Free SS-GB by Len Deighton Page B

General,’ said Douglas.
    At that moment Huth entered the room. He looked at Harry Woods who was resting against the desk with his eyes closed. Then Huth looked at Douglas and raised his eyebrows quizzically.
    At the other end of the phone, General Kellerman said, ‘Do you think I should come over there, Superintendent Archer? I can rely upon a loyal and conscientious officer like you to assess the situation.’
    Huth had walked over to his desk and now stood with head bent towards the earpiece of the phone.
    ‘I’m sure that the General…’ Huth tried to grab the phone but Douglas held on to it long enough to say, ‘The Standartenführer has just come in, sir.’
    Huth took the phone, cleared his throat and said, ‘Huth here, General Kellerman. What is it you want?’
    ‘I’m so pleased to locate you at last, my dear Huth. I want to tell you –’
    Huth interrupted Kellerman’s greeting. ‘You’re in a nice warm house, General, in a nice warm bed, with a nice warm woman. You stay there and let me continue my work without interruption.’
    ‘It’s simply that my switchboard couldn’t seem –’ the phone clicked as Huth dropped the earpiece back on to its rest.
    Huth looked at Douglas. ‘Who gave you permission to discuss the workings of this office with an outsider?’
    ‘But it was General Kellerman…’
    ‘How do you know who it was? It was just a voice on the phone. I’m reliably informed that your drunken friend here…’ he jabbed a thumb at where Harry Woods was blinking at him, ‘…can manage a fairly convincing imitation of General Kellerman’s English.’
    No one spoke. Any of Harry Woods’s previously stated intentions to tell Huth straight about the decorum of having the little Major along to the mortuary had been put aside for another time.
    Huth tossed his peaked cap on to the hook behind the door and sat down. ‘I’ve told you once, and now I’ll tell you for the last time. You’ll discuss the work of this office with no one at all. In theory you can speak freely with the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler.’ Huth leaned forward with his stick and jabbed Harry Woods playfully. ‘You know who that is, Sergeant? Heinrich Himmler?’
    ‘Yes,’ growled Harry.
    ‘But that’s only in theory. In practice you won’t even tell him anything, unless I’m present. Or if I’m dead, and providing you’ve satisfied yourselves personally that my life is extinct. Right?’
    ‘Right,’ said Douglas quickly, fearing that Harry Woods was working himself up to a physical assault upon Huth who was now waving his stick in the air.
    ‘Any breach of this instruction,’ said Huth, ‘is not only a capital offence under section 134 of the Military Orders of the Commander-in-Chief Great Britain, for which the penalty is a firing squad, but also a capital offence under section 11 of your own Emergency Powers (German Occupation) Act 1941, for which they hang offenders at Wandsworth Prison.’
    ‘Would the shooting or the hanging come first?’ said Douglas.
    ‘We must always leave something for the jury to decide,’ said Huth.

Chapter Eight
    Long ago Seven Dials had been a district noted for vice, crime and violence. Now it was no more than a shabby backwater of London’s theatreland. Douglas Archer got to know this region, and its inhabitants, during his time as a uniformed police Inspector, but he little thought that one day he would live here.
    When Archer’s suburban house – situated between two prongs of the German panzer thrust at London – had been demolished, Mrs Sheenan had offered him and his child bed and board. Her husband, a peacetime policeman, was an army reservist. Captured at Calais the previous year he was now in a POW camp near Bremen, with no promised date of release.
    The table was laid for breakfast when Douglas Archer got back to Monmouth Street and the little house over the oil-shop. Mrs Sheenan’s son, Bob, and young Douggie were being dressed in front of a