Free Last Man to Die by Michael Dobbs Page A

place before it starts swarming with troops. So I’m going to borrow the bike and take to the roads. All roads lead somewhere.’ Hebegan his preparations to depart, buttoning up the Canadian tunic which he was still wearing.
    ‘Not in enemy uniform, for God’s sake. They’ll shoot you for sure!’
    ‘They’ve got to catch me first,’ Hencke shouted back over his shoulder.
    Moments later the sound of an engine, a Norton 250, began throbbing through the night. ‘They even left a map with it,’ he smiled in triumph, revving the bike before letting out the clutch with a snap which sent a shower of wet dirt cascading into the air. Hencke was gone.
    The commander gazed after the disappearing figure. ‘You are a strange one, Hencke. But I chose the right man. You’ll get back to wherever you came from, I’m sure. Even if it’s the other side of hell.’
    He could neither see nor hear the motorbike by the time it pulled up sharply several hundred yards beyond the camp gates. Hencke reached into the pocket of his tunic where the commander had stuffed the precious envelope. ‘My word of honour,’ he whispered, ‘one German officer to another.’ The dark eyes glowed with contempt as he tore the letter into a hundred tiny fragments, sent scattering in the wind as he rode away.

THREE
    The sun was rising and London was beginning to stir, but it made little difference within the Annexe. Daylight didn’t penetrate here, and the only sign of the new day was the progress of the clocks and the arrival of those rostered for day duty. The duty secretary, Anthony Seizall, was rubbing the sleep from his eyes and staring at the telephone as if it had broken wind. Perplexed, he clamped it back to the side of his head.
    ‘You’re not pulling my leg, are you? Because if you are I shall have great pleasure in coming round with half a dozen of the local boys in blue and pulling the head off your bloody neck!’ There was a pause while he listened to a heated voice on the other end of the phone, his head bent low over the bakelite mouthpiece and his straight hair falling over his eyes while he punctuated the conversation with references to a variety of spiritual saviours before descending into repeated low cursing. Seizall was chapel, practically teetotal. Something was clearly up.
    He sat chewing the end of his pencil for several minutes, the tip of his rubbery nose twitching like a rabbit’s and dilating in time to the successive floods of indecision which swept over him. Eventually his gnawing broke the pencil clean in two; time was up, action was required. He proceeded down a maze of underground corridors, shaking his headfrom side to side as if trying one last time to disperse the fog of inadequacy that had settled upon him, until he came to the staff sleeping quarters. Hesitating only briefly for one final burst of indecision, he knocked on a door and entered.
    ‘Sorry to wake you, Cazolet. Got a tricky one.’
    Cazolet rolled over and waved his hands in front of his eyes, trying to ward off the light from the bare bulb which was prying his lids apart. He spent a great deal of his time in the Annexe and the result was a grey pallor across his face made worse by lack of sleep. He wasn’t supposed to be on duty at the moment, but he knew the PM’s mind so well that the other staff had taken to consulting him on many matters. What it meant, of course, was that they brought him all their problems, as if he didn’t have several filing trays full of his own to deal with. But he didn’t mind; consultation was the finest form of bureaucratic flattery.
    ‘Seems there’s been a break-out. Some POW transit camp in Yorkshire. Haven’t got the final figures but it looks like – almost two hundred and fifty Jerry on the loose. I’ve double-checked, of course. No doubt about it, I’m afraid. Bit of a cock-up, really.’ Seizall’s sentences were clipped, giving but the barest detail, as if too much flavour might somehow involve