and circumstances, it stands up surprisingly well. We’re both proud of it, and despite this introduction it really needs no apology.
But the praise for the book that amused us the most came by email from a fellow Who author (who will remain nameless). They sent us each an email saying how much they’d enjoyed the book – informing Steve they especially liked a particular section that they could tell for certain he had written. Except, of course, Justin had written that bit. And sure enough, in their email to Justin they said how much they especially liked a chapter that they could just tell for certain Justin had written. It was one of Steve’s.
We should take a moment to say that The Shadow in the Glass was edited – excellently, and in double-quick time, of course – by the lovely and talented Sarah Lavelle. She was Project Editor for the BBC Books Doctor Who range at the time, but obviously that was long ago and she’s since moved on. Now she’s an Editorial Director for Ebury Publishing – and sits about three desks away from BBC Books.
You see, there really is no escape.
Justin Richards and Stephen Cole
September 2014
For Gary Russell,
without whom this book would quite simply not exist
‘… I asked Hitler, “For whom should we fight on now?” And to that Hitler said in a monotone, “The Coming Man” …’
Heinz Linge (Hitler’s Valet)
Grey clouds striped the white sky like dirt that wouldn’t shift. The sun had barely been up an hour but Flight Lieutenant Carl Smithson had been watching the heavens for most of the night as they lashed down wind and rain on the airfield, and for what? Not a sign of anything untoward, although the endless, regular drumming of the rain against the cracked glass of the camp windows had been cranking up the tension he felt hour after hour. He should’ve spent the night listening to the rain in bed, nuzzled up against Mary in Turelhampton. The rain sounded comforting outside when you were tucked up and warm. Here, standing by the glass, it sounded like machine gun fire.
Terrible weather for May. And it had brought with it strange sightings. Lights in the night. Not Luftwaffe, so the CO said – these lights weren’t acting like planes, they were just hovering, a vivid red, burning… stuck in the sky over Sword Beach near Caen, like an omen warning the Allied forces away. Smithson had overheard the AOC talking about Hitler’s V weapons. The CO had told him there was probably nothing to worry about, but even so…
482 Squadron was due to fly this morning, and Smithson didn’t want strange, hovering red lights up there with him.
He needed some fresh air, and so walked outside, his slipper soles slapping down on the wet asphalt. He stared stupidly up into the watery white sky. The airfield was quiet, deserted for now. Anyone watching from above would see him as tiny and insignificant, a speck on the ground.
The sirens howled, obliterating any other sound. The order to scramble had come just an hour or so after Smithson had finally called it a night and tried to get some sleep. Now, running for his plane, the frantic activity of the airfield ran jerkily in his vision like the silent movies he’d loved so much as a child. Props turning. Mechanics dashing to and fro. The men of 482 squadron clambering into their Hurricanes. Neddy, the CO, giving him the thumbs up.
Smithson was glad for his plane, for the comforting familiarity of every dial, of every spring in the seat as he wormed into the cockpit. Everyone sang the Spitfire’s praises, which had largely replaced the Hurricanes as fighters. But Hurricanes had brought down more Luftwaffe planes in 1940 than all other British aircraft combined, and still nothing could turn in the air like one, even four years on.
Smithson felt the ground drop away as his plane took to the air, falling in with his squadron, following the steersman’s vectors. He put on his mask, braked right for the coast, and far below him were the dummy camps at Trowhaven Patton had set up to bamboozle the Krauts. Fake tanks and trucks and troop housing and even dummy landing craft in the estuaries and rivers. All tying up the German 15th at the Pas de Calais very nicely, playing Hitler the giddy kipper. Fortress Europe would come tumbling down at Normandy next month. It had to. Nothing could stop that fall.
But what was Hitler sending at them now?
‘It’s coming in high, Red Leader,’ squawked control, tinny-voiced in his cockpit. ‘Vector three one zero, unidentified object at 40,000 feet. Falling slowly. On present trajectory you’ll meet it shortly. Over.’
Neddy’s voice: ‘Will comply. Fan out, boys. All units report sightings, over.’
The hard Dorset coast had given up to the Channel’s grey waters. Smithson broke away from the Hurricanes flanking him, rising to 30,000 feet. Then something struck him in the eyes, so brightly he flinched, the annoying catch of sudden sunlight reflected on metal.
The familiar fear gripped him; of running into the enemy one more time and running out of luck.
Then he saw properly what it was, and nothing was familiar. He tried to speak but his saliva had turned to sticky paste.
‘I see it, Skip,’ Smithson said thickly, even so, surprised by how calm his own voice sounded in his ears. ‘It’s not a plane. It’s… cylindrical by the look of it. Keeps spinning, it’s like it’s…’
‘Joining you, Smithson, over,’ Neddy reported.
Steersman was keeping matter of fact, unfazed by the situation. ‘Intercept, Red Leader, over.’
Smithson barely heard. He’d been watching the skies all night for this thing, knowing it was up there. Up there waiting for him. And here it was, and he was first to find it. This was destiny, or fate, what all the papers and the pulp romances talked about when someone died before their time with some queer twist in their tale: fate was just death dressed up, and now it was coming for him.
‘Two red lights,’ Smithson announced, transfixed as he drew closer, raised his altitude to 33,000 feet. ‘They’re holding still, even while the thing’s spinning… they’re a blazing red. It’s like no colour I’ve seen… over.’
‘Engage bandit,’ came Neddy’s voice. ‘Head on, three sections. We’re bringing it down. Over.’
There was another flash of light from the silver cylinder hanging in the bleached out sky. Smithson realised that the metal was surrounded by something else, something like glass.
You could break glass.
It was a simple realisation but in this strange meeting it acted to focus Smithson’s attention back to the job in hand. ‘Roger that, CO,’ he said, flanked once more by his fellows. He upped his speed to match theirs, passing 300 miles per hour, climbing higher, to 36,000 feet, nearing the ceiling. He felt his plane tremble with the acceleration.
Now it came into his crosshairs. The thing was still just hanging in the sky. It wasn’t moving, wasn’t firing. Should he chance it? Smithson knew the boffins said the Hurricanes lacked the vertical performance and the horsepower to weight ratio to keep on target when chasing their prey. Well, that was all right. Like Neddy said, you just had to kill on the first try.
Smithson found he was closest to the thing, and now spearheading the assault. Red machine eyes – and that’s what they were like, eyes burning into anyone that dared approach – glowed at him through the strange opaque glass structure surrounding the object. It was almost like crystal. But the unidentified craft was still taking no evasive action. It hung as small and insignificant up here in the scrubbed-clean sky as Smithson had been, back down on the airfield. But there was something about it, its unnatural shape, the way those lights were moving…
But you could break glass. And bugger fate.
Smithson’s Hurricane went in with all eight machine guns firing 120 rounds per second. Those planes flanking him did the same.
The spinning cylinder’s glass cocoon shattered. A moment later the cylinder itself dropped from the sky, as if the glass had been holding it up. The red lights burnt out, extinguished swiftly by the blustering winds and the rain.
Terrible weather for May.
‘Downed it, Steersman,’ he heard Neddy report, ‘repeat, unidentified bandit brought down.’
‘It’s changing course,’ squawked an unfamiliar voice over the headset, a Yank accent. Smithson couldn’t have heard right: ‘Upward of 500 miles per hour…’
Then Control came back on. ‘Bandit heading inland. Losing altitude. Pursue and intercept. Trowhaven base must be protected, repeat, must be protected at all costs. Over.’
‘Wilco that. Over.’
Smithson fell in with the rest of his squadron, banking and diving, giving chase. The other voice must be some USAF bigwig. If the dummy camps were blown apart then the Allied campaign of misinformation would go the same way. Deliverance Day would go west.
And yet, even straining at full speed, the squadron couldn’t keep pace with the bandit, sparking and tumbling from the sky. It was like trying to outrun a missile, but in reverse. Smithson didn’t stop to consider the irony, racing through the patchy cloud, watching shifting sea become stolid land again. They were too late, it couldn’t be caught, but it was coming in low now, it was over…
Smithson felt his heart stop beating, the blood freeze in his veins.
When the end came for the thing it seemed to halt in mid-flight and drop like a stone from the sky. There was no explosion, but having banked and turned, Smithson could see a plume of smoke rising from the outskirts of a village. The thing had come down on Turelhampton.
Bugger fate, he’d said. And now the damned thing could’ve come down right on Mary’s sweet dark head.
After an hour finishing the sortie, of checking the skies for any more of the things, the atmosphere back at the airfield was jubilant following 482’s apparent victory over their strange quarry. But after a quick conflab with Neddy, Smithson left the celebrations and charged straight to old Arnold’s office. He rapped hard on the old oak door, and stepped through smartly without pause.
Wing Commander Arnold, inscrutable as ever, wasn’t fazed by the intrusion. ‘Chain of command, Smithson,’ he remonstrated mildly, but seemed oddly subdued. He almost seemed to welcome the intrusion.
‘The bandit came down on Turelhampton,’ Smithson blurted out.
Arnold nodded but said nothing.
‘Any casualties?’
‘Limited, according to first reports,’ Arnold said eventually. ‘But Trowhaven’s integrity remains unbreached.’
Smithson nodded and half-smiled. ‘I have… Please, sir, I… know someone… in Turelhampton. Could you tell me…?’
Arnold considered, then gave a watery smile. ‘Don’t have names, Smithson. But…’ He paused, rose stiffly to his feet. ‘Well, you must go along at once. Perhaps you can help out with the evacuation, stop Dogson’s boys making too much of a mess, you know what they’re like.’
Smithson stared. ‘Evacuation? But—’
‘105th division is already moving in to clear the area. The object came down in one piece. We… we have to be sure it is not a risk to civilians. You understand?’
Smithson could see papers on Arnold’s desk. Official-looking papers with the ink barely dried: a graph with a steep curve then a sudden falling off. A memo from Ground Control, and some instructions on USAF paper.
‘Get yourself down there, Smithson,’ Arnold repeated, and Smithson, a little calmer now, noticed now just how pale-faced he was.
Smithson had to abandon his car, since the road to Turelhampton was blocked by convoys of army vehicles trundling towards it or by supply trucks scraping past, loaded with civilians, rumbling out. Making his way on foot, feeling sick to his stomach, he scanned the bewildered, bemused or excited people clustered in the trucks for Mary’s face.
‘Carl! Here, here!’
Fate may have been tempted but it hadn’t struck. Mary was safe and sound in the second such truck passing by, and he shouted when he saw her, flooded with relief. He ran along the road to keep up with her.
‘Did you see it?’ she called excitedly.
Smithson bit his tongue. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, love,’ he called.
‘That thing, the glowing thing… fell like… like an enormous oil drum or something, out of the sky.’
A belligerent-looking old man was observing Smithson’s fast jog to keep level with the van. ‘Was it you that brought the thing crashing down on our heads?’
‘We brought it down over the water,’ Smithson said defensively, before realising he should’ve kept his mouth shut. How rattled was he?
‘So how did it come down here?’ the old man demanded.
Even if Smithson had been able to talk about it, he shivered to realise he didn’t have an answer.
‘Why are they taking us away?’ asked Mary.
‘I don’t know,’ Smithson admitted.
‘Don’t know or won’t tell us?’ huffed the old man.
Mary rolled her eyes and grinned at Smithson. He saw that all this was quite an adventure for her. ‘They’re saying we have to stay at Crookhampton. “Arrangements will be made”, very hush hush. Seems we won’t be going back for a while.’
‘Why?’ the old man grumbled. ‘Why should that be?’
Smithson glanced over his shoulder at another army truck, a dark green shadow against the cornfields, pressing on to the village. The smoke still hung above the crash site like a thick swarm of bees.
Smithson suppressed another shudder, looked back at Mary and forced a cheery smile. ‘Well, you’ll be closer to the base, anyway. Not as far to walk in blackout. That’s something, isn’t it?’
The old man was harder to mollify than Mary. ‘What was that bloody thing, anyway?’ he shouted.
The truck picked up speed, and started to pull away. Smithson stopped running, panting hard as he waved to Mary. Soon she had blurred to become one more featureless face among the dozens in the vehicle.
Behind him, in the distance, came the calls and shouts of Dogson’s men on their Army business, and strangulated roars as more trucks and staff cars bedded in. It looked as though the 105th would be keeping busy.
He thought again of Arnold’s pale, distracted face, of the red lights that had burned so coldly through the thick glass and metal in the bald white sky. He decided that Mary was right; that she wouldn’t be returning to Turelhampton for a while.
That night, Smithson was back by the dorm window in the early hours, staring uneasily up into the blackness. He was wondering what else might be up in the sky, and what might come looking.
The air was alive with noise and bullets, and Ilya Petrova had just killed a child.
Acrid smoke drifted aimlessly across the ground as he knelt to turn over the body of the sniper who had shot three of his unit. He found himself looking into the face of a boy no more than twelve. His head barely filled the dark metal helmet. He looked as if he was asleep, and for the briefest of eternities the noise and the bullets froze in the air around Ilya. He thought of the blood and the waste and the killing still to come. He thought of his own son, Sacha. Then a dull detonation chewed the side out of a nearby block of offices and he blinked back the moisture in his eyes and stood up.
The Russians had taken Tempelhof airport that morning. Now they were inside the inner ring of the city – the Zitadelle – and closing on the area their generals had designated as ‘Sector Nine’ where the government buildings were. Each unit wanted to be the first to reach the Reichschancellery; each soldier was desperate to be the one to find the Fuhrer, dead or alive. Whoever did find Hitler, it was said, would be proclaimed a Hero of the Soviet Union.
And so they inched closer and closer to victory. It was like Stalingrad, Ilya reflected not for the first time. It was not so cold, and they were attacking not defending. But the Germans would fight to the death – even the children, he thought numbly. The attacking Russians had learned more from Stalingrad than the German defenders. They were making progress, slow and costly but steady. It would be over in days rather than months or weeks.
But for the moment time seemed to have slowed. The repetition, the constant process of clearing building after street after building, made it seem to Ilya as if he had spent his whole life in the torn and ragged city of Berlin.
They moved forward again, stooping close to the ground, scuttling towards the next building. It had been an apartment block, now it was a half-standing disjointed structure ready to collapse into rubble. Vlad’s flamethrower charred the broken bones of the infrastructure where they stuck out awkwardly from the twisted framework. If there were screams, they were lost in the sound and fury of the flames. When Vlad stopped, small pockets of fire still burned along the broken walls and in puddles of orange and yellow scattered across the broken ground.
Cautiously, watching and listening constantly for any tell-tale sign of life – of enemy life – the group edged through the shattered remains of the building. Each soldier covered his fellows. At once they watched each other’s backs while looking out for themselves. You had to trust completely in your comrades, and in nothing and no one else.
There was no sign of life. The only sound that came from within the building was the crack and drip of falling masonry where it had been dislodged by the flames or disturbed by their movement. A blackened body lay face-up in a corner of what had been a bedroom. It was impossible to tell whether it had been male or female. A bundle of charred rags was clutched to its chest. It had been dead for some days, the face all but eaten away by the rats and the stench fighting with the cordite and phosphor from outside.
The door to the basement seemed untouched by the devastation around it. The wall beside the frame was pitted and scarred, yet the wooden frame and the door itself seemed unblemished. A splash of mud – or old blood – clouded one panel.
They had congregated in the area, as if sensing this was a focal point. Captain Yazov nodded to Vlad to use the flamethrower.
His name was not really Vlad. But none of them could pronounce, or remember, his real name. The Russian army was a cosmopolitan grouping of disparate races drawn together from within the Soviet Union. ‘Vlad’ was Mongolian, and he spoke no Russian. And because none of the Russians spoke Mongolian, all communications were handled by sign language. Some of the units had interpreters, but not this one. Vlad had the flamethrower as he was least likely accidentally to harm anyone in his own unit with it – it was used when and if, and only when and if, Captain Yazov gave the signal. That much at least Vlad and his comrades understood between them.
The burst of oily flame engulfed the door, pummelling it with a smoky fist. When Vlad stepped aside, the doorway was a blackened hole in the wall. The smoke cleared to reveal a flight of concrete steps leading down into darkness.
Yazov had a torch, shining it along the juddering barrel of his rifle as he led the way. He stopped so abruptly at the bottom of the steps, that Ilya almost cannoned into him. Then slowly, carefully, incredulously, they stepped forward into the room. Yazov swept the torch beam over the scene that awaited them before sharing an astonished glance with Ilya.
For once, Vlad seemed to understand when Yazov shouted and gesticulated at him. He sprayed a stream of liquid fire into a corner of the basement room, igniting a pile of boxes, books, paper and other detritus. By the smoky light, Ilya stood beside his captain and gazed at the bodies.
There were seven in all. Each was dressed immaculately in the uniform of a soldier of the Third Reich. Six of the corpses were lying face-up in a rough circle, feet towards the centre. In the middle lay a seventh body. It seemed identical to the others, lying face-up, dressed in German army uniform. Except that this man wore gloves.
The gloves, Ilya noted with surprise in the drifting light, were bright green.
When he looked closer, he noticed other oddities. Apart from the fact that the whole scenario seemed bizarre. A gasp from Yazov beside him indicated that the Captain had spotted it too.
‘They are…’ Yazov turned to Ilya, as if for confirmation. ‘They are Oriental. All of them.’
Ilya nodded. Trust Yazov to spot that before noticing the real surprise. ‘I know,’ he said. To his left he was aware of Vlad stooping beside one of the bodies, his silhouette made stumpy and grotesque by the metal cylinders on his back that fed the flamethrower. His shadow flickered on the floor beside him like a malevolent imp. He looked up at Ilya, and it was apparent in his eyes that he had seen it too. His hand strayed towards the thin fragments of glass on the floor. They caught the firelight, seeming to jump and blink. The Mongolian changed his mind, pulled back his hand and straightened up.
‘They have all taken poison,’ Ilya told Yazov slowly. The fire was dying now. ‘Look at how the teeth are clenched, the lips drawn back.’
Yazov frowned and stared into the gloom.
‘Suicide,’ Ilya said. ‘Each and every one of them has bitten into a cyanide capsule.’ To make the point he stepped forwards and ground the shards of glass into the concrete floor with the toe of his boot.
‘But why?’ Yazov demanded, as if he thought Ilya might know. ‘Why would…’ He paused to count them. ‘Why would seven Chinese poison themselves?’
‘And why lie in a circle to do it?’ Ilya asked. He decided not to mention the gloves.
Vlad was shaking his head. ‘Not Chinese,’ he managed to say, his accent guttural and thick, the words strained and clumsy.
‘You’re right,’ Ilya agreed. ‘Japanese more like.’
Again Vlad was shaking his head. When he spoke it was a rush of words that meant nothing to Ilya. After several moments, Vlad was quiet, thoughtful. He gestured for Ilya to crouch with him beside the nearest body and pointed at the face. ‘Not Chinese,’ he said again.
‘What’s the idiot trying to tell us?’ Yazov demanded.
‘That they’re not Chinese,’ Ilya said. He shrugged. ‘Or Japanese either, I think.’
Vlad was nodding now. His teeth shone in the fading flicker of the firelight. He seemed pleased to have found the word in the depths of his meagre vocabulary. ‘Tibet,’ he said indistinctly. ‘Men of Tibet.’
There was no door to close behind them as they left the basement and moved to the next street. By the end of the day, Yazov was dead and his unit had other things to worry about. But what they had found in the basement continued to haunt Ilya’s imagination. That and the sleeping face of a young boy, his head too small for his helmet.
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE LAST DAYS OF HITLER?
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY CLAIRE ALDWYCH
ORIGINALLY BROADCAST ON THE CONSPIRACY CHANNEL,
AUGUST 12TH 1997
Footage of Eva Braun happy, playing, walking with Hitler.
It was the arrival of Eva Braun that signalled the end for most of the people in the Berlin Bunker. Hitler had gathered together his closest and most trusted advisers. But even they could tell that he was cracking under the strain – the end was rapidly approaching.
When Eva Braun forsook safety and arrived at the Bunker on April 15th 1945, it was a sign, a portent of the approaching end. Despite Hitler’s insistence, she refused to leave him. The Fuhrer was touched.
But behind Eva’s back, many of the others in the Bunker christened her ‘The Angel of Death’.
Close on picture of Eva’s smiling face.
The Russians were already approaching the capital of the Third Reich.
What happened in those last days within the confines of the Fuhrer-Bunker is unclear. There are conflicting accounts, or no accounts at all. People came and went for the next few days – until Berlin was effectively sealed off by the Russians.
Russian troops closing on the outskirts of Berlin.
On April 20th Hitler celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. This was the last day he saw the sunlight, the last day he left the Bunker alive. Probably.
Footage of Hitler inspecting the Hitler Youth in Berlin.
As can be seen from this final film of the Fuhrer inspecting members of the Hitler Youth Brigade as they prepared to defend their capital city, the strain was taking its toll. Gone was the exuberance and confidence. The man we see here looks closer to seventy-six than fifty-six. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had already ordered that the Fuhrer was only to be photographed and filmed from certain angles to hide his increasing infirmity.
Montage of photos of the Bunker – interior and exterior.
Yet he refused to admit the obvious, the inevitable, even to himself. He continued to order military operations and troop movements that at best made no sense, at worst were impossible. Many if not most of the army units he had marked on his map-table no longer existed. Those that did were in no fit state to follow his grand orders.
Close-up of Himmler.
Hitler’s birthday party, held in the Bunker itself, was a sombre affair – more like a wake. Significantly, Heinrich Himmler – the Reichsfuhrer and formerly Hitler’s closest and most trusted ally – left the Bunker afterwards. He never returned. Instead he opened secret negotiations with the Allies and sued for peace. When Hitler discovered this, on April 28th, he declared Himmler a traitor and executed Hermann Fegelein, one of Himmler’s closest aides who had tried to leave the Bunker without permission.
Wedding photo of Hermann and Gretl Fegelein.
Fegelein was married to Eva Braun’s sister, Gretl.
One of the most enigmatic figures of the Third Reich, Himmler is best remembered for being head of the SS. He was also a keen devotee of the occult, seeing himself as a latter-day King Arthur, gathering his SS knights around him as they sought for the Holy Grail.
Picture of the ‘Spear of Longinus’. Cross-fade to Wewelsburg Castle.
This was a man who on the one hand could see the end coming earlier and more clearly than his colleagues. He ordered the death camps closed in September 1944 – an order that was ignored. Yet when he tried to slip away and evade capture by the Allies, it was disguised in the uniform of a sergeant-major of the Gestapo. He was captured and recognised almost at once, committing suicide to cheat Nuremberg of yet another war criminal.
Close on Himmler’s dead body.
Ironically, in matters of the occult, Hitler was a realist. He had little faith or belief in the supernatural, which makes it easy to dismiss as rumour and falsehood the claims that in those last days secret occult ceremonies were held on the lower level of the Bunker. Hitler would hardly have countenanced such a thing even while Himmler was there. After his departure on 20th April, surely such extreme clutching at straws was impossible.
Archive footage of Hitler at rally.
The reality of the situation seems to have hit home to the Fuhrer on April 22nd when the Russian forces at last entered the city of Berlin. When he received the reports, Hitler was distraught. According to some sources, he actually suffered a nervous breakdown. Certainly, this was the point at which he saw his own destiny.
Close on Hitler’s face.
‘All is lost,’ he said. And it became apparent to those in the Bunker that Hitler would never leave it. Having resisted all suggestions that he should leave Berlin for Southern Germany, he now made no secret of his intention to commit suicide rather than surrender or witness defeat.
Film of Eva playing in fountain.
It was also clear that Eva was determined to share his fate. She was a happy, bubbly, slim blonde woman, then in her early thirties. She had few admirers among the higher-ranking Nazis, and her only real friend in Hitler’s inner circle was Albert Speer. She refused his offers of help and rescue.
Shot of Hitler, Eva and Speer.
Speer, the only man with the integrity to plead guilty at Nuremburg, finally left the Bunker on April 24th. The next day the Russians took the main airport of Berlin and started to advance on the inner city.
Footage of the Russian advance through war-torn Berlin. Dubbed on sound effects.
Over the following week, Hitler grew increasingly paranoid. His left arm shook almost uncontrollably and he had to hold it still with his right. He had declared Goering a traitor, largely egged on by his personal secretary Martin Bormann. As we have seen, he also denounced Himmler. Only Bormann and Goebbels remained close and loyal.
Pictures of Bormann and Goebbels.
Goebbels, on Hitler’s instructions, had even moved his wife and their six children into the Bunker. None of them would ever leave it.
Just after midnight on April 29th, Hitler married Eva Braun in a civil ceremony. To say it was hurried is no exaggeration. Goebbels was sent out into the burning streets to find an official to conduct the ceremony.
Image of marriage certificate. Close in on signatures.
Eva signed her name ‘Eva B’ before scratching out the ‘B’ and finishing ‘Eva Hitler.’ The Fuhrer’s own shaky signature betrays his deteriorating physical condition.
Film of Hitler in full rant at Nuremburg Rally.
After the marriage, Hitler dictated his final ‘Will and Political Testament’ to his secretary. If she was expecting the level of rhetoric and political insight of his early writings, she was disappointed. It is a rambling, unfocused document. Feeling betrayed by the army which had failed to relieve Berlin despite his orders, and having never forgiven the Luftwaffe for losing the Battle of Britain, Hitler named the highest-ranking naval commander, Admiral Donitz, as his successor. Typically, he blamed a Jewish conspiracy for starting the war in the first place.
Goebbels family portrait.
The following afternoon, Joseph and Magda Goebbels held a party in the Bunker for their six children. Surely this celebration organised by parents who would murder their own children in the next few days must have been one of the most bizarre events in those final surreal days.
Now, with evidence newly released from Russian archives, it is possible at last to reconstruct what happened on the fateful day of April 30th 1945 in the Bunker beneath the Berlin Reichschancellery.
Long shot of the Reichschancellery, closing in on the garden and the Bunker’s exit.
In the morning, Eva Hitler went outside, to take a last look at the sun, she said. She stood in the garden of the Reichschancellery, and must have been able to hear the sound of the advancing Russians and of their artillery fire.
After lunch, Hitler and Eva said formal farewells in the main corridor of the Bunker.
Artist’s impression of the main corridor.
It did not take long, and the Fuhrer made no great pronouncements or rousing speeches. In fact, witnesses recall little if anything of what was said. Hitler placed his valet, Heinz Linge, in charge of subsequent events and gave him strict instructions. When Hitler and his wife retired to their room, Linge was to ensure that nobody disturbed them for a full ten minutes.
Move ‘along’ the corridor towards the door to Hitler’s rooms. Hold on the door.
It was actually Hitler’s adjutant, Otto Gunsche who guarded the door. But even he was unable to keep Magda Goebbels, who had missed the farewells, from forcing her way past for a few final words with the man she had secretly loved for so long. Perhaps she tried to persuade Hitler to flee rather than die, certainly by this stage she must have decided that if her Fuhrer died she and her family must follow his example. When she emerged, she was sobbing and shaking.
Animated shadows on the door to signify the various figures – grotesque, misshapen silhouettes.
Arthur Axmann, head of the Hitler Youth, was however turned away by Gunsche and waited with the others in the corridor.
Some say they heard a shot, despite the fact that the door into Hitler’s rooms was bomb-proof and airtight. Whatever the case, when they finally entered, Linge and the others found the bodies of Hitler and Eva on the sofa.
Despite having a pistol, Eva had taken cyanide and died almost instantly. She was sitting, we are told, serene and composed with her legs drawn up under her.
Hitler, we now know, also took cyanide. And from the recently released Russian evidence, it appears that he also shot himself as he bit into the capsule.
Photo of Linge.
There has been speculation that Linge administered a coup de grâce to his Fuhrer. But this is based on one witness’s interpretation of a single comment of Linge’s.
Close-up of Hitler.
Whether it was a bullet that did the work, or the cyanide he had so carefully tested on his beloved Alsatian dog Blondi several days earlier, Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer of the Third Reich was dead.
Footage of Hitler playing with Blondi. Freeze-frame and defocus.
The bodies were taken into the garden of the Reichschancellery, doused with petrol reserved specifically for the purpose, and burned beyond recognition.
Autopsy pictures of the blackened corpses.
That, at least, is the accepted version of events, but it leaves many questions unanswered. Why were the Russians so slow to admit Hitler was dead? Why were there so many apparent sightings of the Fuhrer after his ‘death’? Why, if Hitler shot himself in his living quarters, was there blood on the bed in the next room…?
Alan Watson was losing her attention; he could see her eyes darting about, perhaps looking for her husband. She was still smiling and nodding, but he knew he must be boring her. All around them uniformed men and posh-frocked wives were talking and laughing animatedly in groups. Watson badly wished he was in one of them himself; his awkward, rambling narration of his post-wartime life was boring himself, never mind this poor girl.
‘I was sorry to leave the pre-fab,’ he continued stoically, ‘but since Mags went, well… didn’t need so much space. Got a bedsit, now. You know.’
The girl wasn’t even looking at him now.
He swallowed. ‘Shame about old Dogson, he’d have loved to be here. Bedders ever mention old—?’
She smiled at him abruptly; a polite, prim smile. ‘I’m sorry, I have to just… would you excuse me?’
Watson nodded and smiled apologetically. ‘Of course you must, of course…’ The girl – he realised he didn’t know her name, she was just Bedders’ wife – walked over to the buffet table and added a pork pie to her plate before joining the periphery of a sizeable group where Bedders was holding court. Flash beggar. They’d both been just the same serving as privates under old Dogson, but it seemed life had smiled since on Bedders: pretty young wife, good job… He was living up in London. Little semi in Wembley; you could see the twin towers from his back yard, so he said.
Watson swigged his glass of warm beer and glanced up at the bright bunting hanging over the stage in the church hall, the hand-drawn banner catching in the October sunlight: DOGSON’S BOYS – TENTH ANNIVERSARY. He’d been looking forward to this day for months: the regiment’s first reunion since breaking up in ’45, the chance to catch up with old mates, to feel the old camaraderie. Just to feel that he belonged to something again, that there was more to life than taking fares on the buses all day before falling asleep in a chair by the wireless.
Yeah, he’d been looking forward to a good old natter about the old days, but now he was here he couldn’t help feeling cheated. The lads had been happy enough to talk about those times at first – most of them, anyway – but they all seemed to have so much else to talk about. Watson had drifted between groups, trying to join in, but it seemed they’d always disperse about him, leaving him alone again.
People drifting away; it seemed to sum up the last ten years of his life.
Just as Watson was about to make his third trip over to the buffet table to consider who he might buttonhole next, he noticed a tall, imposing figure strolling directly towards him.
‘Watson!’ the man called. ‘Alan Watson!’ His smile was as smart and straight as the cut of his dark, well-tailored suit, but no laughter lines scored the skin around his deep-set brown eyes. In fact, there was barely a mark on the classically heroic, square-jawed face. Even his fair, almost-white hair was slicked back in its old familiar style. He was one of those lucky sorts that never seemed to age a day.
‘Sergeant Henderson,’ Watson muttered in disbelief, happy yet also worried to be singled out for attention from the officer class. Old Spinney had christened Henderson the Dorset Darling, and the name had stuck with the lads. They’d always been joking back then. Watson felt automatically for the keepsake in his jacket pocket. His lucky charm, got him through D-Day. Got Spinney seconded to guard duty in Turelhampton. Shame Spinney wasn’t here… not surprising though.
Henderson’s fixed smile never wavered as he made his way nimbly through the noisy crowd to join him. He even seemed to talk through it. ‘Please, Alan, we’re not in the army now. You must call me George.’
The thought of doing so unnerved Watson still further. ‘You’re looking well,’ he said.
‘You too, old man, you too. Good to see you here. Hear you’re on the buses these days.’
‘Fare cop,’ Watson joked weakly – his usual joke.
Henderson nodded genially, looked about him. ‘No Spinney about? You two used to be inseparable.’
‘We lost touch, sir. Since his troubles.’
Henderson’s smile dropped a little and Watson instinctively knew that their small talk was now out the way.
‘Noisy here, isn’t it,’ Henderson said. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we find somewhere a little quieter, have a chinwag.’
‘Outside?’ Watson suggested.
‘No…’ Henderson indicated to a door by the little stage, which was standing ajar. ‘Tell you what, my coat’s hanging up through there. I’ve got a little flask of something in it. Let’s have a nip, shall we? Drink to old times, eh?’
A fresh wave of laughter from Bedders’ own adoring army rattled out brutally in the hall, and Watson found he wasn’t resisting as Henderson steered him over to the doorway and ushered him through.
It was a lot quieter behind the stage, and shrouded in darkness. Watson could hear splashes and the clinking of china from the kitchens in the adjoining area; a comforting sound, it reminded him of Mags, elbow deep in suds doing the pots.
Henderson flicked on a light switch and in the brilliance of the bare bulb above them Watson saw the man’s hand was ringless, which surprised him. ‘Not married, then, sir?’
Henderson shook his head, reached into his coat and offered Watson a hip flask.
Watson relaxed a little as the whisky splashed into his dry mouth. It was good stuff, too. ‘Only we all reckoned you were the marrying sort. Never short of a sweetheart as I recall.’
Henderson’s dark eyes betrayed a flash of annoyance at such triviality. He took Watson’s arm firmly. ‘Listen, Watson, there’s something I’m interested in. Something I’d like to talk to you about.’ Henderson pulled him closer to the shadow of the heavy stage curtain. ‘The night we were all told never to discuss.’
‘Never have discussed it, neither, Sarge,’ Watson said immediately.
Henderson smiled again, coldly. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘Who’d believe me?’ He let out a short, self-pitying laugh; one that couldn’t have been more different from Bedders’ confident roar. But Bedders hadn’t been sent in to look inside the thing. He hadn’t seen what Watson had.
‘Spinney would’ve understood, of course…’ Henderson went on.
‘We lost touch. Missing out on the action in Normandy to guard the old place, it messed him up, I think.’
‘I stayed behind myself,’ Henderson pointed out mildly.
Watson looked away, embarrassed, pretending to be fascinated by a display cabinet on the bare wall to his right. Notices and old photographs were pinned up behind the glass, and his misshapen portly silhouette was slouched on the magnolia beside them, squaring up dismally to Henderson’s slim physique. He looked back to Henderson. Why couldn’t his body have stayed firm and slim like the Dorset Darling’s?